A day or so late – my excuse is that it’s a holiday weekend here in NZ. But also…
Some years ago I received a note from Harold Massingham (Mass) in which he apologised for its brevity, but he was deep in preparing grids for some twenty barred thematic puzzles (after which he would clue them). I was taken aback by this as it was very different to my own way of proceeding, and I couldn’t imagine the consequence of so concentrated a focus on one aspect of crosswording.
Well, the absence of the other half at an all-day art course on Saturday has helped to answer that. Over the course of a day to myself I produced ten grids for various outlets, and I can say that for the moment I no longer want to do anything involved with putting a grid together, or printing it up, or extracting words from it (however easy software makes that). So I’m not putting a puzzle up this time round. But there is a new ‘book’ review (and you’ll have to go read it to see why there are inverted commas).
As for me, it’s about time I wrote some clues (and not to any of those ten grids, either).
I remember sitting opposite Harold Massingham many years ago at a Crossword Club dinner in the Eastgate Hotel, Oxford and have a very similar memory. On that occasion, the number of grids he had just created prior to starting cluing them was 99!