Crazy talk

Crosswords. What is with crosswords? Honestly. I remember a time when the most a crossword required from me was the answer to four down, "the colour of grass." O, clever me, I would think, whilst writing the word green into the little boxes. I am a genius, I would often also think, as I filled in the word 'Shrek,' the answer to the next clue. And so on and so forth. Until my fabulous little crossword in the back of the Bunty magazine was complete.

Yesterday evening, as I sat perusing my copy of the Royal Geographic Society magazine (cause that's the kind of girl I am), I found a crossword. Oo, exciting, I thought, reaching for a pen. I looked for a clue about a film actor or the capital of Russia and found the following....

"Contested subcontinental area - ask him about rebel's leader."

What. On. Earth. What was this drivel?! Had the crossword making man had a stroke whilst writing the crossword clues? This meant nothing to me. It was like alien talk or something. I read and reread the words. It was like someone had flipped through a dictionary and picked out words at random. It literally meant nothing to me.

I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it. There must be a problem here. Because I am a crossword demon and this clue means nothing to me. Therefore, the error is clearly in the crossword. It is the only explanation.

Danda looked over as I pointed and exclaimed.

"O yeh," he said. "Ask him about rebel's leader. It's an anagram. Yeh. An anagram of ask him. And about rebel's leader, that's an R. So an anagram of ask him and the letter R is Kashmir. The answer is Kashmir."

Ok, now I definitely know something fishy is going on. Who has organised this? This nonsense talk? Has this been set up like a candid camera show? It's an anagram of ask him and R?! Why? Why on EARTH is it an anagram of ask him and R?

He continued on with this nonsense talk for quite a while e.g. "Belgium ambassador holds venomous reptile!" was apparently "mamba" and the answer to "A social class in India discard English," was "caste." Because, obviously, obviously, it means the letter E when it says English.

Well, pardon me for thinking that the word English meant the word English.

I feel left out. It's like there was a class at school on crossword solving and I was off that day and have been left behind. I remember the good old days, when the clue was, "where you roast a chicken" and the answer was "oven." I was clever then. I was a crossword genius. Now I am a crossword dunce. I am the girl who's picked last at crossword practise. I shrug cluelessly when I am asked to help with "Abandon drainage channel" because it sounds like a load of crap someone just spouted for fun.

What is everyone talking about? Is there any hope for me?