Certainty's not an easy commodity to acquire, but it's hard to think this is not an allusion. Gospodin Krestoslovitsa would have been tickled. Interestingly, in Nabokov's Letters to Véra, which Olga Voronina and I are just putting the final touches to, VN creates a whole series of puzzles, some crosswordy, most not, for Véra at a time when she seems to have been depressed. And one feature of two of the crosswords--otherwise fairly basic, unlike this lushly tangled bank--is that here too the words read simultaneously across and down.

Brian Boyd

On 2/10/2012, at 2:22 PM, NABOKV-L, English wrote:

The Wall Street Journal Saturday puzzle <http://blogs.wsj.com/puzzle/2012/09/28/rows-garden-saturday-puzzle-16/> is in a format the setter Patrick Berry calls "Rows Garden."  Instead of Across and Down, it has Rows and "Blooms" of different shades:  Light Blooms, Medium Blooms, and Dark Blooms.

I assume the allusion to Vivian is intentional, but does anyone know for certain?

Jay Livingston

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Google Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal" Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options Visit AdaOnline View NSJ Ada Annotations Temporary L-Soft Search the archive

All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.