Crossword News March 2023

Crossword News March 2023

The February Prize Puzzle was Cross Contamination by Coot. This puzzle had ten clashes and pairs of letters spelled out NEWSPAPERS and PRINT MEDIA. In the completed grid, the letters used for NEWSPAPERS were entered. The theme words were STAR, EXPRESS, MAIL, STANDARD, MIRROR, GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH and TIMES.

Here are some of the comments from solvers.

This was quite an easy solve, but fun and enjoyable nonetheless.  While most clues yielded readily, there were a few where repeat readings were required to identify the correct parsing.  The most impressive feature for me was the amount of thematic material that had been packed into a blocked grid.  Should the preamble have mentioned that there would be non-words in the final grid? Not sure what the convention is.  The endgame was a bit tricky.  A case could perhaps be made to retain letters that give the names of publications, but this would have meant a couple were more magazines or journals, ie other forms of print media, than newspapers.  Decided to use the letters in "NEWSPAPERS", as this approach offered a unique solution while staying true to the instructions.  Sadly, a couple of well-known thematic names dropped off the grid.  Many thanks for another interesting workout.

Very much a game of two halves for me - lots of clues fell very early on, but the combination of clashes in a blocked grid meant that the last 4 or 5 took a long while to get through (MIRROR and TELEGRAPH among them, so it would have helped if I'd seen the connection!)  I was impressed at how many newspapers were contained, although my hopefully constructive criticism would be that it felt a bit messy at the end - having one message from acrosses and the other from downs, or misprints always occurring at a newspaper, or having all real words to finish (although I suspect this would be hard in this format) would have tidied things up a bit. That being said, it was a fun puzzle, and the perfect use of a blocked grid.

Lots of enjoyable clues here. I thought this would have made a very nice barred puzzle but am a bit less keen on clashes in a blocked puzzle. For instance, 22dn is a four letter entry with effectively three unches, which seems to be pushing the boundaries a bit!  Thanks for the puzzle, I look forward to seeing more from Coot in the future!

Despite it being a blocked grid, solvers found it quite a tough challenge what with the lack of checking and the clashes, hence quite a high error percentage.

There were 43 entries, of which 11 were marked incorrect. The marker decided to mark correct some solutions where the letters of NEWSPAPERS in grid order.

The lucky Winner out of the Electronic Hat was Bhalchandra Pasupathy who will be receiving a prize.

There is a full solution at https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2023/03/solution-to-cross-contamination-by-coot.html

You still have lots of time to complete our March puzzle, High Bar by Hawk.

The April Prize puzzle will be our long-awaited Round Robin XV with a puzzle designed by Wan and clues written by volunteer clue-writers.
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The Listener Crossword Setters Dinner in Bristol went very well and was excellently organised by Jane Teather and John Henderson. I was able to watch the proceedings on Zoom and the profusion of gold ties was very evident.

I logged on to the Zoom chat at about 9.15 but the speeches did not start until after 10.00. In the meantime I was able to join in the chat with others who were waiting. I had a nice chat with Paul Henderson and peek on Andrew Fisher having breakfast with the sun shining through his window.

Shane Shabankareh started the speeches. The Radix Auditorum was won by Ian Hickman, who could not be at the Dinner, as it clashed with his mother’s big birthday celebrations. Ian lives in Wakefield, and we plan to organise a lunch in York for a presentation quite soon.  Any ‘locals’ interested in attending, get in touch via listener.dinner@jetdoc.co.uk.

Regarding those who have kept an all-correct record, Simon Long still holds the record with 411 weeks without an error. This year it was a twosome, Paul Taylor and Katie Steckles who were awarded the Solvers’ Silver Salver. They had asked the other all-correct solvers to vote for their favourite puzzles. The results were as follows.

