THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2020 N C3Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each
heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or
division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.
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ANSWERS TO
PREVIOUS PUZZLESKenKen
Two Not Touch
Put two stars in each row, column and region of the grid. No two stars may touch, not even diagonally.
Copyright © 2020 http://www.krazydad.com
Put the same four letters in each blank to complete a description of a baby animal in alitter. What is it? ______ - B______ K______Brain Tickler
SATURDAY’S ANSWER Lament, mental, mantelANSWERS TO
PREVIOUS PUZZLESPUZZLE BY WILL SHORTZ
Crossword Edited by Will Shortz
ACROSS
1 “That ___ a close
one!”
4 “Fingers
crossed!”
9 Numbers for
sports analysts
14 Everyone
15 A physicist or a
fashion designer
might work with
one
16 Hall-of-Famer
Banks a.k.a. “Mr.
Cub”
17 ___ sauce (sushi
condiment)
18 One reading
secret messages
20 Edible casing in a
stir-fry
22 Singer Carly ___
Jepsen
23 Narrow cut
24 Vends
26 Goddess who
lent her name
to the capital of
Greece
28 Professional joke
teller
32 Half-___ (java
order)
33 Karl who
co-wrote a
manifesto
34 Home that may
be made of logs
38 Pleasant smell41 Collectible
animation frame
42 Swiss Army ___
43 Point of
connection
44 Revise, as text
46 Org. that might
ask you to
remove your
shoes
47 Health
professional who
has your back?
51 Quick races
54 Title woman in
songs by the
Beatles and the
Spinners
55 Brainstorming
output
56 ___ Vegas
59 “Amen to that!”
62 Apt command to
an 18-, 28- or
47-Across
65 Actress Mendes
66 Hilo hello
67 Home made of
hides
68 1980s gaming
console, in brief
69 Mortise’s
counterpart
70 Department
store that once
had a noted
catalog
71 Like deserts and
some humorDOWN
1 The “murder
hornet” is one
2 ___ vera (cream
ingredient)
3 Quite cunning
4 “Brrr!”
5 Ruffian
6 Peculiar
7 Person equal to
you
8 Idris of TV’s
“Luther”
9 “Believe me
now?”
10 Item rolled to the
curb for a pickup
11 Joint below the
knee
12 Cross-promotion
13 Sealy competitor
19 500 sheets of
paper
21 Farm enclosure25 Orthodontic
device
27 Target of a
camper’s scalp-
to-toe inspection
28 Digitize, in a way
29 Set to zero, as a
scale
30 Words to live by
31 Yellow flowers
in the primrose
family
35 Conclusion a
die-hard might
stay for
36 “Should that be
the case ...”
37 Close by
39 Hombre-to-be,
perhaps
40 Tennis great
Arthur
45 Fitness coach48 Gran Canaria or
Mallorca, por
ejemplo
49 Wise sayings
50 Nicotine source,
informally
51 Try to unearth
52 One-named
singer of 2011’s
“Someone Like
You”
53 New Jersey’s
___ Hall
University
57 Headings in a
playbill
58 ___-Ball
60 Penultimate
word in many
fairy tales
61 “No sweat!”
63 Went on, as
errands
64 Hoppy beer
choice, brieflyANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLEPUZZLE BY ERIC BORNSTEIN10/26/20Online subscriptions: Today’s puzzle and more than 9,000 past puzzles,
nytimes.com/crosswords ($39.95 a year).
Read about and comment on each puzzle: nytimes.com/wordplay.123 45678 91011121314 15 1617 18 1920 21 22 2324 25 26 2728 29 30 3132 33 34 35 36 3738 39 40 41 4243 44 45 4647 48 49 5051 52 53 5455 56 57 58 59 60 6162 63 64 6566 67 6869 70 71RIFFS COVERART
AV I L A URBANAREA
ZONAL NEATTR I CK
ORGY G I MME EAS E
RYE COTEACH
STROLL CHASSIS
HOT RODDER I CANT
AW I N G A ND A P R A Y E R
REPOS AUTODR I VE
PRSTUNT SOF T I E
PAYLESS PDT
ABCD SPADE TREF
BREECH I NG KRONA
BADBOUNCE SOUC I
AGE TOAGE UNDERThe title character in Douglas Stuart’s de-
but novel, “Shuggie Bain,” at one point finds
his mother passed out in their Glasgow
apartment. He gently turns her head to the
side so that she doesn’t choke on her vomit,
places a bucket by the bed and sets out
three mugs next to her — one with tap water
for her dry throat, one with milk for her sour
stomach, and one with flat, leftover lager to
ease her shaking limbs.
