Word Alert! at Melbourne Art Book Fair 2018

This was the Sunday festival program. Imagine the Friday and Saturday programs! You’ll have to, because they were printed on the other side of this sign.

Here we are, bright and early on the Friday morning. The first event on the program was a live solve of that day’s David ‘DA’ Astle cryptic crossword. The workshop was hosted by Antonios ‘AS’ Sarhanis, who is the founder of the DA Trippers (pronounced ‘D-A-Trippers’): a website about solving the David ‘DA’ Astle cryptic crossword, which is published in the Fairfax newspapers every Friday. Sure, this event was a little difficult to explain in advance—but look at the turnout! DA Trippers, each and every one. In other news, how do you get a copy of the DA cryptic crossword a day before it’s published so you can typeset it and print it out on a giant flip chart? Long story. Let’s have a coffee sometime.

Here we are at the next event. Crossword fans in their element. Some people had driven from Bendigo!

It was sitting-room-only. Everyone who registered for a workshop was assigned a giant clipboard.

Here’s who they’re listening to in the photos above. It’s Chris Black presenting the ‘Cryptic Crosswords 101’ workshop. As you can see, the stage looked like it was made of giant black and white cubes.

Here’s Siobhan Linde, 40 metres away on the other side of the stage. Lucky we had mics. This, may I say, was a very informative workshop for cryptic crossword beginners.

Teaching stance.

These two were possibly on a crossword date.

Meanwhile, business was booming over at the Word Nerd Hub. This was our merch-stall-slash-information-stand for the festival. Here’s a customer wondering how not to buy a crossword headband now that she has bought a crossword tote. It’s a lifestyle. These totes were designed by Crossword Club member Dennis Grauel and are available from our online shop. They’re double-sided. The other side says ‘CROW SLOBS CRUD’.

Here’s Crossword Club member Sophie overseeing the hub. We had an electric pencil sharpener that was free to use, which attracted a lot of business.

Here’s someone submitting a grammar grievance. We accepted grammar (and punctuation) grievances all weekend in return for gold-coin donations to the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages. We were ‘literally’ turning word rage into cash. On the Sunday we had an Airing of Grievances—but more on that later.

Look what else was going on at the hub—a Clue Booth manned by Liam ‘LR’ Runnalls! You may know LR as the author of Monday’s cryptic in the Fairfax newspapers. Liam’s dream was to man a booth at which people could have their names turned into cryptic clues. And here he is, making it come true. He had a label maker and would print out cryptic name tags for people to wear about the place. I later saw a guy wearing the label ‘ROB ME! (4)’. You may have already worked out that his name was Nick. If not, perhaps you should consider joining Collingwood’s longest-running crossword club. We are beginner friendly.

A happy Clue Booth customer.

Turning names cryptic isn’t easy. LR had a copy of the Chambers crossword dictionary and three bottles of water on hand.

What next? Aah, the Spelling Bee. Here you can see excitement building side-of-stage.

Bee host Karen Pickering really nailed her entrance. We asked the sound guy to play the Oscars theme so Karen could take a turn around the set, shaking hands with competitors and stoking the tension. In this shot you can see some of our spell-checkers—Hope, Emma and Bobby—poised on the side of the bleachers. Bobby is studying his word list.

In the first round, the contestants spelled on their clipboards, checked by the checkers.

A confident contender.

The one thing better than looking strikingly like Dame Helen Mirren is spelling ‘apostrophe’ correctly.

These two went off-piste, doing some freestyle spelling in the audience.

Me with the sign I carry everywhere.

Our finalists take the stage.

Here, Tony is spelling ‘cantaloupe’ incorrectly. Turns out it has an ‘a’ after the ‘t’. Who knew? Not Tony.

The winner, Susie, wields her dictionary! The irony is, she doesn’t need one. Ba-dum ching.

Susie will wear this rosette for life. But I hope she took her name tag off. It’s weird when strangers say hello to you on the tram.

Here’s Emma back at the hub, greeting the GP (that’s event-coordinator slang for ‘general public’).

It’s Bobby and Hope, taking names.

‘So far, so good.’ —Chenks, me and Tony. Chenks is the co-founder of the Collingwood Crossword Club. He’s the brains of the outfit, you might say. Tony is the founder of the DA Trippers (pronounced ‘D-A-Trippers’), which, as you know, is a website about solving the Friday cryptic crossword set by David ‘DA’ Astle in the Fairfax newspapers. There’s a website for everything.

Stay nervous.

Here’s a young chap named Bowie who has just found out there‘s going to be a spelling bee for kids on Sunday. (He ends up making it to the final—but more on that later.)

