The question of whether crosswords can be plagiarised sometimes comes up. In this case, I’m not going to talk about people possibly copying clues. It’s the repetition of grids I have in my sights.
Now, the following grid:
is used, I think, by all of the national UK dailies. It’s easy to think of it as the H grid, and, indeed, Otterden in the New Statesman (crossword not online, I’m afraid) has deployed the blocks in a very similar grid as Hs to be added to adjacent words. Is it plagiarism for different papers to use the same grid? Can you copyright a grid pattern? In any case, it is unthinkably unlikely for two setters on different papers to come up with the same set of words for a grid, so really the question of plagiarism doesn’t arise.
Once you get into thematic barred crosswords, even the idea of the same grid being reused becomes…well, maybe not so improbable. Here’s one of mine:
It was used for a Listener puzzle called The Uncertainty Principle in 1994. It’s a perfectly acceptable grid in terms of the proportions of unchecked letters, and so on. It could be used in a Beelzebub or Azed puzzle without comment (a bit short on the longer answers, perhaps). However, The Uncertainty Principle was a puzzle that frustrated a lot of people and it’s fair to say that it was probably the wrong grid for the gimmick. It didn’t get that low an entry, but I suspect a lot of people may have abandoned it part-way through.
In 1996 I turned to solve the Listener puzzle one day. A setter’s début – but that grid looked familiar, very familiar. Well, it’s not impossible – there are umpteen zillions of credible grids, but some of these four-way symmetry ones seem to be a recognisable sub-family with common features, so it’s perhaps less incredible to find the same grid of this type, or a very similar one, cropping up (and like as not with a swastika or fylfot in the middle, too). I may not have been the first person to chance on that design anyway.
While it might be thought slightly nerdish to be able to remember a grid from a few years earlier, there’s worse to come, I’m afraid. As I solved the puzzle, I became aware of a vague feeling of ‘Didn’t I have that answer, and in that exact spot…and that one…and…?’ So I hauled out the files and used my old grid as a guide to interpreting the remaining unsolved clues. I reckoned about two-thirds of the answers were the same as in my 1994 puzzle.
But let me be clear – a different gimmick and necessarily a different set of clues. My hypothesis is that the setter in question had got stuck on The Uncertainty Principle, and, when searching for a new grid for their own puzzle, had taken that incomplete one and simply filled in the entries they hadn’t solved with new words, some of which were different.
I raised it as a curiosity with the editorial team at the time, sending them the two completed grids side by side. As Mike Rich noted in reply, it was indeed a curiosity. But (he went on) it was only likely to be spotted by one person, and that person had, well, merely raised it as a curiosity (and had got a quick solve out of it, to boot). It wasn’t exactly a strident mandate for action, whatever action might be deemed suitable.
Nor was it, nor is it. And had I not started a blog it might have lain dormant. But it seems an event worth not losing entirely.
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Interesting one, Phi.
I think there was an instance, many years ago, when either the Times or the Telegraph got into an argument with another newspaper when one of its stock grids was used. I don’t remember what the outcome was but, to me, grid copying is harmless. It would be roughly similar to one artist berating another for using a canvas of the same size and shape but for a different painting.
For clues it’s obviously a different matter, but the circumstances you describe make me wonder if the culprit was simply poor memory?
Not so long ago solvers of one of my concise puzzles commented that it repeated many answers of another I’d published not so long previously. It turned out that what I’d done was save the original puzzle half way through setting it, but I inadvertently saved it under its original ‘template’ filename – ie I’d clicked Save instead of Save as…
So the next time I opened that template I had a part-filled grid and thought “Oh, that’s a bonus – I’ve got one half finished here” – completely forgetting it had been the basis of a previously completed puzzle.
If we’re going back to pre-1996 I doubt it would have been a ‘filename’ error (did we have any crossword software at all back then?) but it could just have been a part-filled grid on a piece of paper which got filed away and forgotten about. Ultimately, I suppose that if the clues were all different then there could have been no attempt at plagiarism. Let’s hope so!
It’s hard to say, Anax. As you point out, you came upon a part-complete grid, and simply finished it. For the same thing to apply, you’d have to assume this setter had part-solved my puzzle on to plain paper, and had then happened on that sheet and thought ‘Oh, here’s a grid I haven’t finished…’ Not impossible, but I still wonder whether they looked at their part-completed effort and thought ‘Well, there must be a filled version to be found, as it’s been published…’ and went on from there.
I will just underline that the puzzles used different clue types in their different gimmicks, so there really wasn’t any chance of copying clues. My recollection is that the later version used Printer’s Devilry, which was actually quite brave given that I hadn’t filled my original grid with that in mind at all.
Your question becomes more relevant, I think, Phi, when it comes to circular grids as the models currently used are few. I blatantly plagiarised the first ones I used in 1 Across from Tantris in the Spectator and there was no comment. Needing a 36-answer one for the Magpie, I filched a Round Robin one from Derek’s message board and when I submitted it, AJ asked me whether I could give him the source of the grid to save him creating a new one. I replied that it was a beautiful little grid someone had created for Derek. On consulting Derek, AJ found that it was one he (AJ) had made for Derek years earlier – so I was well and truly caught ‘plagiarising’. AJ was flattered by the compliment to his grid and encouraged me to go on using it (acknowledging the creator!) When grumbling about my incurably awful unching (too many open lights – a feature of the fact that I attempt to fit masses of graphic thematic material into a Chalicea puzzle) James Leonard suggested I use or ‘borrow’ better grids. He also sent me one of his own. Long ago, I raised the question on Derek’s message board and the consensus seemed to be that it is almost impossible to claim ownership of a grid. Clues are an interesting issue too. What has happened to me is that the exact clue I have used has appeared in one someone else has published while mine was sitting in a two-year queue. Clearly it looks as though I ‘copied’ his clue but ‘Honest Guv’ I didn’t’!