“He knew this was the one she would
reach for first,” Stuart writes.
It’s a wrenching realization. But Shug-
gie’s almost maternal tenderness toward
his emotionally volatile mother, and his love
for her despite her failures, helps him en-
dure their hardscrabble existence.
Stuart based the novel on his own child-
hood in Scotland, as the lonely youngest son
of a single, alcoholic mother. Still, he sees
Shuggie’s story not as a tragedy, but as a
tale about unbreakable filial bonds.
“For me, ‘Shuggie Bain’ is a love story,”
Stuart, 44, said during an interview on a
drizzly day in downtown Manhattan this
month. “It’s about love before it’s about ad-
diction.”
When the book came out in February, it
had a warm but rather quiet reception. Now,
it is being celebrated as one of this year’s
most accomplished debuts.
It was named as a finalist for both the Na-
tional Book Award and the Booker Prize,
two of the most prestigious literary prizes in
the world. It has drawn comparisons to D.H.
Lawrence, James Joyce and Frank Mc-
Court.
Stuart, who lives in the East Village with
his husband, Michael Cary, a curator at
Gagosian who specializes in Picasso, said
he is “absolutely stunned” by the novel’s
success. When he first started writing more
than a decade ago, Stuart was working 12-
hour days as a senior director of design at
Banana Republic, jotting down scenes and
bits of dialogue in his spare time almost as a
form of therapy.
“I sat down to write ‘Shuggie’ without
knowing what I was writing,” he said. “I
wouldn’t allow myself to believe I was writ-
ing a book, because it was too intimidating.”
A portrait of a struggling city, community,
family and woman, “Shuggie Bain” unfolds
in the economic and social stagnation of
1980s Glasgow, after the region’s shipbuild-
ing, mining and steelwork industries col-
lapsed. Stable, working-class communities
became destitute, leading to widespread
poverty and addiction.
In this harsh world, Shuggie feels like an
outcast. His mother is ostracized by the lo-
cal women and preyed upon by the men;
Shuggie is bullied by his classmates for be-
ing gay.
The novel caused a stir in Scotland. “New
York fashionista uses Glasgow’s Sighthill as
inspiration for novel,” the Daily Record, a
Scottish newspaper, trumpeted in August.
Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scot-
land, tweeted a photo of the book, and con-
gratulated Stuart on his Booker nomina-
tion.
The Scottish American actor and writerAlan Cumming, who became friendly with
Stuart after reading “Shuggie Bain,” said he
was struck by how Stuart drew on the Scot-
tish literary canon but expanded it by writ-
ing from the point of view of a gay boy and
his wayward mother.
“Douglas is incredibly entrenched in that
great Scottish working-class tradition of
storytelling, but he’s coming at it from being
an outsider in your own country,” he said.
“He’s bringing a queer sensibility to it.”
As a boy growing up in public housing,
Stuart rarely saw books at home. His
mother had shelves of what looked like
leather-bound classics, but they were deco-
rative, faux-leather cases for video cas-
settes of movies and soap operas.
Like Shuggie, Stuart had a lonely child-
hood. The youngest of three, he felt like an
only child, as his older brother and sister
were teenagers when he was born and
found jobs to escape the chaos at home. He
barely knew his father, who left when Stuart
was young. Stuart often functioned as acaretaker for his mother, who would black
out from drinking and sometimes try to
harm herself.
He occasionally skipped school to look af-
ter her. On the days that he went, he was
shunned by the other boys and attacked for
being too “poofy.”
