L. V. explained his idea. "After you play the Sedaka song," he said, "try 'Hey, Jude.'" It was one of his favorites, reassuring and life-affirming.
As soon as the guests retrieved the record from the box, another slip of paper fluttered out - an introduction to Walter Sexton.
"Why," wondered Ocean aloud, "do these pages refer to us as 'pieces?' Pieces of a puzzle, perhaps? Or chess pieces?" But no answer was forthcoming.
But when they played both records on the phonograph in succession, the safe door didn't budge, even after the Beatles finished their three-minute final chorus of "Na, na na, na na na na, na na na na, hey Jude!" repeated seventeen times. Instead, the microphone in the door crackled to life.
"A Century of American Music," it intoned, in a sexless voice filtered to a state of unrecognizability. Hurrying over to the bookshelf, Ms. Ellis pulled down the volume in question and paged through it rapidly until an index card fell out. The card read:
Turnabout is fairplay?
AT IF BS PG OT
(5 x 5, no Q)
Otto turned to Kenichi. "Think this one's for you."
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Meet the Pieces (Part 7 of Many)
Walter Sexton
Age: 68
Profession: Patent Attorney
Quote: "I never said that young people are dense as a rule. Some of the brightest minds I know are young! But the bright young people are all silly, and the sensible ones are all dense. Youth, intelligence, good sense - choose two."
Background: Raised in Oxford, sole son of a Latin professor and a nurse, Walter Sexton always seemed older than he really was. As he matured from a dour and cynical child to a moody teenager, his parents prophesied that he should be an old man by the age of twenty. This was true, in a sense. But with his keen mind for precedent and legal argument, he found a career in patent law that gave even him little cause for complaint. As the years went by and he had a little more time for his own pursuits, he mastered the construction of crosswords in the cryptic British tradition. Ever traditional in his tastes, a lover of illuminated manuscripts and fishtail lamps, Sexton is unlikely to be amused by the strange and wild turns that this tale is bound to take.
Random Fact: Walter spends much of his time in a hothouse tending tropical orchids.
Sample Puzzle: While reading in the Club, Sexton was asked to construct a tutorial for new Club members on how these puzzles worked. With a show of grouchy reluctance, he set to work.
"We begin with the types of clues," he wrote. "The most common type of clue consists of an answer expressed two ways. In the beginning or the end of the clue, the answer is defined. In the remainder, the answer is expressed through wordplay. The number of letters in the answer will usually be given in parentheses..."
Cryptic Clues: A Tutorial
* The Double Definition. This is the simplest of clues, in theory. The answer is simply defined twice.
"Cannon shot marine armour (5)"
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* The Homophone. A word is replaced by its homophone; clues to this include "to the ear", "sound of", "heard", "in conversation," and so on.
"Sounds like Mark turned white about the temples (6)"
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* Anagrams. Indicated by such words as "broken", "mixed", "wrong", and so on.
"Lack of scattered thread (6)"
(Note that certain words such as "of", "is", "in", "for", "by", "and", and so on may be present in a clue in addition to its wordplay, indicating the equivalence of the two halves. However, these words may also be part of the wordplay itself.)
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* Charades: The answer is assembled from multiple words.
"Monster concealed flower (6)"
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* Reversals: A word is read in reverse.
"Star running back curses! (4)"
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* Containers: One or more words are placed inside another. Clue words include "in", "about", "without", "around", and so on.
"Everyone surrounded by lousy song (6)"
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* Hidden word: The answer is hidden inside the clue itself, often across word boundaries.
"SPECTRE is tough, ostracized, concealed (5)"
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* Deletions: A word or set of letters is removed from another word.
"Paladin loses boy, bringing grief (4)"
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* More than one of the above. Clues frequently involve combining the above tricks, along with abbreviations, acronyms, roman numerals, and so forth.
"I speak of a barrier brief and unknown, with a great weight (6, 6)"
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Learning these tricks would eventually prove critical.
