EV1747
Group of Four by Ifor
Solution
Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
This week, I asked Gemini, “I am about to tackle a themed crossword puzzle from a setter called Ifor. Do I have good reason for trepidation?”
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
I submitted the preamble to OpenAI which to be fair found it completely incomprehensible and proposed several rewrites and offered to: “suggest alternative single-line preambles with different tones (concise, cryptic-setter-house style, or very-solver-friendly)” – is this an improvement: “In greyed columns missing bars, solvers must follow the name spelled by extra letters from down clues to form expected bottom entries, then rearrange and divide each to reveal what was actually seen, all resulting entries being real words or names”? … Continue reading
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
Keen to get ahead of the game, I asked Claude, “In a themed crossword puzzle, we are told that in the filled grid we must simulate the effect of an action by moving a thematic block of cells within the two central columns, thus displacing another block. What might the theme of the puzzle be?”
+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +
This week I thought I’d do a search on Dave Hennings’ excellent database of themed crosswords (xwdb.info) to locate earlier puzzles that had a connection with the word ‘anonymous’.