It’s fifty-odd years since I first watched Scooby-Doo on the television, and the passage of time doesn’t seem to have dulled its memory. That may be because the franchise – as things now evolve into – is a continuing affair, with new characters, live-action films, and even new cartoons in that uncanny valley style reminiscent of Pixar.
To sustain this ongoing development, the characters gained families and back-stories and surnames. I don’t know that I ever registered that the occupants of the Mystery Machine had surnames – to an eleven-year-old it hardly mattered that Fred was called Jones. What you wanted to know was which of the subordinate characters was the one trotting around in the glowing Hallowe’en mask. (Not the owner of the guest voice, that’s for sure.) But once Daphne has become Buffy (or vice versa), something deeper is needed, just to keep things disentangled.
But not for a crossword. I reckoned I could assume that most people, like me, would not know of the surnames, nor that Shaggy was called Norville (which does seem a very accurate choice). But when something that could only be Velma was emerging in the grid, the bells would ring and the pennies would drop. (Perhaps the bells ring because the pennies are dropping on to them?) And, of course, you would leave Scooby himself to be found in the grid.
It might also help to hide ‘pesky kids’ in the grid. Except that when I consulted the Scooby-Doo wiki (it’s a franchise – there are several wikis), it turned out that ‘meddling kids’ was the commoner form. No matter – 8+4 is ideal for a row in a 12×12 grid.
After that it was a question of jiggling entries to ensure that Down answers allowed BLAKE to be spelled out in order, so that it could be replaced by JONES, and there we were.
It occurred to me that, however the Hanna-Barbera executives and creatives arrived at the concept, the ghost of Enid Blyton looms large. Can’t quite see it working with the central canine called Timmy, though, can you?
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