Crossword News December 2020

 

Crossword News December 2020

This will be the last newsletter for members of the Yahoo group mailing list. Yahoo is closing all its groups on the 15^th December. I started the group in June 2001and it has served us well with a membership of 840 and members are also eligible for the Clue-writing competition. We will be continuing to send newsletters to the new Crossword Centre group on Google. You can join this group at https://groups.google.com/g/crosswordcentre
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The November Prize Puzzle was Hoping for a Hat-trick by Yimin. Initial letters of extra words in clue order spell SERTURNER, NIXDORF and LIBORIUS. The first two are famous sons of Paderborn in Germany.   The third is buried in Paderborn Cathedral, a notable feature of which is the Window of Three Hares – each animal has two ears, even though only three ears in total are shown. The word PADERBORN had to be highlighted diagonally on the grid.

The title is a reference to Yimin’s previous puzzles on the Crossword Centre - both of them were won by Ros and Brian Rougvie, sending their entry from their address in Paderborn! Their names were in clue 24 and the top line of the grid is a reference to them winning Yimin’s puzzle Farce. Yimin surmised that they might be hoping for a hat-trick of wins. Sadly, Brian died in 2017 but Ros continues to solve and I am pleased that she was delighted to spot the link.

Here are some of the comments from solvers.

An enjoyable solve with an interesting theme. The preamble 'Some clues have an extra word' increased the trickiness - identification of clues with superfluous words wasn't always easy, particularly with the unusual words their initial letters spell out! I read more about the theme beyond Paderborn Cathedral - very interesting. Thanks to Yimin!  As for the title, study of archived Crossword Centre blogs - gosh there are a lot! - proved unfruitful, even concentraing on those around the time of Yimin's first two puzzles for the Crossword Centre. My attempts to look at the Themes of 2009 puzzles on the Listener Crossword site were thwarted in that the clickable 'Theme' button wouldn't work for me, I'm afraid, so I abandoned the quest which is a bit disappointing! I look forward to hearing the rationale for the title.  In the meantime - good wishes for the coming (muted) festive season. I have enjoyed the puzzles offered over the year - just the thing for Lockdown, Tier 1 and now Tier 2 and goodness knows what's to come............ Thanks to you and the Crossword Centre.

This is the first Yimin puzzle that I've attempted, and always a pleasure to tackle such an interesting one (bit sad that his last one was way back in 2017).  Very nice clues requiring answers to be teased out gradually, a rewarding process of discovery in terms of both new words/meanings and nuggets of general knowledge.  Many thanks to the setter and best wishes to the hat-trick aspirants.

(And from Roslyn Rougvie)

So that notorious pair Brian and Ros from Paderborn  have at last been celebrated in a crossword. Two times winners of the Listener ( the last time in 2009) and the lucky winners of  Top Shoe and Farce both by Yimin and Crossword Centre puzzles.  Have to say it was a surreal experience to solve a puzzle with the slow realisation that the theme was indeed all about us. I'm sorry to say that Brian died in October 2017 so Farce was one of the last puzzles he completed. He would have had enormous fun tackling "Hoping for a Hat-trick". It would have appealed to his sense of humour but I'm afraid that it's not going to happen.  I see Yimin has also made it into The Magpie.  Congratulations!

There were 47 entries, of which 4 were marked incorrect. The lucky winner was Todd Konkel of Vienna. (So no hat-trick, Ros) Todd will soon be receiving a prize of a copy of Chambers Crossword Dictionary which was donated by Chambers.

Eleven solvers spotted the link to the title, Geoff Lee, Tony Harker, Rod Bell, Gerry Murtagh, Ros Rougvie (of course!), Roland Rance, Jon Ballard, Rod Beards, Philip Wood, Craig Fothergill and Ronan Cullinane. The winner picked from the electronic hat was Geoff Lee.

A full solution is available at https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2020/12/solution-to-hoping-for-hat-trick-by.html

There is still lots of time to solve our Christmas treat, Seasons Greetings XII by Eclogue. https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2020/11/crossword-centre-prize-puzzle-december.html

The January challenge will be Best Mates by popular setter, Chalicea.
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The Times Crossword Championship had to be cancelled when a failure in its server meant that the on-line competition was unavailable. Puzzles editor David Parfitt, published this apology.

 It is with the bitterest disappointment that we have cancelled this year's online championship. I am sure you all also extremely disappointed and upset too. It seems that the database changes made on Saturday were not effective. We desperately wanted to do something special for you this year in particular - and to bridge the gap while we were unable to put on the championship in the usual format. I'm afraid that despite our best efforts, we have failed to deliver this.
All I can do is offer my sincerest apologies for disrupting both days of your weekends. I hope that by this time next year we will be in a position to run the championship as normal, when we can attempt to make it up to you all.
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I decided to miss the Listener Setters Dinner in March and I could not give a full report on it. The report on the dinner is now on the Listener Crossword site.
http://www.listenercrossword.com/PDF/Dinners/dinner20.pdf

Roger Phillips has also updated some missing items from the Listener site. You can now download the quizzes from the 2019 and 2020 dinners.
http://www.listenercrossword.com/List_Dinners.html
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Last month I mentioned the 3D Calendar Puzzles and it s nice to see a review by Alan Connor in the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2020/nov/23/crossword-blog-the-next-dimension
Remember that you can order the calendar from this link.
https://3dcalendarpuzzles.co.uk/
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I recently mentioned that, following the success of their Cracking the Cryptic YouTube channel, Mark Goodliffe and Simon Anthony were planning to publish a book of sudoku puzzles. They set up a crowd-funding scheme which closed last week with an incredible number of subscribers. There were 7,447 investors who put $191,302 into the scheme!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/peterchayward/cracking-the-cryptics-greatest-hits
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We hear of yet another stand-up comedian setting crosswords as Dave Gorman published in the Telegraph. You can watch Simon Anthony solving one of Dave’s puzzles on You Tube https://youtu.be/9S2SwJnoBYU

John Henderson picked this clue from the Telegraph Toughie by Django, also Dave Gorman.
No Deal act, Boris and I worked up – it helped Johnson win once (8,7)

A full review of this Toughie is on Big Dave’s site http://bigdave44.com/category/crosswords/toughie-crosswords/django/
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In her latest article on the psychology of cryptic crosswords, Kathryn Friedlander tackles the subject of anagrams.
https://createpsy.com/2020/12/09/cracking-psychology-understanding-the-appeal-of-cryptic-crosswords-3-anagrams/

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The results are out for the Clue-writing competition for GLORIA. The winning clue was written by Jeff Robinson.

Fashionable cut from original woven fabric (6)

The December challenge is to write a gift list for John and Robert using the letters of ROBERT AND JOHN'S CHRISTMAS STOCKING PREZZIE LIST (42 letters).

http://www.andlit.org.uk/cccwc/main.php
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Do remember that al the newsletters and competition puzzles and solutions are posted on our blog at https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/
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As another year on the Crossword Centre comes to an end, I would like to thank all the people who have supported us, the solvers, the setters, the CCCWC managers, Robert Teuton and John Tozer and our dependable tester John Nicholson.
Best wishes

Derek

Solution to the Django clue ANABOLIC STEROID anagram: ref. athlete Ben Johnson.