The Bagatelle; or, Nineteenth-century novels and other amusements

by Chris Piuma

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Difficulty: hard

Now that's a title. This puzzle is full of deep cuts and I applaud the constructor for the effort. Nineteenth-century novels, eh? Why not.

This is the only crossword on this site that is a partner solve with hint usage, and I suspect it will remain that way for quite some time. Normally when I'm able to tap into the superior crossword-brain of my partner the two of us can crush any kind of puzzle. Not today! This puzzle is an absolute doozy.

Here's a list of all of the literary references in this grid (at least, the ones that are plainly referring to the theme). You can thank me later.

TOMCATMURR: The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr
ANNEBRONTE: Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
GOD: The Great God Pan
RED: The Red and The Black
ORC: Herewald the Wake: Last of the English
NEMO: The Mysterious Island, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas

Hot dog, those are some references.

I stand by a difficulty rating of "hard" for this puzzle because you can plainly see how much of the easier fill is obfuscated by less straightforward trivia, as is the case with GOD, RED, and ORC. The same goes for some of the non-literary fill, such as ESP with "Sixth member of a famous quintet", or SMOG as "Pea soup". The latter of which only appears in Wikipedia as Pea soup fog, if you're wondering how the hell "Pea soup" could possibly mean SMOG.

The FLOUT/"Repudiate" tag-team combo was also a big source of trouble. It took us forever to fill that one in from the surrounding context, constantly revisiting the gimmes to the left (BLOOD, BFFS).^[1] UMOK certainly didn't help the situation.

My partner and I both found the difficulty of this crossword to be a little more frustrating than satisfying. I can respect a tough grid, but when hints are required in several places it loses a bit of its luster. I'd like a few more gimmes in some of the corners, perhaps. Throw me a bone!

I feel like "Mates, quickly" is an incorrect definition for BFFS. Were mates referring to friends, it feels like an understatement since a BFF is a few steps above mate in the friend hierarchy. Were mates referring to a significant other, I'd consider BFF to no longer apply, since it's incorrect to describe your partner as a "friend". ↩︎

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