Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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This puzzle is from setter(s?) we have never encountered before and the advertising ploy being referenced leaves us with some questions.… Continue reading
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Today the EV community extends a warm welcome to our new editor, the cruciverbal legend that is John Henderson (Elgar, Enigmatist, Io, and editor of the Inquisitor puzzle in the i newspaper); at the same time, we bid farewell to Steve Bartlett, who has been in the editorial seat since 2019 and has by my reckoning brought 373 puzzles to us during his seven-year tenure – I’m sure you will join me in thanking him for a sterling shift, in the course of which, along with editing many fine puzzles, he introduced these ‘hints and tips’ blogs. Thanks, too, on behalf of all EV setters: there’s no doubting that when many of those puzzles were received by Steve they were significantly less satisfactory than their polished, published forms.
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Gemini wasn’t very helpful – basically, rewrote the preamble as a structured list (it loves organising information but isn’t it supposed to make it useful as well?). … Continue reading
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After Claude’s problems with the primates of EV 1750, I gave him a chance to redeem himself, asking, “In a themed crossword puzzle, we are told that we must find the title of a work featuring ‘double crests’ and the name of the series of which it is part. Can you suggest what the work/series might be?”
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Karla has set a handful of EV puzzles before and this one promises to be challenging.… Continue reading
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I felt there was enough in the preamble here to give Claude a fighting chance, so I asked “In a themed crossword puzzle , we are told that the completed grid includes a nickname (13 letters) and the names of three protégées to whom the nickname refers (35 letters in total); the completed grid also contains three ‘study groups, one of which is hanging upside down’, associated with these protegees. What might the theme of the puzzle be?”
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Gemini was quite excited by the opportunity to search for an innovator and a connection and proposed several candidate innovations and inventors – the most promising were: “The Electric Battery”, Volta (5), symbols=”+,-”, and “The Electric Telegraph”, Morse (5), symbols = • (Dot) and – (Dash).… Continue reading
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Wondering just how many EV puzzles Kcit had set in his long career, I consulted Dave Hennings’ excellent xwdb.info site.
I-four has set us a four-midable challenge today. Although one can imagine many appropriate musical groups of four, our favourite AI model has suggested a particularly noteworthy four-piece band as a common thread for various song titles that could affect modes of entry.… Continue reading
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I was at school with Tony Miles, who went on to become the first UK-born over-the-board chess grandmaster, in the process winning the £5,000 prize put up by Jim Slater.