What’s going on inside, at the book fair? Here’s Meredith, presiding over the neatest stall table in Good Copy history.

We had a new issue of ‘The Gaz’; new pencils with our logo lasered onto them; new tomato timers; and a new zine by Pork Chop, who announced the day before the fair that he would be compiling an 80-page collection of his tweets that nobody has liked. A lot of material to draw on.

People received a free poster of their choice with any purchase.

Though trapped behind the stall, Brodie and Meredith tried to get into the crossword spirit.

This child is suspicious of mailing lists. We can learn a lot from generation Z.

Alex Kelaart, a stalwart of any self-respecting art book fair.

Here’s good ol’ Sav, living up to the Ladies of Leisure name with her bubble tea and casual polo.

Paul and Mitch, lending some gravitas to the affair.

Over in the cool aisle: two Sams for the price of one. In this shot you can also see part of Wilfred Brandt’s arm, and some of his books. Wilfred is a great guy. He was launching his new book, ‘Thank You for Asking Me That Question’, at the fair. It’s a collection of interviews and it’s just excellent.

Dan and the youngest staff member at the Perimeter Books stand.

Dan, back on duty. The problem with having youthful employees is they need a lot of breaks, so you have to hold things down much of the time. See that stack of thickish paperbacks with the brown covers? You’re looking at the winner of this year’s Cornish Family Prize for Art and Design Publishing! It’s called ‘To Note: Notation across disciplines’. Congratulations to publishers Perimeter Editions, editor Hannah Mathews, and designers Ziga Testen and Stuart Geddes.

There’s the co-designer himself, Stuart Geddes, soaking up the online acclaim while his dad waits politely.

We’d better get back to the festival or we’ll never get through all these photos. Day two, and here’s Liam ‘LR’ Runnalls of Fairfax-cryptic-crossword fame presenting his workshop, ‘Behind the Grid’. The idea was that Liam would reveal the secrets of crossword setting while setting an actual crossword. Ambitious!

Here is the audience, busy thinking of words to fit into the grid. You can’t see him in this shot, but one guy saved the day when LR needed an eight-letter word related to art: third-last letter ‘e’, last letter ‘k’. ‘What about renowned Melbourne-born sculptor Ron Mueck?’ says the guy. Incredible.

LR was impressed.

We won’t show a close-up, but LR had his mobile number printed at the bottom of the grid. He invited the audience to text him clue ideas. Will he live to regret this? Time will tell.

Inside at the fair, word of our totes was spreading.

Also, word of our ‘Cross Words’ zine. It contains every crossword commissioned for the Word Alert! festival, including an Aussie-slang-themed American-style quick crossword by Brendan Emmett Quigley of ‘The New York Times’, and it’s available from our online shop for $10, don’t you know.

These two thought it was time to go home but the fair was open until 7pm on Saturday so we all had to stay.

Sunday! We got off to an early start with the spelling bee for kids. This kid looks to have done well in round one. Perhaps this photo shows toilet-break time.

In the first few rounds, it was a matter of writing the words on clipboards. Not too much pressure out of the gate.

But soon we were down to our nine finalists. They took to the stage with bee hostess Karen Pickering. Recognise the young chap on the right? That’s Bowie, whom we met previously. He was seriously into spelling. At the bottom left of this photo you can see my niece, Nora, who doesn’t care for spelling. She cares for pulling the heads off flowers and swanning around in her watermelon-shaped backpack.

It was an encouraging crowd. You’d almost suspect some of them were related to the competitors.

Here’s one of the runners-up, Y-Lan, who revealed herself to be a much better speller than I am. The field of contenders was topnotch. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway. Y-Lan made it through several elimination rounds and was happy with her runners-up award: a fancy ribbon we’d had printed by a horseshow sash and rosette company based in Adelaide.

These two, Inez and Alice, were so good at spelling that we had to call it a draw. Two winners! The things kids can spell these days. Is it because of computers or despite them? Unbelievable.

Over at the Word Nerd Hub, business was brisk. People were browsing in droves because they’d heard we were about to present Australia’s first outdoor crossword tournament. Had they heard that? Anyway, these two were checking out crossword zine ‘The Cruciverbalist’, edited by Chris and Siobhan, whom you’ll remember from 350 pictures back as the hosts of our ‘Cryptic Crosswords 101’ workshop.

Here are three members of the Elsternwick Cryptic Crew (ECC). They attended every day of the festival, wearing their matching club t-shirts. This crossword festival truly brought clue lovers together. The Collingwood Crossword Club will be doing an exchange with the ECC before too long.

