Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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This week I thought I’d give Claude a chance to impress. I asked, “A themed crossword puzzle is entitled ‘Sobering Thoughts’. Can you suggest what its theme might be?”
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I have a suspicion that the phrase which constitutes the title has something to do with bellringing.
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Hoping to make a flying start, I asked ChatGPT, “A puzzle involves two ‘double acts’ with a connection of some kind. What might these two double acts be?”
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My most recent experience of cranberry was in an M&S Christmas Sando (very nice), but now we have a puzzle by a setter of that name.
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In the olden days (15 years ago!) I was a blogger (on a couple of the other sites) but blog quality and sophistication has improved considerably since. Me not so much.
My qualification then was that I self-described as a beginner and Peter Biddlecombe (Hi Peter!) wanted to demonstrate that mere mortals such as myself were cryptically capable.
Incidentally, my solving partner (to be introduced) pointed out it’s ironic for us to be writing this blog since this is where we come ourselves for help (thanks Phibs!).
Enough about us…
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A very happy New Year to all EV solvers. As of next Sunday, a new EV blogger will make their début, sharing duties with me on an alternating basis. I will let them introduce themselves when the time comes, but this is the moment to say a huge ‘thank you’ to the Numpties, who got these hints off the ground back in September 2020 with Chalicea’s The Beagle Has Landed (EV 1451), wrote all the blogs until June 2022, and then took turns with me until the end of last year – in the process covering something like 150 puzzles. Suffice to say that the existence of these hints is a direct result of their enthusiasm and effort.
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Hexagonal grids are far from unknown in the world of the themed puzzle, and they are more common now that there is software out there to create and fill them, but I can’t find any record of a hexagonal EV having appeared previously, at least not in recent years.
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Firstly, I would like to wish all EV solvers a very happy Christmas. ‘Tis the season when the sort of ‘jokes’ that I tell all year round are briefly back in fashion (of a sort). Oh yes, I know that Good King Wenceslas likes his pizzas deep pan, crisp and even; that snowmen go to the greengrocer’s to pick their noses; and that when Santa tried to sell Dancer and Prancer on eBay there were no takers because they were two deer…
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A search on Dave Hennings’ database at xwdb.info reveals that Chalicea has had 161 puzzles published in the Listener/EV/IQ weekly series and the monthly Crossword/Magpie magazines. A further 18 by her alter ego Curmudgeon take the total up to 179, so I make this number 180, an achievement of truly Phil Taylor-esque proportions.
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Growing up as an only child, I often had to adapt pastimes to suit my situation, whether that meant throwing balls at the wall of our house so I could catch them when they bounced back, taking myself on at chess, captaining both the England and Rest of the World cricket teams (brilliantly) in a game of Owzthat, or writing pieces of prose containing deliberate errors so that I could correct them in red pen (I probably shouldn’t have admitted that…)