Crossword News December 2021

 

Crossword News December 2021

The November Prize Puzzle was A Good One by Hawk. Misprints spell CROSS DUBLIN WITHOUT PASSING A PUB and ULYSSES. This ‘good puzzle’ mused upon by Leopold Bloom in Chapter 4 of James Joyce’s novel is depicted here by a trail between the districts of CABRA and BALLSBRIDGE, turning away as it approaches each of MULLIGAN’S, The BRAZEN HEAD, and DAVY BYRNE’S - three pubs which exist today as they did in Joyce’s day - and spelling out AA-RECOMMENDED ROUTE. The two helpful organisations were Alcoholics Anonymous or the Automobile Association.

Here are some of the comments from solvers.

A very good one indeed. Some of the misprints were incredibly well disguised, and the clashes great anagrams. Thanks and well done to Hawk.

I found this a really tough puzzle - hard clues (the ones with clashes especially so!), but what a great finish.  The grid fill was challenging enough but it took me days to complete the end game.  I kept trying to find Joycean addresses at first until I finally spotted Ballsbridge, which I should have seen at the outset (am half Irish and have been to Dublin countless times), then recognised Cabra.  Here I got hung up for quite a long time by trying to make a geographical path using street names or something similar. I could see " chart a recommended...' but as it had too many letters it was discounted.  My PDM was when I finally realised that as 'helpful societies' AA and AA were distinct yet one and the same representation and each delivered all guidance required. Brilliant, it made me laugh.  Well Done, Hawk! A super puzzle. Am looking forward to the next one.

I found this one much harder (especially identifying the "obstacles") but very satisfying. I must congratulate Hawk on (1) an intriguing and ingenious theme, (2) the neat way in which the path turns 90° ahead of each "obstacle", and (3) the clever ambiguity of the "AA" recommended route - though I had assumed that alcoholism was out of bounds for crosswords until I tackled last Saturday's Listener crossword in The Times!

A solution is available at https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2021/12/solution-to-good-one-by-hawk.html

This proved to be a tough challenge with only 31 entries, of which 7 were marked incorrect. The lucky winner, picked from the electronic hat was Craig Fothergill who will be receiving a prize of Chambers Crossword Dictionary donated by the publishers.

For December we are offering three crosswords. The Prize Puzzle is the traditional Seasons Greetings by Eclogue, now in its 13th edition. The December Special is Ring Cycle by Hedge-sparrow and there is also a bonus from Artix, What’s it Look Like? There is still lots of time for you to email your solutions.

All three December puzzles will count for annual statistics and the competition for the Crowther Cup.

We will start the new year with a puzzle from the ever-popular setter, Wan. I am sure you will enjoy Obi by Wan.
***
The next Round Robin is planned for April and we are looking for volunteer clue writers. John Nicholson posted this on the message board.

I am back recruiting volunteer clue writers for what will be the 14th round-robin puzzle. For those not familiar with the process, we put a thematic grid together and ask willing members to write a clue each. Solvers can award points to their favourite clues and the setter whose clue gains the most points will receive a prize. More importantly, it is a bit of fun where we can all join in. If you have taken part before, we hope you will again, and if you haven’t please do give it a try. You can contact me on email gironanick@yahoo.com or leave a message via the messaging system on the message board.

There are two types of clue this time: half are plain and half are of the ‘wordplay leads to extra letter’ type. The answers are on a list and simply allocated in that order, one from each type alternately. However, if you particularly prefer one type please say and I will accommodate you if I can.

We would like to get your clues by the 15th January please.
***
On 26 November the death was announced of Stephen Sondheim at the age of 91. The talented songwriter was said to have reinvented the American musical. He loved crosswords and compiled them for the New York magazine. In 1968 he wrote an article about the British Crossword which is a delight to read. It was my friend Apex, the late Eric Chalkley, who got me to draw caricatures of Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein to accompany his Christmas puzzles. Eric had kept the signed solutions that they had sent him. So, when I had the idea of getting Apex an MBE, I wrote to Stephen Sondheim to ask him write a letter of commendation. He was very willing to oblige.  The other commendations came from Jonathan Crowther and Sir Jeremy Morse.

Ben Zimmer’s article describes Sondheim’s interest in puzzles. https://slate.com/culture/2021/12/stephen-sondheim-crossword-puzzles-cryptic-west-side-story.html

Alan Connor has written about Sondheim’s love of cryptic crosswords in his Guardian blog. https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2021/dec/06/stephen-sondheims-other-job-crossword-setter
***
Cain’s Jawbone, the mystery novel written by the crossword setter Torquemada, is back in the news. And it's all thanks to Sarah Scannell, a communications assistant at a non-profit documentary company called Citizen Film in San Francisco.

She found a copy in her local bookshop, ripped out the pages, plastered them all over her bedroom wall, and charted her efforts to solve it on TikTok.

'I've decided to take this nearly impossible task as an opportunity to fulfil a lifelong dream and turn my entire bedroom wall into a murder board,' said Scannell, who is known on TikTok as @saruuuuuuugh. Her videos have been watched by seven million people.

