bout de papier, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2001) — Summer 2001 // Été 2001, pp. 45–48
Viche Petit nudged the Embassy’s vin age brıcklın around a line of heat crazed lambada dancers, gyrating frantically in the July sunshine, and through the gates of the Presidential Palace. “Now remember, Liebnitz.” he cautioned, “Don’t raise the subject of the OAS Summit. The President thinks he had to bribe me to make sure he didn’t get an invitation. No one dared tell him that he wasn’t invited in the first place. I used the money to bring in the latest hot Kanata salsa combo, the Alta Vista Social Club, under our new ’branding’ program, CanCult: In Your Face Like a Wet Tortilla”
Moments later, Petit was introducing the logician and his aide, Attila McGee, to El Commandante. “I am grateful for your help in this matter, Ambassador,” said the bearded leader. “Lately, these incidents have been piling up. I hardly know where it’s safe to sit down.” Liebnitz stepped in. “We know about the earlier attempts on your life – the rocket-propelled armchair, the two-ton coconut pie in the swimming pool, the exploding chorizo, the booby-trapped iguana. Have there been others?”
El Commandante gestured with his trademark cigar. “Three days ago, I received a mysterious warning by carrier dodo,” he said. “But dodos have been extinct since 1681,” protested McGee. “That’s what made it so mysterious,” continued the President. “Later the same day, someone re-arranged the tiles on my bathroom floor. The guards saw him fleeing, but he made it over the seawall and into a umiak before they could collar him. A passing cubist, Pablo Braque, made a sketch of the man. Based on it, the police arrested the last nun in town, the mayor’s Edsel, the Michelin man, the Eiffel Tower and Key Largo. Unfortunately, they all had alibis. All we know is that the vandal was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan, ’Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.””
Liebnitz coughed in transparent embarrassment. “Well, we can clear up that little incident for you, sir. More urgently, the Centre did some research on the earlier events. We think that the would-be assassin was originally part of the invasion of 1961, but was so short-sighted that he misread his * Rompecabeza is Spanish for “conundrum” (literally “head-breaker,” parallel to the French “casse-tête”). map and landed at the Bay of Figs by mistake. After waiting in a beach cabana until late ’67 for back-up, he got to the capital and made a life for himself there under an assumed name. We don’t know what has set him off again, but have no reason to believe that the Congress of Inept Alsatians has anything to do with it.” El Commandante snorted. “Those running dogs! So who is this man?”
The ace logician said, “We’ve narrowed it down to five possibilities: refrigerator salesman Jack London, country road-builder John Denver, your spokesman Edgar Bergen, police chief Joel Cairo and tin-pan magnate Irving Berlin. All of them are in Cuba. One of them plans another attempt on your lite — a poisoning — at the benefit concert tomorrow night. We suggest smoking him out there, if you are prepared to take the risk.” El Commandante intoned, “Machismo demands it, however ludicrous.”
Liebnitz continued,, “I have to admit that the man in your bathroom was one of our agents, Jimmy the Turk. Do you have a diagram of the new arrangement of tiles?”
Raising an eyebrow, the president took a piece of paper from his desk and passed it to his visitor. The logician examined it and said “Yes, this is the missing piece. The chart shows what appears to be a random arrangement of black and white tiles. The white ones in fact form a skeleton crossword puzzle, with the arrow pointing upward. The report that Jimmy sent to the Centre provides the clues to the words that fit into the skeleton, and also a second chart of a different kind as back-up. With this, we should be able to pinpoint the assassin and where he will put the poison. When he shows his hand tomorrow, we’ll nail him.”
The following 39 clues, mainly relating to Cuba, refer to words or phrases (which come out in alphabetical order) that can be used to fill in the skeleton crossword puzzle. The skeleton has no numbers — you will have to deduce the placement of letters based on word length, etc. Each word or phrase can also be found in the block puzzle as a string of letters linked horizontally, vertically or diagonally. The letters are in the right order and although the string is not necessarily a straight line, it crosses neither itself nor other strings. Each letter is used only once. Be careful — some word strings may be found in more than one place in the block, but only one placement works with the rest of the strings. Two words in the skeleton puzzle and the same two words in the block puzzle are not linked to any of the clues; one is a man’s name and the other a type of liquor.
