When crosswords contain more than just the answers to the clues
In 1945 a daughter was born to the caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. She was named Nina. From that day, he concealed the letters of his daughter’s name somewhere in most of his drawings. The letters N, I, N, and A are wholly inessential to your enjoyment of any of his cartoons but lie there as a treat, woven into someone’s hair or the folds of his or her clothing, if you know what you’re looking for—much like Alfred Hitchcock’s cameos, which can be seen in almost all of his films.
“Ninas” is a more charming term than “alfreds” and lives on as a way of describing hidden extra elements that can be discovered in completed crossword grids. Like their near namesakes, ninjas, ninas operate in the shadows. They’re not part of the solve, but they raise a smile on the faces of those who spot them. They can be found—if you know where to look—in British “concise” crosswords, which are a kind of pared-down cousin of the American style. Relying almost solely on straight definitions, they are nonetheless constructed by the same warped minds who come up with cryptic clues. It is easy to imagine that their creators might prefer to set themselves a more satisfying challenge than inauspiciously filling a thirteen-by-thirteen grid.
Having a hidden structure is also a good way to get started, rather than sitting there pondering the infinite possibilities of a blank grid like Buridan’s ass in the fable, which finds itself stuck between two equally attractive piles of hay and, unable to rein in ambivalence and choose a favorite, dies of hunger.
There are assuredly many constructors for whom the basic unit of crosswording is the clue and not the grid, and who relish each clue as it comes. For others, filling a grid may raise the unanswerable question of where to start. If you know that you’re going to try and construct a grid, though, whose perimeter reads TOBEORNOTTOBETHATISTHEQUESTION, well, you know what to do as you find yourself willingly thrown in at the deep end.
That’s one reason for including a nina. Another is political. Take Hungary. Crosswords were banned there in 1925 when the Horthy government discovered that a monarchist constructor had hidden the message LONG LIVE OTTO in one of them. And when the final edition of the British tabloid News of the World was being prepared among the debris of the UK phone-hacking scandal, executive Rebekah Brooks may have had two senior colleagues comb the copy for messages from disgruntled staff, but they did not notice some seemingly pointed phrases in the clues within the quickie and the cryptic. Constructed, one suspects, less in sorrow than in anger, they included “woman stares wildly at calamity,” “catastrophe,” “stink,” and “criminal enterprise.”
Other “personal” ninas are happier and subtler: birthday wishes to loved ones, which, ultimately, have only one intended reader but which are so unrelated to the mechanics of solving the puzzle that those for whom they are not meant would be churlish in the extreme to resent their presence—much better to join in and relish the fun.
Among the most common ninas is a puzzle theme the constructor has decided not to announce—and you, the solver, only spot if you’re letting your brain wander around. In 2009 Brendan Emmett Quigley constructed a puzzle for The Guardian in which the answers included PIERCE (“break through”), LINCOLN (“city”), GRANT (“admit”), HOOVER (“clean”), and FORD (“go to other bank”). It is easy to miss connections like this—especially if your obsession is the speed of your solve—but once you do, your heart is lifted, and there are extra treats, like the unchecked letters in the central column spelling out the by-then-inaugurated OBAMA.
Ninas work best when, like that example, they come in a place that feels right: in symmetrical form in the grid, as an acrostic in the clues, or—in a different context—in the same place in every paragraph. They can be a treat that reveals itself at the end, or can provide help with the meat-and-potatoes of the puzzle. Spotting a nina midsolve, perhaps in an inattentive moment, can make the endgame a lot smoother as you may be able rapidly to fill in more squares, and hence gain more letter clues to the actual clue clues.
Ninas are also a way for constructors to flex their muscles. Constructor Henry Hook showed his constructing chops at the age of fourteen. His grandmother gave him a puzzle that was part crossword, part jigsaw, created by Eugene T. Maleska, who went on to become the editor of the New York Times puzzle. Its endgame revealed a zigzagging nina reading, YOU HAVE JUST FINISHED THE WORLD’S MOST REMARKABLE CROSSWORD. Days after Hook received the gift, Maleska received a puzzle, written by Hook, with the nina WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOUR PUZZLE IS MORE REMARKABLE THAN MINE? Most ninas, it has to be said, are considerably less bombastic, but many serve a similar purpose: to prove one’s chops to one’s peers. They also convey an extra aspect of the personality of the more playful constructor, raising spirits and making a personal connection with the solver, the pair drawn inalienably together in fun.
Such moments are all the more affecting when they take place in unlikely puzzles. The London Times has the most dependable of British crosswords: Constructors are anonymous to ensure a house style that does not allow for themes or even the inclusion of living persons with the exception of the reigning monarch. So when, in 1967, a teacher at Westcliff High School for Boys wrote to the paper to ask whether a relevant clue or answer might be included on the day of departure of Alfred Bately, the head of maths and an ardent Times solver, the answer was not unexpected. Written in a letter that seemed curt was the admonishment that “the crossword was certainly not the place for passing on personal messages!”
That seemed to be the end of it until the last day of the same term. Hidden in that day’s apparently staid and anonymous puzzle were references including MATHEMATICS, GOOD-BYE MR. CHIPS, and even ALF, RED, BAT, and the cathedral city ELY. “It rapidly became clear to us,” a colleague recalled, smitten in admiration, “that the crossword editor was not as stony-hearted as his letter had led us to believe.”
Just as touching is the story of Wing Commander Peter Flippant, who entered the 1999 Times Crossword Championship. Eliminated at the first round, he offered his help as a companion-in-arms with the practical arrangements, in his words, “moving chairs and tables around and shuffling pieces of paper.”
A couple of months later, the Saturday Times puzzle contained, with zero fanfare, the following laudation in answers placed consecutively in the grid: SQUADRON LEADER, PETER, FLIPPANT, THANKS.
The nina in its purest form, though, is probably the perimeter message of a puzzle by Monk for the Financial Times in 2007. It reads AGHBURZUMISHIKRIMPATUL, which is exactly the kind of gobbledygook that suggests that the solver has embarked on a wild-goose chase. AGHBURZUMISHIKRIMPATUL means nothing, even in a made-up language, surely?
Not so. It means something in the made-up language Black Speech, invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the inhabitants of Mordor. In fact, it is inscribed on the golden, inaccessible One Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy:
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
And so our nina perimeter does mean something—“and in the darkness bind them”—monumentally irrelevant to the working of the puzzle as a crossword but a source of jaw-dropping joy and hats-off admiration to a tiny proportion of solvers. The nina, then, in a nutshell.
(While constructors might make their invisible messages so arcane that they are only spotted by a few, the puzzle itself is a different matter. For a solver—especially the more dogged [or perhaps I should use the obsolete term “caninal”?]—the feeling that he or she should have been able to fill the grid is assuredly no mere bonus . . .)