Here are Martina, Alice, Sana, Sophie, the other Sophie, Dennis, Mark and Sahra: eight of the twenty Crossword Club volunteers I rostered on for the tournament. I was very nervous about the tournament.

‘Should we enter the tournament?’

Too late! It’s starting. And here are the hosts, Lara Chan-Baker and Jeremy Wortsman.

Now, I’m going to skip straight past the heat to the final. Suffice to say, the heat went off without a hitch. It was essentially 50 people doing crosswords in silence. Well, not silence: we played 40 minutes of elevator music that Chenks downloaded from YouTube. Every now and then, Jeremy would get on the microphone and announce to the gathering crowd that the heat was very exciting. Anyway, here are four of our eight finalists: Alana, Anthony, Mike and Peter. We made all the finalists wear marathon-style vests.

Here’s another finalist, Alison. She was the crowd favourite because she started the heat halfway through and still made it to the final.

As the competitors took to the stage we played the ‘Rocky’ theme tune and forced them all to put on crossword-print headbands. You can’t see here, but at this point our tournament officials were setting up eight giant easels in a semi-circular array before the crowd.

Here’s my colleague Pork Chop, who made it to the final. He’s looking to the sun gods for guidance. Behind him is Dennis, Pork Chop’s assigned checker, wearing a handsome Good Copy t-shirt. They’re designed by Tim Lahan, don’t you know.

And they’re off! Anthony attacks the top right of the competition grid, a crossword set by festival favourite LR. Anthony was the strongest contender, having finished the heat 10 minutes ahead of everyone else. Here you can see Jeremy onstage, offering some pertinent commentary.

Oh, yes—the crowd loved Anthony.

But Pork Chop was pushing through the pain barrier.

Who’s this? It’s Mike, who had very clear handwriting.

Peter meditates for a moment. His assigned checker, Chris, looks on.

Alison hits the halfway mark ahead of most. It’s what we’ve come to expect from Alison, by this point.

But ANTHONY! Look at him go. What could it be? Ententive? Extensile? Extensive?

And there it is. Anthony was extensively victorious.

All the runners-up received a professionally printed ribbon. Mike was happy with that.

Here, Anthony poses with his official champion’s sash, worn upside down so he can read it. Bookies will be posting very short odds on Anthony for upcoming tournaments.

Back at the hub, LR was pleased to autograph his handiwork.

‘That’s life. Good headbands, though.’

Here, at the other end of the hub, you can see Martina shilling the festival zine and Sana accepting last-minute grammar complaint forms … because it will not be long now until the AIRING OF GRIEVANCES. Let me explain the Airing of Grievances. In my life, I have noticed that a lot of people like to complain about aspects of other people’s grammar and punctuation use. They feel that things are NOT BEING DONE CORRECTLY. They are GRIEVED AND ENRAGED. They monopolise valuable comment space on the internet. ‘Why not harness this energy for good?’ thought I one night, after a jazz cigarette. ‘If we accept donations in exchange for airing these grievances, we can raise money for something important—in this case, the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages.’ So now you have the background. Let’s see how it all panned out.

A crowd gathered on the bleachers, ready for the airing. These two brought black veils à la Winona Ryder in ‘Beetlejuice’. Very appropriate.

Here he is, the grievance airer himself: Casey Bennetto. Casey was wearing a genuine horsehair barrister’s wig, which I hired from Rose Chong’s. She really does have everything. But back to the story. In this shot, Casey has just called for the grievances box to be wheeled out.

Jordan and Sahra looked very grave. Very grave, indeed.

Not so our expert panellists. Here’s Professor Kate Burridge, prominent Australian linguist, and Meredith Forrester, author of ‘Make Grammar Great Again’ (Thames & Hudson Australia, 2017), yukking it up on their stools.

Aah, there’s our third panellist: Penny Johnson, renowned of RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing course.

And now let’s pan out. You can see me there at the front of the stage, with my green hat on. When I rang that gold bell, Casey would read a grievance. In this shot he’s reading one submitted by Samantha from Mentone: ‘I don’t like it when people say they “did” countries, rather than saying they “visited” countries. For example, they say, “I went to Europe and I did France and Italy.” You can’t “do” a country.’ As you can see, the audience is nodding in agreement.

But what does the panel think? ‘Doing’ countries gets a low grief rating. Who are these pushovers? I’m looking at you, Meredith. And so’s that kid in the pink t-shirt.

Some were loving it; some were hating it. What did you think of that semicolon? Correct: it was perfect.

Oh, there were many grievances. Coincidentally, one of them was from someone named Casey who complained about the inconsistent list punctuation on the grievance submission form.

The crowd held hands. This was specifically to do with a grievance about the difference between ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’. There, their, they’re.