(1) Star’s first name in 33. (2) A friend indeed. (3) Big name in rum. (4) Previous president Fulgencio. (5) What they cut with 24. (6) Sea to the south. (7) Well-known product of 3. (8) Dominican friar Bartoleme de las – – – – -. (9) Two-thirds of a dance craze. (10) Argentine medical student, head of the National Bank, died in Bolivia. (11) Discoverer of Cuba. (12) Another dance craze. (13) Hispano-African culture. (14) Rum, cola and lime juice. (15) Young Gonzalez of recent fame. (16) Province, yacht and newspaper. (17) Foreigners (means “gibberish”). (18) The US pays $4085 a year for it, but Havana won’t cash the cheque. (19) A capital woman or her fiery dance. (20) He wrote Nobel prize novels in room 511 of the Hotel Ambos Mundos. (21) First mayor of Santiago and conqueror of Mexico. (22) Poet and revolutionary after whom Havana airport is named. (23) Popular musical group founded in 1969. (24) They are used to cut 5. (25) The Sierra where things started again in 1956. (26) It blew up in 1898 and started the Spanish-American War. (27) Swamp tree. (28) Boat-lift port or daughter of 20. (29) The barracks where things got off to a bad start in 1953. (30) Premium cigar and Dumas hero. (31) A 17th century English pirate who plundered Cuba. (32) Eastern province. (33) Movie made from Greene novel. (34) Rum in Cuba. (35) Yet another dance craze. (36) Where Teddy is said to have charged. (37) Cult from Africa, the Regla de Ocha Ifa. (38) Top export made from 5. (39) An important crop of the potato family, Latin name Nicotania.
The next evening, all was formal dress (camouflage fatigues with diamond studs) at the gala benefit concert in the grand ballroom of the national cultural centre. Every government department was to provide entertainment of some kind for the circulating guests. As they listened with (heavily modified) rapture to the Ministry of Propaganda’s orchestral rendition of the “Pronunciamento in C-minor,” few in the room remarked on the large number of sinister-looking black-garbed military guards along the walls. It was simply not “done” (or particularly safe) to remark on such things. Fewer yet noticed the furtive figure creeping toward the bar with a small skull-emblazoned flask in his hand.
But when the same figure stepped up to El Commandante a few minutes later and handed him a glass, watchers sprang into action. Liebnitz snatched the glass from bearded lips. McGee moved to apprehend the would-be assassin, but slipped on a squid and prune hors d’œuvre that someone had (understandably) ditched. The furtive figure dashed across the room towards the doors. The entire revolutionary leadership shouted at the guards to head him off, but they seemed frozen, as if awaiting a cue. Struggling out of a potted palm, McGee quickly surveyed the scene, glanced at the evening’s printed programme and turned to the now-silent orchestra beside him.
Seconds later, the guards were on the move. To the strains of “YMCA,” the gorgeously-uniformed crew marched, counter-marched and pirouetted in perfect unison, incidently blocking all egress for the running man, who was swept up into a line of exultantly sashaying guardsmen and out of the room, frantically exclaiming, “No, no, you fools. Stop dancing. Stop dancing NOW ….
As he thanked the Canadians, the President remarked, “Catchy tune, that.
Village People, you say? But of course. Once again, the campesinos in the forefront of the proletarian revolution in culture.” Petit opened his mouth to reply, but thought better of it. That was why he was Ambassador.
Can you duplicate Liebnitz’s feat by determining the two extra words in the puzzles: the name of the would-be assassin and the drink in which he placed the poison? Not necessary as a solution to the puzzle, but can you also fill out the skeleton? bout de papier will decide the winner by drawing from a box containing all correct entries received by February 18, 2002. The winner will receive a CD and a book prize autographed by A Aalto.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2001) — Summer 2001 // Été 2001, pp. 45–48. Read the rest of this issue →
