My Downfall, by Chorybdis
Thanks to all who responded for your kind comments on “Downfall”. There were a few queries about the unusual theme, so (belatedly) I felt some kind of explanation would be justified.
The inspiration for the puzzle came originally from the Edinburgh tram project, widely regarded by the locals as a fiasco. (It should be noted that Edinburghers have a long history of giving public works a frosty reception when faced with the bill: see for example en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Monument_of_Scotland.) Projected costs for the trams have escalated to the extent that the one remaining projected line from the city centre to the airport will probably cost around a billion pounds (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Trams). Much of the huge expense has been attributed to the need to relocate underground services away from the middle of the road where the tram rails will be located. I started wondering if the same transport aims could have been met much more cheaply by locating the system above ground. Thoughts obviously turned to Chicago’s ‘El’ (elevated railroad), but this seems more suited to a city of skyscrapers. A little Wikipedia research uncovered the related concept of suspended monorails, which led quickly to the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn. What an impressive system — and I suppose as well-known in Germany as it is virtually unheard of here. In my mind’s eye, I can see a similar suspended monorail working well in Edinburgh. Sadly, the reality is we’re stuck with expensive but rather conventional trams.
I noticed that WUPPERTALER and SCHWEBEBAHN were of equal length, so the idea for a puzzle was born. The slightly sadistic appeal was that the unfriendly combination of letters would make deducing the theme from a partially completed grid more difficult than usual. I also decided that, after Mynot’s Latin excursion, the taboo against using foreign languages was well and truly broken. The tale of unfortunate Tuffi from the Wikipedia entry provided a perfect embellishment to the theme because I could legitimately call the puzzle “Downfall”, creating both a red herring and a hint about the geography of the theme: see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_(film) . Another hint occurs in 32 across. I decided to use the letter-changing device to serve the dual function of indicating the letters of TUFFI and obfuscating the appearance of WUPPERTALER SCHWEBEBAHN in the initial grid fill. The idea was that the letters of TUFFI would “fall out” of the grid leaving the words to be highlighted immediately apparent to those attuned to Germanic word structure. The parallel lines of the highlighted words would represent the up and down monorails of the schwebebahn.
At this point more skilled setters would have added more and elegant thematic elements. However, I felt I was pushing my luck (even by Magpie standards) with such an obscure theme, so decided to keep it simple.
I settled on a 12 x 11 grid (I’ve no idea why I didn’t consider the more familiar 13 x 11) with the theme words symmetrically placed so that the semi-anglicised WUPPERTAL SCHWEBEBAHN form could be ruled out. Realising that Tuffi cognoscenti would be thin on the ground even among Magpie subscribers, I chose to indicate her as being a member of a specific thematic category. Wikipedia came to the rescue once again (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_elephants), and — surprisingly spoilt for choice — I spent a happy time shuffling lists of female elephants around to fit the preamble constraints. I deliberately placed the more complex (and hence Google-friendly) names in the Across clues (which include the exceptional clues) so that a partial fill dominated by Down answers would not give up the theme too early.
In the submitted version of “Downfall”, I included a footnote to the title which said “as reported in the Telegraph”. This was a pun relating TUFFI to its homophone TOUGHIE — the Telegraph’s crossword series. It also provided the missing elephantine link between the TOUGHIE and the Times’s JUMBO puzzles. The editors thought this too tenuous.
In a strange twist, I recently discovered that “Downfall” and the Edinburgh trams project are also linked in a hilarious spoof video (warning: much profanity).