You can read more in this Daily Mail article

***
In the Times Diary there was this passage, headed Gorman Gets a Lidl Cryptic

Nine years ago Dave Gorman was delighted to be in The Observer cryptic crossword. “Good chap, engaging alternative comedian (6)” led solvers to the comic’s surname. Now he writes them. Gorman, right, started submitting crosswords to two national newspapers in the first lockdown under the names Bluth and Django. However, some of his clues have upset traditionalists. A controversial one was “Sea seven are made poorly eating supermarket crabs, for example (8, 7)”. The first three words were an anagram (“made poorly”) that had to be wrapped round a word for supermarket (“eating”) to give a phrase for crabs. The answer, “venereal disease”, drew lots of complaints, though not because it was an unpleasant image. No, readers moaned, Gorman said, because using “Aldi” lowered the tone. There just aren’t enough phrases that contain “Waitrose”.
***
If you are a fan of the TV programme Only Connect and of tough puzzles then the Nimrod crossword in the latest edition of the Cam magazine will be ideal. Another Brick in the Wall by Nimrod

***
GCHQ has published another series of Christmas puzzles. Solve them all and you might get a job on MI6. https://www.gchq.gov.uk/files/GCHQChristmasChallenge.pdf
***
An article on the internet highlights the value of crosswords in education and language learning and gives a gentle introduction to the topic. You can read it here - https://custom-writing.org/blog/crossword-puzzles-in-learning
***
Last month I mentioned the obituaries to Anne Bradford. David Beamish has pointed out one other which appeared in The Telegraph.
Anne Bradford, author and cruciverbalist who devised the first dictionary for crossword solvers – obituary
She had the idea for her indispensable reference work in 1957 after stumbling over a clue that read: ‘An isolated pillar (India) (3).’

Anne Bradford, who has died aged 90, was a crossword wizard who compiled the first crossword solver’s dictionary, providing words or expressions – synonyms, puns and wordplays – that were possibly related to words appearing in cryptic crossword clues.

Thus the word “outstanding” in a clue might, with other pointers, suggest the answer “fugleman” – a soldier who stands out in front of the rest to demonstrate the drill. The word “scarper” might lead the solver to consider as solutions (or part-solutions), words such as bunk, run, shoo or welsh.

Though she admitted doing an average of 20 crosswords per week, Anne Bradford was no obsessive. She estimated that she was able to finish the Times cryptic in “10 minutes on a good day, six on a very good day, more like 18 to 20 on a bad one”, and her hobby occupied no longer than about an hour a day.

She also found time to write a book about Harry Whittier Frees, an eccentric photographer of animals dressed as people, curate and publish a collection of Victorian postcards, run an agency for graduate mothers looking for part-time or temporary employment, work for 20 years as a school secretary and bring up four children.

Her career as a “cataloguer of clues” began in 1957 when she stopped work to have her first child. She was stuck on a clue in the Observer cryptic crossword: “An isolated pillar (India) (3).” The answer, it transpired, was “lat”, an Urdu word for a pillar, which forms part of the word “isolated”. She decided it might be useful to have what she called a “reverse dictionary” to help herself and others struggling with such clues.

The result, first published in 1986, was the Longman Crossword Solver’s Dictionary. By 1993 it had been renamed the Bradford Crossword Solver’s Dictionary and she would continuously compile more entries based on her own cruciverbal experiences for new editions. The 12th edition was published in October.

Anna Rae Freeman was born in Jesmond, Newcastle, on November 3 1930. Her father was a dentist; her mother, who enjoyed crosswords, taught Anne to read when she was three and, as she recalled, “before long, I was very good at reading upside down, too, which is most useful if you’re playing Scrabble.”
In 1973 she would win the national Scrabble championship. She never won the Times crossword championship, however, though she was a finalist on several occasions.

During the war she was evacuated to Alnwick in Northumberland, where she was so successful at school that she was moved into a year with girls three years older than she was. She became head girl.
After reading Social Sciences at King’s College, Newcastle, then part of the University of Durham, she worked at an employment agency. In 1952 she married Francis Bradford, with whom she moved to north London, where he worked for BP. While their children were young she worked from home, running the University Women’s Part-Time Employment Agency.

Later she spent 21 years as part-time secretary at a north London prep school, worked as a volunteer adult numeracy tutor and, in her eighties, volunteered in the books section of a hospice charity shop.

Her favourite crossword clues, she told The Lady magazine in 2013, included: “Pineapple rings in syrup (9)” (answer: grenadine); “Information given to communist in return for sex (6)” (answer: gender) and “Cake-sandwiches-meat, at Uncle Sam’s party (8)” (answer: Clambake).

Telegraph readers who cannot spot the connections are clearly in need of the Bradford Crossword Solver’s Dictionary.
Anne Bradford’s husband died in 2013 and a daughter also predeceased her. She is survived by two daughters and a son.
***
On a personal note, ten days ago I went to London by train to spend some time with my son and daughter. When I returned home, I went down with a bad cold, coughing and sneezing. A PCR test confirmed that it was Covid-19. Fortunately, I was triple jabbed and after a few days I started to feel better. Now I just feel a bit tired but getting better every day.

I am looking forward to a quiet Christmas with lots of crosswords. I wish you a happy Christmas and a healthy new year.

Best wishes
Derek