Vladimir Nabokov composed this puzzle for his wife Véra in 1926. The title, “Crestos lovitxa Sirin,” roughly means “Nabokov’s crossword”: krestlovitska approximates the Russian kreslovitsa, “cross” plus “words”, and Sirin is a pseudonym Nabokov often used, a reference to the creatures of Russian mythology. The upper half of each wing contains the grid, the lower the clues.

Nabokov, a trained entomologist, had published the first crossword in Russian two years earlier. Forty years later, in the Paris Review, he likened writing a novel to creating a crossword: “The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose.”

(Adrienne Raphel, The Crossword Mentality in Modern Literature and Culture, dissertation, Harvard University, 2018.)

Each year since 1993, the Literary Review has presented a Bad Sex in Fiction Award “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it.” Here’s 2013’s winner, Manil Suri, in his novel The City of Devi:

Surely supernovas explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it the sea and the sands — only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. We streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the world over rejoice.

Here’s the full list.

Memorable excerpts from the detective fiction of Michael Avallone (1924-1999):

• “The next day dawned bright and clear on my empty stomach.” (Meanwhile Back at the Morgue)
• “My body felt as abnormal as a tuxedo in a hobo jungle.” (The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse)
• “My stunned intellect, the one that found death in his own backyard with him standing only feet away, hard to swallow in a hurry, found the answer.” (The Horrible Man)
• “Her breasts were twin mounds of female muscle that quivered and hung and quivered and hung again. The pale red of her nipples were two twinkling eyes that said Go, Man, Go.” (The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse)
• “‘I’ve done a stupid thing, Ed,’ Opal Trace musicaled.” (The Case of the Violent Virgin)
• “‘Opal …’ she hoarsed.” (The Case of the Violent Virgin)
• “‘Obviously!’ she crackled, laying a whip across me and then turning with a sexy flounce she vanished through the glass doors, dragging her hatbox and portmanteau behind her. And my mind.” (Shoot It Again, Sam!)
• “I looked at the knife. … One half of the blade was soaked with drying blood. Benny’s blood. It was red, like anybody else’s blood.” (The Voodoo Murders)
• “Dolores came around the bed with the speed of a big ape. … She descended on me like a tree full of the same apes she looked like.” (The Tall Dolores)

This and my recent post on Robert Leslie Bellem were inspired by Bill Pronzini, who has written two appreciations of rapturously bad mystery fiction.

Notable allusions to unrecorded cases of Sherlock Holmes:

• “‘Oh, you mean the little problem of the Grosvenor Square furniture van. That is quite cleared up now — though, indeed, it was obvious from the first.'” (“The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor”)
• “‘Farintosh,’ said he. ‘Ah, yes, I recall the case; it was concerned with an opal tiara. I think it was before your time, Watson.'” (“The Adventure of the Speckled Band”)
• “‘Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife.'” (“The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual”)
• “‘He is a big, powerful chap, clean-shaven, and very swarthy — something like Aldridge, who helped us in the bogus laundry affair.'” (The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”)
• “‘You know that I am preoccupied with this case of the two Coptic Patriarchs, which should come to a head to-day.'” (“The Adventure of the Retired Colourman”)
• “‘We have not forgotten your successful action in the case of Matilda Briggs.’ ‘Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson,’ said Holmes, in a reminiscent voice. ‘It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.'” (“The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire”)
• “A third case worthy of note is that of Isadora Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a matchbox in front of him which contained a remarkable worm, said to be unknown to science.” (“The Problem of Thor Bridge”)
• “‘This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which you will allow is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller.'” (“A Case of Identity”)
• “‘And yet the motives of women are so inscrutable. You remember the woman at Margate whom I suspected for the same reason. No powder on her nose – that proved to be the correct solution.'” (“The Adventure of the Second Stain”)
• “‘I must thank you’, said Sherlock Holmes, ‘for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.'” (The Hound of the Baskervilles)
• “Our months of partnership had not been so uneventful as he had stated, for I find, on looking over my notes, that this period includes the case of the papers of ex-President Murillo, and also the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland, which so nearly cost us both our lives.” (“The Adventure of the Norwood Builder”)

A full list is here.

I don’t know anything about this; it just popped up on the subreddit r/funny:

“Someone in the Netherlands has a sense of humor.”

06/02/2025 UPDATE: Oop, no, it’s at the Dudutki ethnographic museum in Minsk! (Thanks, Nick.)

In his later years Joseph Conrad became obsessed with the opening scene of an unwritten novel that he planned to set in an Eastern European state. “So vividly used he to describe this scene to me,” wrote his friend Richard Curle, “that at last it was as though I had been a witness to it myself”:

“In the courtyard of a royal palace, brilliantly lighted up as for a festival, soldiers are bivouacked in the snow. And inside the palace a fateful council is taking place and the destiny of the country is being decided.”

“I never learned anything more about this novel — I do not know how far Conrad had himself visualized the plot,” Curle wrote, “but as he pictured that opening scene one could almost feel the tension in the air and one almost seemed to be warming one’s hands with the soldiers around their blazing fire.”

(Richard Curle, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, 1928.)