Phi Crosswords

Every New Zealand region has an annual anniversary – a local public holiday on the Monday nearest a significant historical date. Wellington’s is tomorrow – it’s the Monday nearest 22 January, though I can’t quite recall the rationale. When we first arrived in Wellington, the Monday I was due at the new job was Wellington Anniversary, so there was some hasty communication saying not to turn up. I’m still inclined to think: ‘Hooray! A long weekend to get blogs posted’. The new regimen (that tells me I can do updates midweek now) hasn’t established itself yet.

But I have managed to get a couple of largeish grids done which had been hanging around in the back of my mind. One took several sessions since there was a degree of intricacy that meant I had to stop and regather my thoughts. It was a circular grid; I worked clockwise and I was not looking forward to the moment when I had to join up back at the starting point – and when it came it was a doddle. The immediate review threw up a mistake that required a correction switching one high-scoring Scrabble letter for another – and, lo, there was a word fitting an implausible set of letters. Now all I have to do is clue it.

The other puzzle was the 2025 APEX grid, which is also quite sizeable. Participants may be relieved to hear that I’m aiming for normal clues, rather than this year’s Gallimaufry-style. I have had a good number of clues submitted already, but the reminders will be coming out soon enough. The new regimen may mean that there will be no waiting for the next public holiday (Waitangi Day on 6 February) before collating entries – and hence no period of grace if you miss the 31 January deadline!

The other odd thing about this weekend is the weather. After a burst of warm weather at Christmas, Wellington has had a series of southerly blasts and a lot of cloudy damp days. Until this weekend, when, despite it being a public holiday, the weather has perked up. I’m sitting writing this outdoors under a sunshade, having a relaxing day after clearing our stream yesterday (an annual supply of water plants for the compost heaps) and planting leeks today. Need to go in and stew some apples and eat some of the crumble made from the results of a previous visit to the tree. Lemonade may also be in the offing: we have enough desserts of various types to make the idea of a Sussex Pond pudding, however delectable, a bit redundant.

I thought it might be a quiet January, but its last couple of weeks have five puzzles lined up: Pangakupu appears in the Guardian on 24 January, with a coincidental Independent Friday appearance. Then there’s a Times Quick from Pedro on Monday 27 January, a Toughie from Kcit on 30 January, and a final Independent Friday puzzle to close off the month.

And the puzzle this time (almost forgot) is the start of an exploration of 2003: an Inquisitor from March that year. At that time the puzzle was called the Weekend Crossword, and the numbering system threw up 406.

As promised, the puzzle this time is a Jumbo from the handful I did for The Independent way back when – Christmas 2003, in this case.

Looking back twenty years or so is an interesting experience. I typed everything in (and I think I’ve caught all the errors) and I found myself wondering at the clues. There was nothing ‘topical’ to be changed, but they felt less like my clues than usual. Jumbos are slightly odd – you are clueing lots of longer phrases (in general, average word lengths in Jumbos are higher, I think) and the temptation to rely on cryptic definitions is quite high. At the same time, if you have the occasional obscure word (yes, there are a few), you have to be precise, and you end up with a bit of a ragbag of clues. There’s one lovely and lit. in the mix, though, which I might rescue for another puzzle.

The Guardian Christmas Special was a pleasure. It was based around classical composers (deprived of their vowels, like all other entries) and covered a good range of familiar names interspersed with some unusual ones; the historical range was TYE to ANNA CLYNE (in good Proms prospectus style, the living composer gets her forename attached). Sadly, there has been some sniping about elitist subject matter – curiously this did not emerge over the previous Special (August Bank Holiday) which covered pop music, and which I found impenetrable. There remains the expectation that everything in every puzzle should be known to every solver, and there are a few who seem to take pride in saying ‘nho’ and ‘well, that’s GK’, as if they haven’t spotted that there are cryptic elements to the clues as well. 

The Listener also marks a milestone – no longer are entries sent to St. Albans. It’s now Pontefract, as John Green has stepped down as vetter. Sadly, but perhaps somewhat predictably, the opportunity has not been taken to introduce an email entry option. There were periods last year when I was almost prevented from entering by the unavailability of stamps, and I now have to take significant detours to find a postbox (down to only one in the suburb now, and numbers of boxes are being reduced next year). Collections and deliveries are less frequent, and the time to the UK seemed to be hovering around 3-4 weeks throughout the last quarter of 2024. Given the postage cost (three price rises this past twelvemonth) and the fact that The Times doesn’t supply a prize even if you are picked out of the hat, this may be the year I stop entering regularly. Next time the puzzle is under threat, I’ll write a letter of support though – just don’t expect it to get there in time.

Just the Friday Independent appearances for the foreseeable – information channels (even electronic ones) tend to get a bit out of whack over the holiday season. APEX competitors: your deadline is the end of the month, and reminders will follow nearer the time.

 
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A complicated week, given that I retired on Friday, in the midst of distributing this year’s APEX crossword, and aware that this post needed to go up this weekend. And all the burgeoning number of Christmas crossword specials to be collected and solved too.

A week of capricious weather too: warm to start, then a five degree drop accompanied by gales and rain, and now back to an intensely hot and muggy day. The garden has been lapping it up, with everything coming up or out early (plums already lined up for jam; beans pre-Christmas rather than post-New Year). More widely, the New Zealand ‘Christmas tree’, the pohutukawa, which tends to peak in the space between Christmas and New Year, is already winding down its display in several places. Lots of red former petals in the gutters, making it look like there’s been mild carnage further up the hill.

As usual at Christmas, the puzzle this weekend is an unpublished one – another Beelzebub-style puzzle, which I keep working at to keep my clue-writing hand in. I’m thinking that, with the additional flexibility that the season (let alone retirement) brings, I may unearth an old Independent Jumbo for a fortnight’s time.

Meanwhile, I have a Times Quick on 23 December, Pangakupu pops up in The Guardian and the Independent Friday puzzles continue as normal.

But for now it’s Christmas. All the best for the holidays, and keep your head down as the rest of the seasonal puzzles come flying in!

A difficult week, during which I finally decided to retire. By the time of the Christmas site update I will have left work, and perhaps will have time to ensure I can put more puzzles up on the site more predictably.  I might even get back to the solving guide.

But it’s an emotional thing to do, and it’s accompanied by extended exchanges with the Civil Service Pension scheme (though ‘exchange’ might be dignifying their contribution to the process), and all the various bits of planning that go with the decision. It is rather distracting, and when the cul-de-sac Christmas event and the cat cafe Christmas event also align then the weekend vanishes quite quickly. Next time around there’ll be a special puzzle for Christmas (yes, that’s how close Christmas is) – and I should have circulated this year’s APEX puzzle to the usual suspects by then as well.

It’s a quiet fortnight for Phi puzzles – the usual Friday appearances in the Independent are augmented only by a Times puzzle on 16 December and the Church Times Christmas special on 20 December.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.