October Bonus Puzzle
Every month, The New York Times publishes a bonus crossword puzzle for subscribers. The puzzles are designed to have the difficulty of an early-week puzzle and to use the theme throughout. The theme of this month’s puzzle is crime and mystery novels. “Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis,” Sherlock Holmes declared, “and I am in my own proper atmosphere.” Literature’s most iconic freelance “consulting detective” first appeared in “A Study in Scarlet” in 1887 and has been going strong ever since. Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t invent the detective novel, but he created the version we know — complete with magnifying glass. Sherlock Holmes quickly became so popular that many believed him to be a real eccentric, playing the violin and dispassionately observing at 221B Baker Street, his actions recorded with admiration by the mild-mannered Dr. Watson and a long-suffering housekeeper. Holmes was a fictional creation, but, according to his author, he was based on Doyle’s onetime boss, the prominent Edinburgh surgeon Joseph Bell. The doctor had impressed his young clerk with his intuition and dedication to scientific method. As Julian Symons argues in his classic 1972 history of crime writing, “Bloody Murder,” Victorians had an interesting relationship with rational deduction. On the one hand, they fetishized a Holmes-like detachment; on the other, they embraced spiritualism and fairy lore — Doyle, a fervent believer in the world beyond the veil, was an ambassador of this duality. But clearly people were hungry for the detective novel’s rules and structures, just as the horrors of World War I gave way to the engrossing “puzzle box” mysteries of Agatha Christie and midcentury readers found a plethora of hard-boiled, noir antiheroes. And today? Well, anything goes. Choose your poison, as it were: If you want Holmes, there are modern Holmeses, female Holmeses, doctor Holmeses, nieces of Holmeses, finger-puppet Holmeses. Beyond him, you’ve got your cozy mysteries in which no main characters or animals are harmed; your gritty procedurals in which cynical cops have their own demons, heroes and antiheroes and oddballs; snow, deserts, spoofs and, presumably, the odd total bore somewhere. You’ll find most of them in this month’s bonus puzzle. With a little deduction and some knowledge of film, TV, classic detective fiction and crossword standbys, you, too, will find the perfect rainy afternoon’s distraction from the mindless and the topical. I don’t claim many of the great sleuth’s traits for myself. But even lacking his infallible instinct, all of us who love the crossword puzzle, the cryptogram, Wordle, Sudoku or the irresistible lure of a twisty detective yarn or series know that there is no better distraction. Solve the puzzle.
Try This Clue60-Across: Element of the Nancy Drew Notebook “The Apple Bandit” or the Sherlock story “The Five Orange Pips”
How are we doing? Thanks for playing! Subscribe to New York Times Games. If you like this newsletter, you can tell your friends to sign up here. The answer to the clue is FRUIT.
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