Phi Crosswords

Christmas is known for its crosswords – double puzzles, jumbo puzzles, prizes of champagne, and all because people have extra time over the holiday to sit and do crosswords.  The question of how sober they might be does not often arise.

With that in mind, this update has a BBC Music Magazine Christmas puzzle from 2014 which approaches the seasonal theme from a slightly oblique direction.  The 2019 Christmas edition has just made it to New Zealand – the puzzle there is not as seasonal as some (though there’s a simply hidden message), but the magazine has Handel and his Messiah on the front, so is suitably festive.

I shall put up an unpublished puzzle just before Christmas.  Before then you have an Enigmatic Variations from Kcit on 15 December (with one of those hard-to-get-at closing dates for which internet submissions were invented; there’ll be a blog somewhere in the middle of the festivities as well) and I have a hand in the Church Times Christmas Double puzzle on 20 December (as well as providing the current one for 6 December).  After that comes an online-only Christmas Day puzzle for The Times, but I’ll remind you about that next time.

This is also the time of year when I send out the APEX Christmas puzzle.  All is prepared for that to be e-mailed out next weekend (13-15 December, depending on when I get several moments).

No new puzzle this week – and I did skip a week so that I could put the update out today.

All being well, Saturday 23 November will see my 150th Inquisitor puzzle.  Or so.  I haven’t seen the final proofs yet so there may be a last-minute substitution, but I hope not.

Why ‘Or so’?  Well, the counting of the puzzles got a little complicated with the appearance of SPINK.  First of all, I’m not sure I should count the two collaborative SPINK puzzles as full Phi puzzles – but nor should they be zero.  I think I’ve counted one and not the other.  Secondly, the second SPINK puzzle was not not taken into consideration when I first totted up the approach to 150.  

So 150-ish.  In any case, I got the totting up wrong, and Saturday’s puzzle isn’t the one I planned for the slot.  But it’s actually not bad – the twist (I think, anyway!) is certainly worthy of a commemorative slot.  The actual 150th I planned will follow in due course (and probably not the next one either…)

Devotees of the splendid Dave Hennings’ database will be able to do a quick search and find 61 Phi Inquisitors and 31 Phi Independent Weekend puzzles, which is by no means 150.  But Mr H starts on 3 January 1998 for the Independent Weekend Magazine puzzle – and I start on 8 October 1988 (with this puzzle).  For the first year I appeared pretty much monthly, and even allowing for less frequent appearances later during that nine-and-a-bit years I racked up the 50+ needed to make up the shortfall.

I am not sure I have an opinion on reaching 150.  Dave’s database provides a quick list of post-1998 titles, most of which are quite beyond recall (Look Here! No, Here! No, Here! – what was going on there?).  I am checking up on the solution notes he provides, but there’s part of me that doesn’t want to, and to wallow in perplexity as to what I could possibly have been thinking.  And just to continue the theme of the last two blogs, I don’t have a favourite – I can’t remember enough of them to do the selection justice.  But I do enjoy looking through them when choosing puzzles for the site, so that will continue.

As will new Inquisitor puzzles, I trust.  There are at least two in the possession of the editor, and another one is close to finishing on my iPad.  And then there’s a Post-it note to the left of this keyboard with six thematic words on it and ‘IQ’ jotted in the corner.  The horror of not having a new idea is still being held at bay.

Beyond the 150th IQ, next week sees three puzzles from me: a Kcit Toughie on Thursday 28, the usual Independent puzzle on Friday and a Times Jumbo to round off the month.

 

I promised another favourite puzzle from a single weekend, and here it is.  Calling it a second favourite is a temporal ranking only!  As I said last time, setters can be conflicted about identifying puzzles as favourites.  But it has to be said that coming up with this idea, and steering it through creation to publication was immensely satisfying.  It is, be warned, a very tough puzzle, which may be why there were few comments at the fifteensquared blog.  But they are very satisfying comments – and the blogger has done a damn sight better solution grid than I have!  My own setter’s blog (with photos) is here.

Recommendations of the week: do not contract a bad cold and simultaneously reactivate an old back injury.  It makes for a very depressing week.  On the brighter side, you realise that ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ may have other interpretations.  

Also on the bright side: the receipt of a letter that clearly contained a cheque.  A sterling cheque, sent in a letter which cost £1.25 (that’s a pound sign, in case it doesn’t make it through to the published page) – to the value of one penny.  It’s not even as if anyone asked me for my thoughts on this.  The letter came with an “Our Ref” that was also quite remarkable (on the assumption that the original characters represent people’s names, I am anonymising things somewhat; heck, even the reference numbers are anonymised):

ABC/DEF/GHI/JKL/MNO/PQRST/UVW / 022255-4 /  / 6291.

More than a pennyworth of ink just printing that I shouldn’t wonder.

Someone has noted what I hope is only the occasional typo, and has asked if I want to be told about them. And the answer is yes.  I type a lot of these in from paper copies and while my spelling hasn’t deteriorated over the years, the ability to hit the right keys at the speed I type is not as good as it was.  I hope I spot the red-underlined stuff (ignoring the depredations of an American spellchecker, natch – cheque, ha!), but other things slip through (one that was spotted was ‘talking’ for ‘taking’, for example).  So please let me know and I’ll get round to updating things, probably in tandem with one of these blogs.  The same goes for any dodgy links – I had a page link to itself the other week, which someone kindly pointed out.

Upcoming puzzle: a quiet start to the month, though there’s a Times puzzle on Monday 4 November.  Proofs came in this week for an Inquisitor later in November and an Enigmatic Variations not too long before Christmas – more on those as they draw nearer.

There’s something to be said for blocking the question “Which is the favourite of your puzzles?” with the same sort of response that parents have to “Which is your favourite child?”.  There isn’t a pecking order, you want to say.  And yet there is, of course – just as there often is in the parent-child relationship.

More pleasant is the way you stumble on a puzzle and recall it fondly – it briefly is a favourite, but it never supplants others.  The new puzzle today is one such – glancing through a list of titles, this one sprang out at me, and I thought it was worth sharing.  And when I opened the boxfile to get it ready for use, there, below it, published the very next day, was a further favourite, which I will set up next time.  That was a good weekend!

The puzzle today is This House Believes… from the Inquisitor series (I’ve reinstated here the ellipsis I feel the title needs!).  It exploits an oddity in the English language which only became more pronounced the more I collected examples.  And, yes, it does have two squares already filled in, in an already smaller-then-usual grid – what more could you want?  A bigger puzzle?  That’ll be next time…

As always with more recent puzzles, there is supplementary material available: the fifteensquared blog and even a setter’s blog elsewhere on this site.

Speaking of setter’s blogs, there’s one up for the recent Enigmatic Variations puzzle Arrival.

Between now and next time Pedro produces a Times Quick Cryptic and Kcit a Toughie, both on Thursday 24 October.