Monday 17 May 2021

Crossword News May 2021

 

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 information in your in-box you should sign up to the new Crossword Centre group on Google. You can join this group at 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)

1 comment:

  1. Hello Derek, "Will it be possible to have a computer that can solve crosswords?"
    Let's not forget by William Tunstall-Pedoe. I was impressed by this. All the work of one man.
    Regards,
    Paul Pridmore
    "

    ReplyDelete