Crossword News October 2025

 Crossword News October 2025

The September Prize Puzzle was Sucker? by Bufo. It was a puzzle with a cruel twist and many solvers were indeed suckers. There are two possible answers to 16 across and 20 across. Choosing the more common of these answers (SONIA and CONFINED) gives the message ‘Use the ninth letters’. The ninth letters of the clues spell out “Think again sucker for this is a red herring”. Solvers must take the other two answers (SOFIA and COFFINED) and get the message “Use the fifth letters”. The fifth letters of the clues spell out “Congratulations on your correct solution”.

Here are some of the comments from solvers.

Ha ha! You very nearly had me. Even though I spotted that 20ac could be both coffined and confined, I had already filled in the grid on line before wondering whether I should indeed 'think again' before pressing submit about whether there might be another message other than from the ninth letters of the clues. Congratulations to you on a very enjoyable puzzle, all the more satisfying once the penny had dropped.

When I first read the preamble I suspected that the letters omitted by the wordplay would be unchecked, and that some of them would be ambiguous, but I still ended up being a sucker who read the ninth letters of the clues before realising that I was supposed to read the fifth letters. I think a puzzle with a red herring is better the more likely it is that the solver will find the incorrect solution first and here I can't believe too many solvers would think of COFFINED before CONFINED, and I also think SONIA is more obvious than SOFIA but maybe this is because I would normally spell the latter with a PH. I am impressed that you were able to hide two specific letters in the fifth and ninth places in each clue. I thought some of the clues were oddly written when I was solving them, but I didn't think enough about it to decide that there could be a message hidden near the start of the clues so I wasn't very likely to try searching for the hidden messages before I had solved the clues.

I got lucky with my original guesses, giving "finth", and quickly realized there were two possibilities. A quick check of "fifth" and "ninth" letters, set me straight. However, as a Corkonian, I will never live down completely missing Sonia as an option. Thanks to Bufo for the enjoyable challenge.

There were 51 entries, of which 28 were marked incorrect. The lucky winner, picked at random, was Harry Jenkins, who will be recivinga prize of Chambers Crossword Dictionary, which was donated by Chambers.

There is a full solution at https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2025/10/solution-to-sucker-by-bufo.html

You still have time to enter your solution to the October Prize Puzzle. Like Two-Tone by Yimin. https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/2025/09/october-2025-like-two-tone-by-yimin.html

The November Prize Puzzle will be Nonsense by Craft. Craft's debut puzzle was published on the Crossword Centre in 2021.  Since then he has appeared in the Magpie, Listener, and EV.  His puzzles vary from the straightforward to the complicated, but always with the intention that the solver will prevail.
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I have just received a copy of Tom Johnson’s book All Squared. A 240-page paperback, it is packed with details of Tom’s history of setting crosswords, starting with his first efforts as a schoolboy. He writes in detail about his Guardian Bank Holiday jumbos, his meeting with Araucaria and how he was invited to take over as editor of 1 Across. Each chapter is followed by sample crosswords and I will look forward to revisiting some of the jumbos.

In 1981 he was invited to join the setting team at The Spectator where he took the pseudonym Doc. He composed a puzzle every three weeks, taking turns with Mass and Jac. Among the Spectator crosswords is one of his Christmas extravaganzas, the Anagram Pie.

Tom had a varied career and a number of pseudonyms. He was published in the Puzzler, Prospect magazine, The Cricketer, the Financial Times, New Statesman and Telegraph, among others. It makes for fascinating reading and is a neat history of the past 50 years of crosswords in the UK. There are 90 crosswords with large grids, with solutions at the back of the book.

You can get details at this link. https://crosswordcentre.blogspot.com/p/all-squared.html

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After a break in July, the Azed Slip for the August competition has been published. You can read it here http://www.crossword.org.uk/Azed2769.pdf

The winning clue for ECBLASTESIS was by Robert Teuton:

Broadcast regular “out-takes” from Beeb’s classiest proliferation of bloomers
(anag. incl. alternate letters; ref. Auntie’s Bloomers, BBC’s 1990s out-takes show).
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This year marks the centennial anniversary of Hungary’s first crossword puzzle, which debuted on 22 January 1925 in the weekly magazine Ma Este. To celebrate this historic milestone, the National Association of Puzzle Solvers (ROE) is hosting a nationwide puzzle-solving competition, as announced by ROE President Éva Kasparek.
The inaugural Hungarian crossword puzzle, crafted by journalist Károly Kristóf, was a ‘crossword puzzle’ consisting of a 10×10 grid with 17 black squares and clues for 25 horizontal and 18 vertical solutions. Unlike modern crosswords, only the numbered rows formed meaningful words, while non-numbered rows did not. The prize for solving this innovative puzzle was equally novel—a trendy mahjong game. The puzzle’s popularity soared, leading to Hungary’s first puzzle-solving competition in 1925, which was won by teacher Irén Kerényi.

The 32nd World Puzzle Championship was held in Eger. Competitors at the event in Hungary had to solve a range of puzzles including kakuro, battleships and slitherlink. The new World Champion is Freddie Hand from the UK! Ken Endo and Walker Anderson are second and third respectively.

The World Sudoku Championship, held every year at the same time, was won by Tantan Dai of China, with David McNeill of Belfast, former winner of the Listener Solver Silver Salver, named as over-50s champion for a fifth time.

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More news of Barry Joseph’s book about Stephen Sondheim, Now I know that publication of Matching Minds with Sondheim will be at the end of November and it is possible to make orders in advance. The book concentrates on Sondheim’s love of puzzling and his involvement and creation of puzzles, including crosswords, board, treasure hunts and rebuses. Barry has told me that the book has been issued in the USA and that with advance orders it is in the top ten of puzzle books on Amazon. You can follow him on Instagram as @Matching Minds with Sondheim.
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The Times Crossword Championship is taking place on the 11^th October. If you are attending, either as a competitor or an observer, and would like to write a report, I would be happy to publish it in my next newsletter.

The York Sloggers and Betters will be held on the weekend of the 24/25 October. It looks as if it is going to be a huge event with a record number of attenders. https://www.fifteensquared.net/2025/09/30/for-your-eyes-only/

There is a map of the venues here https://www.jetdoc.co.uk/york-sloggers-and-betters-2024

The Listener Dinner 2026 will take place on Saturday March 14 in Eastbourne, at the View Hotel.
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Best wishes
Derek