James Brydon writes this thread for this month’s FT news puzzle about French economy minister’s erotic novel American Fugue:
Burn Molière plays a pornographer (5,2,5) *
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit the answer into the grid,” said James, whose puzzle, published under his FT name Buccaneer, is published today. “I’m very sad to have to drop any mention of this.”
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Nor can he be part of the mysteries of stories such as the BBC Today program losing its audience, Belgium’s Luca Brecel winning the World Snooker Championship or Boris and Carrie Johnson expecting their third child.
But there’s plenty of other material that does make up the grid — headed by the enthronement of the British king, including the Eurovision Song Contest. This isn’t the first time in this puzzle series that royal feuds have cropped up, as have Britain’s economic woes, the legal wrangling of a former US president, and controversies surrounding British government ministers.
“I’m definitely not a news junkie, so I spent some time Googling news about May, trying to come up with the broadest possible list of potential projects,” Brydon said. “Dire news stories don’t work well in crossword puzzles, so I look for moments of cultural significance, or the hardships and failures of powerful people, that seem appropriate for a satirical mention.”
According to Brydon, writing crossword clues involves the potential to see wordplay ideas hidden within words.
“Here, novel ideas emerge from the words used to populate a grid around a central thematic idea. References Elon Musk’s Starship project, Wills and Harry’s spat, final series successionor anger over the 6th grade SAT (which my daughter took this year), was not on my original list, but instead arose organically from the monograms in the grid, allowing news topics to populate with as many clues and solutions as possible”
The FT Monthly News Puzzle can be found at ft.com/crosswordapp
*Bruno Le Maire (Anagram of Burn Molière)