h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Monday evenings used to be a highlight of the week with Daddy/Daughter time. My wife would take my son to puppet club leaving a good couple of hours with it just being my daughter and I in the house, which I always enjoyed. The trouble I find is that when I get home there's so much pressure for me to, at best, help my children with their homework or, more usually, nag them to do their homework that I feel I'm becoming their teacher. I don't want to be my children's teacher, I want to be their dad. I want to teach them the stuff I feel is important.
However my daughter's decided to join puppet club so that left me home alone. So I did some ironing and continued writing this year's Christmas crossword. Each year I have a list of words that I want to try and include in the crossword, and then I fit the smaller words around them. Yet for the last 14 years I've been trying to get Emperor Augustus to fit in the crossword somewhere, and he just won't. I thought, I'll have him as 1 down and then he'll finally be in it, but no – even as 1 down he just wouldn't fit in and, with the whole crossword faced with a stumbling block preventing its continuation, I was forced to replace him.
Once I've put a lot of the first words in I have a scramble to fill in the gaps, trying to use Christmas-themed words. Sometimes there just aren't Christmas words that will fit the gap, leaving me with 4-letter boxes to fill such as G??M. What word could fit that gap? Grim? Glum? Neither option is overly Christmassy. Other gaps included SU?POE??. The word 'Subpoena' would fit, but it isn't exactly festive, even if there's a court case at the heart of both versions of 'Miracle on 34th Street'. And as for EN?MA.

The crossword will hopefully be finished in time for the Christmas issue of

<BB<

That is a shame these days that there is so much homework pressure on your children at such a young age... On the one hand I could have done with doing homework when I was 10 because my teacher couldn't manage to fit crucial maths in during lesson time but on the other hand I learned a lot informally with my family after school (and learned fun maths with a tutor on Saturday afternoons).

I presume you've tried Augustus in 14 down or thereabouts? The 'g' and 's's look promising, but I can imagine it is difficult to fit the 'u's in because you very cleverly make a dense grid where there are very few letters that don't fit in more than one word

"And as for EN?MA."

indeed

Yesterday's English homework was to draw a well-loved story in 6 comic scenes. Can you guess which story my daughter chose?

I found the support to remove Subpoena and as for GRIM/GLUM that became a three-letter word unattached to the M, thus: G?? | M. I ended up making a few changes to the enema so it now resembles a Wise milkman. Other than that, you'll have to wait and see. The crossword will be coming to soon.

<BB<

I look forward to seeing the crossword soon

Hmm - would it be A Christmas Carol that your daughter chose?

No – it was my son who went through a 'A Christmas Carol' phase. She chose 'Little Red Riding Hood'.

<BB<

Ah!

I got my sneak preview of the crossword today so I look forward to doing it later

I hope you enjoy!

<BB<