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Follow-up to last weekend’s posts

April 10, 2014 By Phixwd Leave a Comment

Long gap between planes on the way back to NZ, so I thought I’d elaborate on points made in a couple of emails I’ve received about last weekend’s double post.

One wondered whether the solver should be equated more with the performer of than the listener to a piece of music, making the point that listening seemed too passive, and we should allow for the concept of interpreting a clue.  The commenter also admitted that a hard and fast equivalence would be hard to establish.  Nonetheless I still prefer listener.  Imagine the length of shrift you’d get from an editor if you tried to claim that PANAMA was your creative interpretation of a clue to BANANA.

The other comment related to symmetry.  Apparently the quick crosswords in one of major papers do have an asymmetric grid amongst their regular designs.  I got the impression, however, that it was of the “blink-and-you”ll-miss-it” variety.  I would still have claimed that you couldn’t get a substantially asymmetric grid into a national daily’s slot.

And then I opened the paper on Wednesday, and saw something like this:

image

Now, admittedly I was in Amsterdam at the time, and this is a Dutch Cryptogram, but it does show that symmetry hasn’t established itself everywhere.  Other Dutch grids look like this:

image

Imagine seeing that on the back page of your Times.

Time for Jetlagged in Hong Kong to sign off while the iPad still has power.

 

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About me

This is the website of Paul Henderson, who sets crosswords for The Independent (London) under the pseudonyms Phi, for the Daily Telegraph (London) under the pseudonym Kcit, and anonymously for The Times (London) amongst many other outlets. For a more detailed biography see the About Me page.

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