Phi Crosswords

And, to be fair, it has been fairly vernal. The overnight thunderstorms have abated, and the usual spring gales have swept in, and it’s a good drying day. And a baking day, and a using up these vegetables that have grown too early day (the broccoli is already looking set for the uprooting phase).

This time there’s an Independent puzzle from 2011 that has an unusual Nina, as it relates to the Nina-hunters themselves. It’s probably about time I did another one as the pseudonyms of the fifteensquared bloggers I deployed reveal the passing of time: some are still there, but others no longer contribute. The site continues to be well worth a visit, and they even blogged the puzzle itself (but, as always, solve it yourself first).

A fairly heavy cruciverbal weekend, including the wrangling of a complex IQ grid to completion – I’m now at the stage of looking at it, feeling pleased, and then panicking that I might not have quite worked out all the complexities correctly. I shall be brief and merely note forthcoming puzzles as the usual Friday Independent appearances (6 and 13 September), the Times (9 September) and a Telegraph Toughie from Kcit on 12 September.

And, of course, a Church Times puzzle on 6 September, which also marks my first formal appearance as editor there. Lead times mean that I have been doing various bits of puzzle preparation over the last few weeks and, indeed, the first puzzle for November began its path to publication today. Everything seems to be going well so far – do take a look.

This weekend has somehow run away from me, with puzzles being submitted and appearing, and an orchestral concert in the mix. We used to go to them a lot, but Covid rather changed the pattern and we fell out of the habit. But the prospect of a concert with both the Korngold Violin Concerto and Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber was a bit too much to resist. Shame the weekend coincided with the first really wet days this winter, but the garden is lapping it up. Spring ‘officially’ starts in a fortnight, but no-one seems to tell the weather that.

I’ll content myself with a list of forthcoming puzzles. The immediate week is very busy.

• August 18: Transfiguration by Kcit in the Enigmatic Variations series
• August 19: Pedro in The Times
• August 22: Pangakupu in The Guardian
• August 23: Phi in The Independent
• August 24: The Times
• August 30: Phi in The Independent

Fingers crossed for more time for the next post.

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Cold enough this morning to bring frost damage for unprotected plants and to freeze the trains into stasis – but warm enough this afternoon to sit out with a glass of wine if you can find a sun puddle (as cats always can, so it’s as well they can’t open bottles).

This time we have a puzzle from the BBC Music Magazine in early 2022.

I work on a production line system with several puzzles advancing steadily, according to when I think they next should be submitted. Occasionally this means a bit of a pile-up when several puzzles roll off the production line in the same week – five this week, and I’ve been busy getting them off to editors, and also with producing grids to start the production line process all over again. It makes for a busy weekend, so an abbreviated post and a bullet point list of dates as well, namely:

• August 5: Guardian Genius from Pangakupu
• August 8: a Telegraph Toughie from Kcit
• August 9: Independent daily from Phi
• August 10: Times Jumbo
• August 16: Independent daily from Phi
• August 18: Enigmatic Variations puzzle from Kcit

Though I should be back with another post by then.

 
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This week has seen quite a lot of upheaval starting with a middle-of-the-night dash to the emergency vet, leading to a more detailed knowledge of the urethra of the tomcat than I had hitherto possessed. Did you know that the male cat’s urethra…well, maybe not (though you wouldn’t believe what we have to effect with cotton buds). But it is a common enough issue, often fatal, and expensive to treat. However, Toulouse is insured and is now sulking in a crate in our living room, blessedly unaware that he has three more weeks of it, followed by two when he’s only allowed to roam the house. At least the weather will have improved by the end of August.

Then the car had to go in for what threatened to be a major piece of work. But the repairing garage found nothing so bad, and the car came out at merely 4% the cost of the cat. The RF CV boot has been repaired, apparently – the original mechanic explained ‘RF’ as ‘right front’ (which I had worked out for myself) but left CV unexplained. And the websites are a bit reluctant to skip using the abbreviation, but Chambers does indeed have C for constant and V for velocity. You could even justify it using some of the newspapers’ acceptable abbreviations lists…  And there was a reversing light to replace – amazingly the first bulb we’ve replaced in 18 years of driving the same car. I’m now expecting all the others to go out simultaneously.

Nevertheless, there’s a new puzzle this week – an Inquisitor from 2011 – and I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things with regular puzzles. There’s a touch of ‘famous last words’ about that, of course.

I cannot even talk about the usual Friday puzzles this time: the Phi puzzle for next week is on Tuesday 23 July (Tuesday is theme day in the Independent, of course) since some international event or other is approaching on Friday (yes, I missed that date) . Back on Friday 2 August, though – but before that 31 July sees me having puzzles in both The Guardian and The Times, just to polish off the month.