“I was effeminate, I was fey, I was preco-
cious,” Stuart said. “There was no way to
identify as gay, because I was too young, but
I was different.”
His mother died of alcoholism-related
health issues when he was 16. He lived with
his older brother for a while, then moved
into a room in a boardinghouse at 17.
Books became a refuge. Stuart devoured
works by Thomas Hardy, Irvine Welsh,
Agnes Owens and Iain Banks, and became
the first person in his family to graduate
from high school. He wanted to study Eng-
lish literature in college, but was discour-
aged by a teacher who told him the subject
wouldn’t suit someone from his back-
ground. He decided to study textiles in-stead, earning a bachelor’s degree from the
Scottish College of Textiles and a master’s
from the Royal College of Art in London.
“He didn’t go around saying ‘poor me,’
and I’m sure a lot of people didn’t realize his
circumstances,” said Sheila-Mary Car-
ruthers, a professor of design who taught
Stuart when he was an undergraduate.
“He’s a very determined personality, not in
a very assertive, ghastly way, but in a pos-
itive way. He just gets on with it.”
A Calvin Klein representative offered
Stuart a job after seeing his work at a school
fashion show. He moved to New York City at
24 and for around 20 years worked for
global brands such as Calvin Klein, Ralph
Lauren, Banana Republic and Jack Spade.
When he first started writing, he treated
it as a private creative outlet, a way to grap-
ple with the residual trauma of his child-
hood. Whole scenes came flooding back. His
first draft was 900 single-spaced pages.
Stuart signed with the literary agent
Anna Stein, but when they shopped the
book, more than 30 editors passed. Many
told Stuart it would be too hard to get Amer-
icans interested in a novel about a gay Scot-
tish boy and his alcoholic mother.
Then Stuart met with Peter Blackstock, a
senior editor at Grove Atlantic, who was de-
termined to publish “Shuggie Bain.” It was
the only offer Stuart got.
“It kind of had this classic feel to it,”
Blackstock said. “But I felt like I hadn’t re-
ally read this story of a queer, working-class
boy’s childhood before.”
Grove Press released the book in Febru-
ary, but just as buzz and word of mouth be-
gan to build, the pandemic hit the United
States. Grove had shipped some 7,000 cop-
ies to bookstores, but with many brick-and-
mortar locations closed, only around 1,000
hardcover copies sold in the first two
months after publication, according to NPD
BookScan.
“It was really tough timing for Douglas,”
Blackstock said. “Just as the book was get-
ting its momentum from great reviews, it
got put on pause, and that was difficult.”
Then, this fall, awards nominations be-
gan to pile up, and “Shuggie Bain” got a sec-
ond life.
In September, it was listed as a finalist for
the Kirkus Prize and made the cut as one of
six finalists for the Booker Prize, over
works by celebrated authors like Anne Ty-
ler and Hilary Mantel. Booker judges called
it “an amazingly intimate, compassionate,
gripping portrait of addiction, courage and
love.” In October, it was named one of five
fiction finalists for the National Book
Award.
Grove moved up the publication of the pa-
perback edition from December to Oct. 13
and has printed 30,000 copies, with another
10,000 on the way. If Stuart wins the Booker
or the National Book Award in November —
or, in an unprecedented coup, both — Grove
plans to print another 50,000 copies.
Stuart dedicated “Shuggie Bain” to his
mother. In a roundabout way, she was the
first person who encouraged him to write.
Some nights when she was drunk, she
would dictate her autobiography for him to
take down, he said. She never got past the
dedication, which she always made out to
one of her role models, Elizabeth Taylor —
another glamorous, melodramatic woman
who was unlucky in love.For a Novel, a Quiet Reception Turns Into a Celebration
Douglas Stuart, a fashion designer, wrote fiction on
the side. Now his debut is up for some major awards.
Right, Douglas Stuart at the
Beekman hotel in New York.
“Shuggie Bain” was
published in February. “I
sat down to write ‘Shuggie’
without knowing what I was
writing,” he said.
DANIEL DORSA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBy ALEXANDRA ALTER.