Putting the words to lights – crossword clues explained in plain English
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Today marks a welcome return to the EV stage for a setter whose previous puzzle in the series was Different Relation, back in November 2023.
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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
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Hard on the heels of Curmudgeon’s Shambles, we have a Failure from her alter ego, Chalicea. I asked ChatGPT, “The theme of a crossword setter’s recent puzzle called ‘Shambles’ was the Charge of the Light Brigade. Their latest puzzle is called ‘Failure’, and apparently concerns the failure of a plan. What might that plan be?”
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Skylark apparently has set an inspired puzzle for us. Is AI inspired by the preamble?… Continue reading
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Since I couldn’t see anything in the preamble that would give ChatGPT a fighting chance of identifying the theme, I asked instead, “Why might a crossword setter choose the pseudonym Kruger?” I was pleased to learn that this was “a fun and subtle question — and in crosswords, setters often choose pseudonyms that have wordplay, personal resonance, or a hint of mischief built in.”
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Gaston often seems to have French themes, so you perhaps would have expected Wicksparrow’s recent offering to have been a Gaston oeuvre – though who knows?… Continue reading
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I gave Claude as much information as I could glean from the preamble: “In a themed crossword puzzle, we are told that we must highlight cells in a block in the completed grid which cryptically represent a puzzle referred to by an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. What might this puzzle be?” Good luck with that, matey…
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A puzzle titled “The Wrong Sort” makes us instantly think of anagrams or, perhaps, of Winnie the Pooh and “The Wrong Sort of Bees.”… Continue reading
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I asked Claude “Why would a lady crossword setter who normally uses the pseudonym ‘Chalicea’ occasionally set puzzles under the name ‘Curmudgeon’?”
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Gemini really wasn’t much help when I submitted the preamble. It just kind of regurgitated – garbage in and garbage out.… Continue reading