04.02.07 -- Latin Lover

Puzzle by Richard Hughes

Three 15-letter Latin phrases each stretching completely across the grid, AMOR VINCIT OMNIA (love conquers all), NON COMPOS MENTIS (not of sound mind), PERSONA NON GRATA (an unwelcome person), bracketed at the beginning and end of the puzzle with LATIN and LOVER, with the sad little notation "Shuffles off this mortal coil" as a clue for DIES, which "Latin Lover" Rudolph Valentino did most famously. This grid is PEPPERY with other pseudo-Latin and Latin Lover fill. One could almost join the three phrases into a spurned lover’s lament -- or they could serve as an exercise from Latin 101 for those who love Latin! This is a wonderful little Monday puzzle.

Pictured: 1A, 71A and 28A (Rudolph Valentino Dies), 39A (Anthony Perkins in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”), 20A ("Amor Victorious" by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio), 57A (Napoleon Bonaparte) -- left click to enlarge images and puzzle .

It’s sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. I can’t allow them to think I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now as I should have years ago. He was always bad and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man. As if I could do anything but just sit and stare like one of his stuffed birds. They know I can’t move a finger and I want to just sit here and be quiet just in case they suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they’re watching. They’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly.”

04.01.07 --Sunday, Bloody Sunday

The ides of March has come and gone this year, but this Sunday, Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon have conspired to present us with an EXCURSUS (word entry P. 72, 159, 105, 58, 2, 90, 45, 136) from Palm Sunday, a bloody affair in the Forum known as the assassination of Julius Caesar. Acrostics are a lot of “bookkeeping” so to speak -- a good amount of time is consumed transferring letter by letter, alphabetically and numerically, from line to square or from square to line. To add to this difficulty, The New York Times allows the most meager area in which to enter answers to the defined words listed alphabetically. Nevertheless, the acrostic is a puzzle I admire when considering the difficulty in construction that it must entail. Not only do we get a quote of some worth (in most cases), but also the author of the quote’s name and the title of the publication (via the first letter of the words defined). Guessing a word from the majority of letters achieved in the grid is not always possible and sometimes very misleading due to the fact that many of these constructions utilize odd quotations --- so in this case we have (in part) “HAD HE SAID HW WX EUXWH INSTEAD…” Now that's an answer that slays me! Sunday, bloody Sunday!

(Image: The Assassination of Caesar by Camuccini)

Left click to enlarge illustration or puzzle.