Crossword News July 2024

 Crossword News July 2024      

I was shocked to hear of the death of Andy Stewart, better known as the setter Dysart. He produced 18 Listener crosswords and appeared in the Inquisitor, Enigmatic Variations, the Magpie and the Crossword Centre. When he retired from teaching in 1990, he moved to Pattaya in Thailand where he enjoyed his hobby of bird-watching, taking thousands of photos. He suffered from a lung disease last year and died in hospital from a heart attack on July 14, aged 79.

I have been emailing him in recent months while editing a crossword that he submitted. We have decided to publish his puzzle in August.
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The June Prize Puzzle was Sage Derby by Vagans. Letters on the leading diagonal spell the schoolroom rebus YYURYYUBICUR and YY4ME is to be written beneath the grid to complete it. The rebus decodes to “Too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are too wise for me”. CLEOBULUS and PERIANDER were two of the Greek Seven Sages (as listed under that heading in Chambers), and the extra letters generated by the across clues spell out WISE MEN FROM THE EAST, geographically true from a UK point of view. The extra words in across clues were all cheeses (BLUE, SWISS, COMTE, KILLARNEY AND CREAM but not GOUDA) and those in down clues were the remining five Sages (PITTACUS, BIAS, SOLON, CHILON and THALES).

Here are some of the comments from solvers.

The cheesy red herrings fooled me for a while and, though I got to CLEOBULUS and his mate PERIANDER after some effort, it took me a while to extract the sages from the down clues. The whole puzzles was a satisfying solve with a theme new to me - thanks to Vagans.  I am delighted to hear that there is now a stock of puzzles for coming months and I look forward to tackling them in due course. A Crossword Centre puzzle is keenly anticipated each month.

The grid itself was a pleasant solve spread over a weekend. Then 3 weeks, on and off, trying to find the 12 characters and … nothing.  It couldn’t be individual cells, it would have said cells, if it was cells, I reasoned.  Last night in (not quite) desperation I started saying the main diagonal, amongst other lines, out loud, in the hope inspiration would hit. They all sounded like words, so a quick Google, and bob’s your uncle. It was not something I was familiar with, but now will probably never forget.

A neat use of the sages and cheeses with an enjoyable denouement in recognizing the saying, which I don’t think I’ve seen for about half a century.  Thanks to Vagans for the entertainment – and good to see the bishop making the usual appearance in the clues.

There were 51 entries, of which 2 were marked incorrect. The lucky winner picked from the electronic hat was David Beamish, who will be receiving a prize of Chambers Crossword Dictionary, which was donated by Chambers.

There is a full solution at https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2024/07/sage-derby-by-vagans-solution-y-y-4-m-e.html

There is still time to complete the July Prize Puzzle, White Label by Henri. https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2024/06/july-2024-crossword-centre-prize-puzzle.html

And do try our July special, Mate in Two by the Badger. https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2024/06/crossword-centre-july-2024-special.html

The August challenge will be Harmony by Dysart.

We would welcome submissions for publication this autumn.
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The Cracking the Cryptic channel on YouTube, founded by Mark Goodliffe and Simon Anthony, has continued to flourish and has recently recorded over 600,000 subscribers. It is always a treat to see them dissect and solve puzzles.
https://www.youtube.com/c/CrackingTheCryptic

Although they mostly do sudokus, Simon has started solving the Friday Times cryptic, which is usually the toughest of the week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_yKD3k4ou8
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In the Magpie magazine, Mark Goodliffe announced that, following the sad demise of Richard Rogan, Shane Shabankareh has taken over the role of interim crossword editor of The Times. Shane is already editor of the Listener crossword and the Magpie, as well as setting puzzles as Tiburon.
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There was a lot of interest in our toughest crossword on the Crossword Centre. A Chessword Puzzle by Radix only received a handful of entries and only one correct solution from A J Moore. I am indebted to AJ and Larry Baum for helping me to construct the solution. It is now available at the link below.
https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/p/solution-to-our-toughest-crossword.html
Numbers in bottom left of cells indicate the moves of the pieces( or answers).
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The Azed Slip for clues to LITTÉRATEUR is now available on the Crossword Centre. http://www.crossword.org.uk/Azed2711.pdf

M Barley won first prize with this clue.

Term for author, French one, turning out title after title possibly?

(anag. + r + auteur less U2, & lit.).

Best wishes
Derek