BANNED CROSSWORDS

At 46 Across you've filled in C K as the end of a four-letter entry clued as "What the ___!?" If you're solving a regular newspaper or magazine puzzle, the answer is easy: HECK. But--cue spooky music--this book doesn't have regular crosswords. It has... Banned Crosswords. And the correct answer is something else.

That's because the top constructors who've made these crosswords may have yes, yes in their clues, but they've got no-nos in their grids. Released from the domination of blue-nosed editors and from self-censorship, they're free to finally use some great entries and clues. No longer will chaste make waste.

In Banned Crosswords, constructors take off the kid gloves--and the fig leaves. Here they display their creativity and verbal dexterity with terms involving activities like sex, death, and bodily functions common to 6 billion people but somehow unrepresented in published crosswords.

While this book may be at room temperature, the crosswords inside are too hot to handle--at least too hot to be printed in family newspapers. XXX may be 30 to some and a label for moonshine to others, but here it's an accurate rating. So by all means, keep it away from the kids.

Why are crosswords one of the last bastions of Victorian Age public morality? Why does ASS have to be clued as "Balaam's beast," PENIS as "The ___ mightier than the sword," or ANAL as "Freud's study: Abbr."? Is it those blue-nosed editors? Not really. Editors are pretty open-minded people; they don those blinkers and blue noses so as not to shock that hypothetical average solver.

The matriarch of the modern crossword, Margaret Farrar, set the tone. "Solvers don't want to read about death, disease, war and taxes," she said. "They get that in the rest of the paper. They want something fun and lively..." In other words, they want escape. Eugene Maleska, her successor at the New York Times, forbade constructors to use "downbeat words offensive to solvers not exposed to the seedier side of life."

Editors have loosened up, but only marginally. My Los Angeles Times puzzles have run clues like "Get hands-on experience?" for PET and "Kind of blade or bar" for GAY. A small step for a constructor...

But if they've opened the door to unfettered puzzles just a crack, Banned Crosswords editor Jim Jenista has thrown it wide open. And many of the nation's top constructors have gratefully--and gleefully--rushed in.

-- BARRY TUNICK

For 24 years, Barry Tunick has co-constructed the Los Angeles Times Sunday crossword with Sylvia Bursztyn. More than 1.5 billion copies of their work have been sold. The "unfettered" Barry appears in this book, in a solo effort (Puzzle #20).

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