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A hectic week

December 11, 2021 By Phixwd Leave a Comment

I would never pretend that this is anything other than a quiet corner of the web.  Give me a daily number of page hits that creeps into double figures and I’ll be content.

So close on 1,200 page hits in a week is something of a startlement. Over 600 of them came on Tuesday, and the daily hits since then are a delightful example of an exponential decay. 

The source of the attention was my comments on the passing of Stephen Sondheim, which were picked up by The Guardian crossword blog. I came home from work on Tuesday, determined to get to the bottom of the 13 earlier emails from WordPress pingbacks, and found a total of 500+ hits about two-thirds of the way through the day. The majority of them were on the last blog and on the Apex 2010 crossword. I was pleased to note that there were more hits on the puzzle than the solution – I do hope this means there were people taking it off to try and solve before accessing the solution.

It’s all been great fun. I doubt we’ll see the same with today’s offering from 2016, even if the apparent ordinary Independent puzzle conceals a similar theme…

Christmas is approaching. APEX participants will get their puzzle over the next week, or perhaps next weekend, and I’ll look to put up another new Beelzebub puzzle over Christmas weekend itself. There are the usual Phi appearances on Fridays in the Independent (but get ready for a one-off shift to Thursday after Christmas). And if I don’t get round to working on the site till Boxing Day, then note that there’s a Times Jumbo from me on Christmas Day itself. Online only, strangely enough…

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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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