Image: Ross Sneddon, Unsplash
Cryptic crossword clues are precise. They follow a specific tradition, a clear set of rules, allowing only a little wiggle room for cheeky wordplay or poetic license. Every syllable, every letter must be accounted for in the clue. For a first-time solver, they appear entirely inaccessible, usually overlooked in favour of their more popular cousin, the Quick. You might think you’re on the right track, having solved half of the cryptic clue and then letting your assumptions fill in the blanks, justifying your answer after the fact. This approach will rarely ever work; cryptic clues are exact. But once you learn to follow the logic, the solution comes into focus, having been staring you in the face all along. A tiny intersection of poetry and mathematics. Simultaneously creative and deeply objective.
*
Cunning creatures played pi games (7)
Gummer loved cryptic crosswords. He would solve them manually in thick, musty books, brown and grey pages published who knows how many years ago. Every time we visited, there would always be a book splayed open on a table somewhere, pages held flat by a strange, smooth leather strap with bulbous weights on either end. I remember being fascinated by the weight as a child, often taking it out of the book and turning it over in my hands, wondering what such an object could possibly be used for. I smile at the memory, at the casual destruction wreaked by unsupervised children, at the exasperation Gummer must’ve felt, returning to his desk to find his page lost, mixed with pride at his granddaughter’s curiosity.
Once you learn to follow the logic, the solution comes into focus. A tiny intersection of poetry and mathematics.
I got into cryptics not long after he died. I’d previously only looked over his shoulder at the occasional clue, as he spent hour upon hour working through page upon page of what I could only understand as total nonsense. The whole activity seemed like an exercise in the arbitrary. How on earth does ‘Gnat inside tin barely visible (7)’ yield the answer ‘smidgen’? After a lot of practice, they’re now a source of comfort, an exercise contained within clear parameters. The answers aren’t immediately obvious but with enough focus, enough brainpower, every answer you could ever want can be spun simply from what’s on the page, what’s in front of you. The synthesis of creativity and intellect. Deeply human. Gummer was always deeply human.
*
Birds like partially periodical pastries (7)
He was christened ‘Gummer’ by his eldest grandson, my cousin Harry. When Harry was little, his impassioned call of ‘come here’ was mumbled into a mondegreen, and the name stuck. There’s a photo of the two of them with their backs to the camera, facing the ocean. Gummer’s large frame, clad in trademark jumper and trackpants, next to four-year-old Harry. There’s something about the way they’re sat next to each other, they appear not as a child and a guardian, but as old friends. Like Eeyore and Piglet. When you’re a child, you don’t feel as if your ideas are important to grown-ups, but Gummer would legitimise every one of your juvenile ramblings, on the proviso you’d stick around to listen to his.
Gummer was a scientist. His legacy is in devising the name for Canberra’s infamous Questacon, the science museum that is the most beloved of the three obligatory stops (alongside Parliament House and the War Memorial) on every Australian school’s mandatory excursion to the nation’s capital. He was a zoologist, among other things; he derived particular delight from regaling us with tales of his scatological study. It seems a disservice to simplify his professional discipline so crudely, but I keep thinking that working scientifically and solving crosswords must have been a fairly similar neurological process; the information is (theoretically) already in front of you. All you have to do is correctly apply the rules, and the answer will be revealed to you in its only true permutation.
Even though he knew he would never know everything, he knew how to know everything.
Once, when I was little, I asked him earnestly whether he knew everything. He smiled. ‘No one can know everything’, he replied kindly, as if simply clearing up a misunderstanding. Treating the obviously ridiculous question of a child with the consideration and reason he would any other. He was completely at peace, too, with his intellectual fallibility. Perhaps because even though he knew he would never know everything, he knew how to know everything.
*
Flying thieves always tormented same pig (7)
Gummer knew he was going to die, despite contrary advice from his doctors. He was known for non-sequiturs; at what would be his final birthday party, he suddenly launched, apropos of nothing, into his farewell address. He thanked his family. Said it had been an honour, that he’d had such a fortunate life. Within a week, he’d died in his sleep, alone in a hospital bed. An almost impressive display of efficiency. To have that knowledge about oneself, on such an intimate level, seems so improbable. Maybe it’s something we all have, and Gummer was just brave enough to face it. Perhaps, presented with all the information available to him, he came to the only possible conclusion, eschewing emotional impulses or human responses. Nothing sentimental or melodramatic, both adjectives he would have been completely entitled to. A scientist to the end; using available data to determine a hypothesis.
Perhaps, presented with all the information available to him, he came to the only possible conclusion, eschewing emotional impulses or human responses.
I didn’t get to go to his funeral. I don’t recall which lockdown it was; I remember sitting in the living room of my Hawthorn apartment, on a red pleather couch found in the street before an opportunistic council collection. Steam from warm human bodies had fogged the windows, but the absence of central heating meant I could see my breath. My phone buzzed, and I read the text. The funeral would be held in Canberra, so that was that.
Instead of a funeral, all I have are those morose, self-indulgent imaginings, where you picture yourself giving the eulogy. I hold my emotions back, but only just, in a way that’s powerful, and garners the audience’s sympathy. I’m just the right amount of funny, just the right amount of poignant, just the right amount of reverential. It really has nothing to do with Gummer at all, but everything to do with me, and my perfect execution. As if there’s a right thing to say. When I talk about him in real life, it’s easier to pretend nothing happened, as if he’s simply still up in Canberra, or has just popped out of the room. Different rules to follow in reality. No perfect solution.
Except in crosswords. I don’t have a bulbous leather paperweight to accompany me. I’m a cheapskate; I make my Dad retrieve the paper from the brisk cold of the Canberra morning, unwrap the gritty, dewy clingfilm, stretch out the Puzzles section and send a picture to me in Melbourne, where I solve it on my iPad. I’m good at the anagrams and the Spoonerisms, but the bits-and-pieces clues can take me ages. Now I know immediately that the word ‘popular’ in a clue refers to the letters ‘in’; the Queen is always ‘ER’; ‘model’ refers to the letter T for some reason (haven’t quite worked that one out yet). Sometimes I have to Google words that I’m sure are right but I’ve never heard of, or the name of a river in Asia. This increases my respect for Gummer’s analogue crossword ability. I look at the set of rules, I think about them, and within 30-45 minutes I’ve come up with the unique solution. I’ve moulded the poetry into science. I’ve filled every blank, accounted for every letter. But still, Gummer is gone, and I never got to say goodbye. Even despite my caution, my exactness, something horrible and complicated happened. I wasn’t prepared. I’m still not prepared.
Doing these puzzles is part of a ritual, an offering to him. To honour his memory. To honour my grief. To make sense of his loss.
Doing these puzzles is part of a ritual, an offering to him. To honour his memory. To honour my grief. To face my regret. To make sense of his loss. To get closer to knowing what it was like to be Gummer, to be, like him, deeply human.
*
A few weeks ago, I came across the following clue in my favourite weekly crossword (LR, in the Saturday Paper): ‘Publications on pastries for birds’ (7).
It looked familiar, and took me a second. A few days prior, I’d written Gummer some clues as a tribute—small gestures, immortalising one of his life’s great loves. Upon seeing this published clue, I thought immediately of the cling-filmed balls of mince invariably populating his fridge. The visitors that arrived at the kitchen windowsill right in time to sing for their dinner. The claims he’d made about his ability to translate their song into words (verbatim, ‘a little bit of bread and no cheese’). I smiled as the answer popped straight into my head. This time, more poetry than science.
Gummer and Harry. Image: Supplied
