Crossword sightings in Indian films are rare. And so I watched with great interest as Byomkesh Bakshi in Shajarur Kanta (2015) lingered on the puzzles section of the newspaper while holding forth on the art of murder.
A close-up shot of the crossword on the page revealed this:
What do we see? A blocked grid crossword, partly solved. A few cells are filled in here and there. Strangely, many of the filled cells are unchecked and the words they belong to are unsolved. How exactly is Byomkesh solving this crossword? Has he cracked the Nina before the individual clues? Is he filling in letters at random? Has he confused the crossword with the Sudoku?
We don’t learn the answers to these questions. But we do move on to bigger oddities in the adjacent Jumble section.
The PORCUPINE strikes
Check out the last jumbled word of the set: UCRONIPREP.
While our detective is talking about the efficacy of porcupine quills as lethal weapons, the Jumble has served him a Baader-Meinhonf moment: an anagram of PORCUPINE.
Except that UCRONIPREP is not an anagram of PORCUPINE.
Take a closer look at the image, and you see the font of UCRONIPREP does not match the other jumbled words, the empty squares run into the explanatory text. Makes one smell a porcupine rat: this word was not part of the original puzzle - the film makers have been up to mischief and tacked it on later.
Someone from the film team must have noticed the gaffe too. By the time the puzzle shows up on screen next, the superfluous R has miraculously vanished.
Byomkesh struggles with cracking that last anagram even after the correction.
He then sets the newspaper aside to meet a distraught client. While talking to this client, he has a PDM, exclaims "PORCUPINE!" and grabs the paper to fill in the pending word.
That's Byomkesh triumphantly writing in PORCUPINE:
Here comes another twist.
Between the two scenes above, the illustrated puzzle that accompanies the jumbled words has been brutally scratched out with a black pen by hands unknown.
What was the motive of this seemingly purposeless act of violence?
I set out to do some detective work of my own.
The Final Piece
That crossed-out image, as Jumble solvers would know, is the final piece of the puzzle: the circled letters from the four words are anagrammed once again to answer the clue in the image.
The clue in the image (as you can see in the "Before" screenshots) is:
When it came to protecting their castle they were "????-??????"
Its solution expects 4+6 = 10 letters. The quote marks around the blanks suggest a pun.
The contributing letters from the first three words in the puzzle:
AM from ALBUM
DT from DIGIT
OTA from BOTANY
AM+DT+OTA totals 7 letters, which means 3 more letters are to be had from the fourth word to make ????-??????, *not* 4 as the encircled letters in PORCUPINE suggest.
Rearranging the contributing letters AMDTOTA??? to correspond to ????-?????? in the image clue gives us a fair idea of what the overall answer could be.
That answer would fall into place only if the circled letters in the last word were IVE. PRPE of PORCUPINE does not fit the bill.
Detective work conclusion: The film makers couldn't make the fake PORCUPINE fit the final puzzle - so they crossed out the final puzzle to bury the evidence!
Endgame
What WAS the real word hiding behind the fake PORCUPINE? I invite you to find the answer.
Related Posts:
- Hot Fuzz: Crossword Conversation
- A Puzzling Difference Between Crossword Solvers and Non-Solvers
- Cryptic Crosswords a Threat to Criminal Justice?
- Unlikely Movie Characters as Potential Crossword Setters
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There are times when, while watching a movie, we find a character say something that prompts us to think – here's someone with the makings of a cryptic crossword setter. This character need not be in the mould of a glib-tongued Bond; s/he may be a person ordinary within the film's framework who lets out an unexpected flash of lexical wizardry.
Have you seen the film 
Do you keep forgetting people's faces, or find yourself saying "Hello Vinod" whenever you meet Tony? 
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