Would you prefer not to see clues that use mental health slang for wordplay?
The good people who made felt hats used to come into contact with a load of mercurous nitrate, and the effect on their brains tended to be the reason given for the apparently irrational behaviour of some milliners. Hence the early-19th-century "mad as a hatter", as seen in Thackeray …
… with the result that when Lewis Carroll later created a backstory for his eccentric tea party host, the Mad Hatter was a recognisable figure.
The Victorian era is remembered for its workplace health and safety as much as it is for its consideration towards people with mental health conditions, so the image of the poisoned modiste was, we must conclude, meant purely in fun.
"Mad" has since become a word pondered more attentively by careful writers, discounting its related senses of enthusiastic, irate, infatuated and so on. Or, at least, by careful writers who are aware of, say, Mad Pride. This attempt at word reclamation, a la "gay", is celebrated each year on Bastille Day; I learned about it from Gary Nunn's recent post on the Mind Your Language blog…
Policing language is never popular and rarely easy. But it is perfectly possible to be both frank and polite. Words around mental health are not so much being banned as recommendations made so we can be sensitive.
… which in turn pointed me at the Guardian style guide's entry on mental health. All characteristically clear enough. But what about in crosswords, asked the setter Arachne?
Sensitivity is all? Food for thought for crossword setters: "Time to change language of mental health" http://t.co/ZNVFo4VrIt via @guardian
— Sarah Hayes (@arachne_xwords) March 2, 2014
The Guardian crossword editor Hugh Stephenson mentioned, 10 years ago, a difference between the language in a paper's reports and in its puzzles:
… in a significant way the words in cryptic crosswords are not on all fours with the words in news stories, features and the rest. In the rest of the paper, phrases and sentences are supposed to make sense and to relate to some approximation of the real world. Crossword clues, on the other hand, relate to a parallel but quite unreal universe.
"Mad" is a handy word for indicating an anagram and can lead to a surface reading along the lines of Carroll's tea party, with endearingly daffy behaviour. On top of that, the English language is not short of euphemisms and synonyms for madness and "the mad". And crosswords take all of the language as their toybox, rarely passing judgement; their aims are to mislead and delight, not to belittle or stigmatise.
Yet some of yesteryear's clues would never appear in today's newspapers. My two go-to examples are one for HOUSEWIFE from Ximenes, discussed in his book On The Art of the Crossword …
With 'sew' in the middle, this screams for an '&lit.' clue. 'How to sew if …'? 'She's got, we hear the way to sew …'. If E? Not easy to finish it. Try again. Hou(r)-sew-I-Fe (Fe=iron). 'I have most of the time to stitch – then I iron.' That's nice and perfectly sound.
… and one which I now see was unearthed by Logodaedalus and mentioned in Hugh's piece mentioned above: it is of 1940s vintage and from the cryptic pioneer Afrit:
What do happen, Mose, if our gals lose deir heads? Oh, den you find de ways out! (8)
Never mind the Jim Davidson-style impersonation: the word NEGRESSES itself (from which we find the answer, EGRESSES) would look out of place to say the least, and there are plenty of other racial epithets more designed to cause offence than that one. Is "mad" the 2014 equivalent? Is it a word that younger setters will remember with rueful surprise as a once-frequent visitor to cryptics? And if not "mad", are any other favourites quietly on their way out?