XWord Muggles Forum

Bird Lives wrote: ↑Wed Jul 15, 2020 9:15 pm

FrankieHeck wrote: ↑Wed Jul 15, 2020 1:26 pm
I made up a cipher (well, it went beyond that, with lots of word symbols and symbols for verb tenses and sound combinations) when I was in 7th grade. I have a collection of journals written in that code from 7th grade to grad school, and I still use the code for Christmas lists and other secret things. Thankfully, when I die, I'm sure nobody will be interested in cracking it to read my deepest secrets

There's a podcast where adults, before a live and usually lively audience, read aloud the journals they wrote as teenagers. It's called "Mortified."

https://getmortified.com/podcast/

• 17-Across: (2016 Coen brothers film) = HAIL CAESAR. Hail, the seventh plague.
• 23-Across: (2003 horror movie, or its fictional title town) = DARKNESS FALLS. Darkness, the ninth plague.
• 38-Across: (Singer's problem) = FROG IN THE THROAT. Frogs, the second plague. (In case you don't like the singular/plural, just note that the Talmud, noticing Exodus 8:2's unusual use of the singular noun tzfardea (frog) rather than tzfard'im (frogs) in the description of the start of the plague, suggests that the plague began with one giant Godzilla frog. Is this the first time anyone has used Talmudic exegesis to justify a crossword entry? Maybe.)
• 50-Across: (Sees red) = BOILS WITH RAGE. Boils, the sixth plague.
• 60-Across: (Cutthroat competition) = BLOOD SPORT. Blood, the first plague.

adamsimonlevine wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 10:16 am Unveiling the solution...

S
P
P
I
L
E
R
.
.
.


The five theme entries all start with some of the Ten Plagues from the Exodus story - familiar to some from the Passover Seder and/or The Ten Commandments and/or the Prince of Egypt:

• 17-Across: (2016 Coen brothers film) = HAIL CAESAR. Hail, the seventh plague.
• 23-Across: (2003 horror movie, or its fictional title town) = DARKNESS FALLS. Darkness, the ninth plague.
• 38-Across: (Singer's problem) = FROG IN THE THROAT. Frogs, the second plague. (In case you don't like the singular/plural, just note that the Talmud, noticing Exodus 8:2's unusual use of the singular noun tzfardea (frog) rather than tzfard'im (frogs) in the description of the start of the plague, suggests that the plague began with one giant Godzilla frog. Is this the first time anyone has used Talmudic exegesis to justify a crossword entry? Maybe.)
• 50-Across: (Sees red) = BOILS WITH RAGE. Boils, the sixth plague.
• 60-Across: (Cutthroat competition) = BLOOD SPORT. Blood, the first plague.

Since the puzzle's title referred to a series of events, let's take the numbers associated with each plague, and look at the letters in the correspondingly numbered squares in the grid. We have a C in square 7, A in square 9, M in square 2, U in square 6, and S in square 1, giving us our answer of Albert CAMUS, author of The Plague.

A few people managed to solve it without figuring out the mechanism - they saw the plagues and immediately thought of the novel. Clearly, this is a very well-read crowd!

Thanks for all the great comments that I received this week - it was really great to share with such an enthusiastic group of solvers! Looking forward to solving future puzzles in this series.

Adam

unfortunate-grid.png

Dplass wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:52 am How did you solve it without the numbers?

Al Sisti wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 12:20 pm

Dplass wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:52 am How did you solve it without the numbers?

I put the obvious words (hail, darkness, frog, boil, blood) into one Google search and all the hits had to do with the plagues. And I knew of the book "The Plague," and I knew who wrote it.