10= Envy by Quinapalus
       Season’s Greetings by Lionheart
       Sequences by Elap
9     Late Arrival by Aragon
8     Map by Pointer
7    Red Applause by Crash
6    New Arrivals by Avian
5    Short Seats by Yorick
4    A Wrap-up by Kea
3    Faux Pas by Tringa
2    Follow the Directions Again by Artix
1^st  Singles Only by Twin

Twin (Colin Thomas) was able to accept the Ascot Gold Cup for his puzzle which left the solver solving a sudoku.
You can download the souvenir brochure for the 50^th dinner and the quiz on Jane’s site. https://www.jetdoc.co.uk/crossword-and-quiz-links
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I have recently been in communication with an American author, Barry Joseph, who is writing a book on Stephen Sondheim and his interest in puzzles. I was able to supply lots of information in our Zoom conversation. My connection with Sondheim was through my friend Apex (Eric Chalkley). He had bumped into Stephen Sondheim when the latter gate-crashed the dinner to celebrate Ximenes 1000 at the Café Royale. However, they did not speak and it was only later that Apex sent him puzzles to solve. I have come across an article that Apex wrote for the magazine Games & Puzzles, in which he explains how he contacted Sondheim, I have now put this on the Crossword Centre at http://www.crossword.org.uk/Sondheimx.html

When I decided to put Apex forward for an honour, I needed at least 3 supporters to add to the submission, I wrote to Stephen Sondheim to ask for his support. He was only too willing and sent a nice letter praising Apex. The other two supporters were Sir Jeremy Morse and Jonathan Crowther (Azed). Fortunately, in the New Year Honours, Eric was given the MBE. Sir Jeremy told me that he had participated in three other requests for honours and this was the first one that had been successful.

Delighted with one of Apex’s Listener puzzles, I sent him a cartoon drawing. He was delighted and that was the start of a long correspondence and the start of me doing illustrations for his Xmas crosswords.

Barry Joseph can be followed on Instagram at matchingmindswithsondheim. You can see there some of the gems that he has discovered, including many of my illustrations. He is looking for more information about Sondheim and puzzles, so let him know or email me.
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The 2022 APEX puzzle from Paul Henderson had the theme of a quote from Stephen Sondheim. Solvers were asked to write a clue to SONDHEIM. The results are now published and the podium clues were as follows.

Winning clues to SONDHEIM

1^st        Harry is done with His Majesty – he’s sadly departed, not without some dramas                                                 Richard Morse

2^nd       Scoring West End show, I composed foremost of musicals                                                                                      Mick Hodgkin

3^rd        Composer, the man uncredited in She Done Him Wrong?   
                                                Allan Scott     
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American compilers, Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon (Hex) were surprised when the New York Times decided to take their Acrostic puzzles off their website. Although they would still be available in the printed paper, many solvers preferred to do these complex puzzles on-line. Apparently, Cox and Rathvon have now decided to leave the NYT and it may be that they will create their own website to publish the Acrostic.
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Sadly the death of Tony Sever was announced this month. Tony won the Times Crossword Championship in 1981 and went on to run his own blog, RTC, in which he commented on the Times Concise crosswords and even had a race against the clock.
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The 45th Annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament is taking place on March 31 - April 2, at the Marriott in Stamford, CT. You can get more details and follow the event at https://www.crosswordtournament.com/
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Can an AI chatbot solve a cryptic crossword? Chris Lancaster put it to the test in a Telegraph article. You can read it here. Also on the AI bandwagon was Guardian blogger, Alan Connor, who, apparently, interviewed a chatbot setter, Lady Labyrinth. I think there has to be a big improvement before the robots can compete with the human setters.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has apparently invented a new game called Sumplete that has the potential to dethrone Wordle. The artificial intelligence model did receive some human help to develop its game from a human user, Daniel Tait, who guided the chatbot and created a website for the game so anyone can play.

Sumplete is similar to Sudoku, although its rules are different. Players are given grids with numbers that vary in difficulty. The basic one for beginners has three rows and three columns, increasing in difficult to 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, and so on. The most advanced grids are 9x9 and are really hard to solve. https://sumplete.com/
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Best wishes
Derek