Happy New Year
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On behalf of all of the bloggers on this site I would like to wish you all a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
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I have recently arranged a link with Monk-ey Puzzles, the site run by, surprise, surprise, Monk. You can find it in the sidebar. During the course of the discussions we discovered our mutual love of Blues music. If you thought that crossword setters did nothing else with their lives then take a look at these two YouTube videos of Monk on his harp. Contrast this with his day job as an Applied Maths Professor at Leeds University!
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Christmas Day Puzzles
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I was rather disappointed to find out that the promised “free” access to CluedUp today appears to be via the 7-day trial, which is available for the other 364 days of the year as well. I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on these excellent puzzles, so you can download them here in pdf format.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Thanks to the bloggers who have volunteered to produce these posts every day of the year, to the setters without whom we would have nothing to write about, to the Phil, the Puzzles Editor, whose work has come under more scrutiny than he can ever have anticipated, and especially to you, the viewers, who have contributed to making this one of the most successful crossword blogs in the world.
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Snowing on the Blog
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Rishi has reported that the snow effect can cause problems with some browsers. If it is causing any difficulties, it can be turned off – please let me know.
How to Solve a Cryptic Crossword: Timeshift
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Monday 07 December, 8:00pm – 9:00pm , BBC4
Tuesday 08 December, 2:05am – 3:05am , BBC4
Friday 11 December, 1:35am – 2:35am , BBC4
The only way to see this now is via the BBC iPlayer – see link below
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New Feature: Email Subscriptions
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WordPress has just introdudced a new facility by which you can elect to receive an email notification each time a new blog is posted. To subscribe, just click on the button in the Email Subscriptions widget near the bottom of the sidebar.
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From The Top
A start-to-finish story of setting a cryptic crossword puzzle.
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Preface
Just a quick note you before you start reading.
After the description of filling the crossword grid, the article gives an account of the clue-writing process. Please note this is in no way intended to be a guide to writing cryptic clues, so while some technical aspects are mentioned there is no attempt to explain how/why particular techniques succeed or fail. Instead, I’ve tried to give an insight into how I go about dissecting an answer to identify wordplay components – it’s all about the scribbled notes, rejected ideas and “a-ha!” moments that come with pleasing discoveries.
Whether or not all of the clues stand up to scrutiny isn’t of great importance. The article finishes at the point when a crossword such as this would be ready to send to an editor and – like any setter – I would just have to sit back and wait for the email asking me to make changes to certain clues; that’s what editors are for!
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Anax Demo Puzzle – Discussion
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Spoiler alert – this post is to facilitate discussion of Anax’s Demo Puzzle and may contain hints and/or answers.
If you want to solve the puzzle first, don’t select “read more” below.
If you want to discuss the puzzle, then post your comments here and join in the fun!
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Anax Demo Puzzle
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Anax has kindly written an article for publication on the blog to give a top to bottom explanation of how he composed a whole puzzle. When I saw this article, my first thought was to give you all a chance to solve the puzzle yourselves. This is not a totally new puzzle – it had previously been available via a link from a now-defunct forum – but it is unlikely that you have seen it before. It is, however, towards the top end of Toughie difficulty.
It is available in three different formats: Microsoft Word, PDF and Crossword Compiler. The links for these are at the bottom of the post.
I have decided to turn off comments on this post so that anyone downloading the puzzle will not accidentally see any hints or answers – but I will set up another post to enable discussion.
Anax’s article “From the Top” will be published next Saturday, 31st October. Trust me, it is well worth the wait.
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Actually Setting
The anatomy of a crossword
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Prior to this year’s Times Crossword Championship Dave and I had never met, but we quickly fell into conversation and I reckon I spent more time talking to Dave than anyone else. At some point the conversation turned to what it is a setter actually does when putting together a puzzle, and I said something – can’t remember exactly what – that must have come as something of a surprise. We both realised that there doesn’t currently seem to be a published in-depth description of the nuts and bolts processes of crossword setting. Yes, there’s plenty of “technical stuff”. And – a thought that just suddenly occurred to me – Tim Moorey gives some page space to it in his “How To Master The Times Crossword”; but that excellent book is primarily a guide to solving and the setting section restricts itself to describing the sorts of wordplay devices a setter looks for.
Dave very kindly invited me to put into words what I now find myself struggling to put into words – perhaps this is a cop-out, but I’m going to describe it as the “feeling” behind the creation of a cryptic crossword.
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Obscure Words
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There has been much discussion in the comments recently about the use of obscure words in the Daily cryptics. As you might expect, this problem has not been confined to the Telegraph puzzles. Hugh Stephenson, the Guardian’s crossword editor, has kindly given permission for this extract from his monthly newsletter to be reproduced here.
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