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Overtaken by events

There I was, all ready to alert you to an upcoming Toughie when the email came in – it was being moved forward a week, to last Friday (10 November).  So, if you have online access…

This happens from time to time, of course.  Editors are concerned not to have AXOLOTL three days in a row (or even twice in the same week).  However, I do recall a fortnight a few years ago when The Independent managed to have LOCH NESS MONSTER on three occasions, which was of keen interest to me as I was clueing it myself for The Independent at the time.  Arguably, it shouldn’t matter if the clues are substantially different, so that the solver is led to the same outcome via different routes, both stylistically and in terms of clue construction.  But sometimes simple repetition is obtrusive.  I remember a Proms concert where a visiting orchestra embarked on its encore of Sibelius’ Valse Triste, only to be greeted by a wave of laughter.  It was the third time Valse Triste had been played as an encore that year (and we weren’t that far into the season).

This is somewhat germane to the puzzle I put up this weekend – Stragglers from 2007 in the Enigmatic Variations series.  Typing it on to the site, I noticed that I’d used the same word in the wordplay of two clues – used it in quite distinct ways, to be sure, but I had to type the same word in the notes.  I’m not sure that that would pass muster with many editors at present.  And yet we tolerate – even welcome – repetition in genre fiction and soap opera as ways of ensuring familiarity.  I suppose if one does clamp down on repeated usages, then the odd occasion they do sneak in acts as a form of misdirection.  Just as if you stipulate no more than one hidden clue a puzzle, then using a second one is just naughty!

I don’t know whether it’s possible to have favourites amongst one’s own puzzles.  I’ve just been reading Martin Amis on whether he has a favourite amongst his novels, and his view was that it was like choosing between your children.  Nevertheless people do have favourites amongst their offspring, so it isn’t implausible.  All of which is a laed-in to saying that I look on Stragglers with a degree of fondness.  It was a simple idea that proved to be rather complex to carry off, and in a way that was probably as tricky for me as the setter as it was for the solver.  That balance doesn’t always happen.  Often a setter will manoeuvre all sorts of thematic material into the grid (bravo!) only for the solver to spot the theme early and be gifted 80% of the fill.  Or the reverse – a setter takes a lazy way out, and the solver is left with a mountain to climb.  This one just feels pitched right.

The Times moves into view for the next fortnight, with a Jumbo on 18 November and the main daily four days later.  Neither of them contain AXOLOTL, so they shouldn’t require moving…

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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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