Crossword News May 2021
The April Prize Puzzle was Round Robin XIII. The theme of
Round Robin XIII is prime ministers of the UK and celebrates 300 years since
ROBERT WALPOLE became the first in April 1721. (300 appears in larger print in
the title.) The letters given in the preamble had to replace letters in the
grid to form ROBERT WALPOLE and the surnames of 11 other PMs. As a hint,
circled letters in the grid can be arranged to form a 13th – DISRAELI.
Here are some of the comments from solvers.
A very interesting thematic concept nicely executed, the
real brilliance being in the grid design which was excellent, accommodating so
many changes in words to give effect to the theme, sans any outlandish entries
to boot. Lovely apposite anagram from the
replacement letters as well. As was to be expected in an RR, there were
different styles to the clues with some outstanding ones. Solving didn't pose too many problems,
identifying the theme and slotting in the changes took more time!
A lovely grid and very neat and successful inclusion of so
many thematic members. The anagram of Disraeli allowed the theme to come
readily, which was a great help. Great to have a range of clue setters -
provided variety in style of clueing, which added to the challenge. Many thanks for the consistently entertaining
grids.
As usual with the Round Robins I enjoy the eclectic mix of
clues from the write-ins to the real puzzlers. I needed the circled letters to
finally crack the theme and then I enjoyed hunting the remaining 7 PMs in the
grid. I definitely needed the replacement letters in their appropriate anagram
to finish - some of the more obscure (older) ones (Petty, Lamb, Temple) being
the last to come to light.
I enjoyed the puzzle and the theme. Bolding 3...0...0 in the
title (presumably a reference to the 300th anniversary of the start of Robert
Walpole's term as PM) was a nice touch.
There were 61 entries, of which 4 were marked wrong. The
lucky winner, picked from the electronic hat, is Time Anderson, who will soon
be receiving a prize of Chambers Crossword Dictionary donated by Chambers.
A solution is available at https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2021/05/solution-to-round-robin-xiii.html
Solvers could vote for their favourite clues and when the
points were added up there was a clear winner.
42 Frequent flyer heads for Paris, lucky to be there in
central location (6)
32 of the clues received votes and the top scores were.
1st - 22pts - 42a - PETREL - Simon Griew
2nd - 16pts - 13a - TERM-TIME - Phylax
3rd - 15pts - 8d - NETTY - Sprout
4th - 13pts - 31d - GLAIR - Tim Anderson
5th= - 11pts - 37a - REMAND - Satyen Nabar
5th= - 11pts - 7d - IAMB - Josie Barnes
I will be sending a prize to Simon.
You still have lots of time to tackle the May challenge,
Confusion Down Under by Flowerman.
The June puzzle will be June Journey by eXternal. Steve
Bartlett sets barred puzzles for the Listener and Inquisitor under the
pseudonym eXternal; his first published puzzle was an Inquisitor in December
2012. Since then, he has expanded his repertoire to include a variety of puzzle
formats for outlets such as The Independent, The Financial Times, The Telegraph
and The Herald. He has also edited the Enigmatic Variations barred-crossword
series in The Sunday Telegraph for the past two years, where he sets puzzles as
proXimal. The June puzzle will be his third for the Crossword Centre.
Steve grew up in Buckinghamshire and after university moved
to Kent, where he still lives. He trained as a professional buyer and worked
for several businesses over the years. He is an exercise enthusiast attending
gym, HIIT sessions and kick boxing under normal circumstances. His current
focus is on running, as he is training for the rescheduled 2020 London Marathon
due to take place in October this year.
As a postscript to Cracking! by Soup, the setter has sent
this explanation.
Some people asked about how I went about constructing the grid for ‘Cracking’.
I’d originally started with safe contents which had about 40 letters, which I
think was a bit ambitious! In the end I needed 28 letters for the three items
in the safe, which is the same as the number I’d get from a ’normal’
perimetrical jigsaw puzzle (where black and white squares alternate round the
perimeter), so I knew it was likely to be possible. So, I started with the contents of the
cracked safe, then (using a little computer program I wrote, in the same way
that one of the solvers wrote an Excel macro) I started twirling the rings
until all the scrambled letters fell over white squares – and then simply tried
to fill the grid. If I couldn’t get it to fall out with sensible words, I
nudged the letters a bit more, and tried again, and eventually I got something
that worked. I’m mildly annoyed that I there wasn’t a letter of the contents in
the outer ring, but I hadn’t even noticed that until I saw the comment! I’m so
pleased people enjoyed it; it’s always fun to play about with new ideas.
Hamish/Soup
***
Last month I noted the passing of CG Rishikesh, the Indian crossword setter who
regularly submitted clues to our Round Robin puzzles. There was a nice obituary
in The Hindu, the newspaper where he published crosswords under the name
Gridman.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/gridman-goes-off-the-grid-crossword-community-loses-a-giant/article34330053.ece
In his Give Me a Clue section in the i paper, John Henderson also gave a
tribute to Rishi.
The late Hindu sage CG Rishikesh, who gave us “Single-minded fellow” for
BACHELOR and “TT wear” for DOUBLET, also contributed clues to the collaborative
Round Robin puzzles on the excellent Crossword Centre website. Derek Harrison,
the site’s founder and curator, offers these examples: “Censure priest failing
to give shelter again (6)” and “Furious about escapes from Syrian city cell
(5)”.
Also in a Round Robin, Rishi wrote this nice clue.
More than one spoke of terrible raid around capital of Iraq
***
It is worth noting that John Henderson took over the role of editing the
Inquisitor crossword exactly ten years ago, following the death of then editor
Mike Laws. He started helping when Mike became ill and was hospitalised. When
asked to take over he, apparently, said yes but just for a couple of weeks! He
has maintained a high standard and an excellent series. Congratulations,
Enigmatist.
***
Will it be possible to have a computer that can solve crosswords? With
American-style crosswords the answer is definitely yes. Matt Ginsberg has
devised a program that can solve clues and fill grids. In fact, it had a lot of
success in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament this year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56934716
This year the ACPT was an on-line competition. The winner
was Tyler Hinman. In the final play-off he completed a perfect grid in 3 minutes!
Full results are here.
https://www.acptonline.com/prizes
***
With a new series of Inside No. 9 beginning this month, Steve Pemberton has
posted a new Sphinx crossword to give some clues about the series.
https://twitter.com/SP1nightonly/status/1389189205784514561?s=20
***
On the Clue-writing Competition, the May challenge is to write a normal cryptic
clue to TOERAG (6). The competition is
open until 29 May.
http://www.andlit.org.uk/cccwc/main.php
The competition for March, a clue to CORNFLAKES, was won by
Steve Hicks with this neat anagram and &lit.
Crazy folk near South Carolina?
***
There are now 227 members on the Google mailing list.
If you want to receive newsletters and clue-writing
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https://groups.google.com/g/crosswordcentre
Crossword News will, as usual, be available on the Crossword
Centre http://www.crossword.org.uk/newsletter.html and on the blog
https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/
Best wishes
Derek
Solutions to Rishi’s clues
RE-ROOF reproof minus P
ASCUS Damascus minus MAD reversed
RADII anagram RAID + I(raq)
