Phi Crosswords

phionline.net.nz

  • About me
  • Types of cryptic crossword
    • Solving crosswords
    • Outlets
  • APEX Crosswords
  • My other puzzles
    • BBC Music Magazine crosswords
    • Beelzebub Crosswords
    • Church Times puzzles
    • Enigmatic Variations
    • The European crossword
    • Independent Inquisitor
    • Independent: newspaper
    • Jumbos
    • Magpie
    • Other puzzles
  • Setter’s blogs
  • Book Reviews
  • Cats

Long preambles

September 4, 2021 By Phixwd 2 Comments

The crossword this time round is an Enigmatic Variations puzzle from 1996 – sufficiently long ago that I decided I should mark the passing of time by updating the descriptive text on the main EV page. The puzzle itself is called Lifts, and it’s one where I looked back at it and thought “Did I really just decide to do that?”. It also has what I think is the longest preamble of any I have put up on the site so far.

Some people grumble about long preambles. There is a lot to take in – but that’s balanced by the fact that you are being given lots of information. You are generally less likely to have to hang around waiting for a penny drop, and you instead have a process to which you have to adapt your solving skills. In the case of ‘Lifts’, it’s a mode of entry twist – there’s a fair bit of boustrephedon work in this one, and I can tell you that here because the preamble also does so. Hence you can plunge in and start solving – though not all answers can be entered straight away. But you have the outlined process to help you spot where an answer might go. I don’t think the puzzle would be solvable without this degree of up-front information.

Some people grumble about short preambles too. Certainly things like ‘A number of clues contain modifications that indicate how the remaining answers, whose clues are normal, are to be entered’ or even the very basic ‘The unclued answers have something in common’ are not letting on a great deal, and you have to dive in and start fossicking around.

There is room for both approaches, surely. Well, actually there often isn’t room for long preambles, while we remain dependent on paper versions. Newspapers have limited space for crosswords, however expansive their websites may be. The original version of ‘Lifts’ did strike me as being in rather small print, though I don’t have any contemporaneous examples for comparison. So the chances are that solvers will see a majority of puzzles of the less informative, wait-for-the-penny-to-drop type.

Last time I was musing on the value of having up-to-the-minute and topical references in crosswords. Almost immediately there was an example in the Independent where the clue referred to a successful pop song from the mid-90s, and a large number of solvers (me included) were left scratching their heads.  I also read an interview this week with Chris Riddell, the illustrator and former Children’s Laureate, who has recently brought out a modern version of the two Alice books by Lewis Carroll. He noted that John Tenniel had included a caricature of Benjamin Disraeli in the illustrations for Through the Looking-Glass – this was not an option in the present-day when political reputations rose and fell almost on a weekly basis. 

So I remain somewhat against topicality: that’s not to say a clue cannot have it, but it’s going to have to have a surface that persists beyond the immediate relevance, and delivers two clear components – definition and wordplay – that do not depend on the topical context for solving. That strikes me as a hard thing to do.

My own piece of topicality: aside from the usual Friday Independent appearances, there’s a Times Quick Cryptic on Thursday 9 September.

Share
Tweet
Pin

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Comments

  1. Roy says

    September 6, 2021 at 9:24 pm

    A long preamble? Ha! Cf Kevin Wald.

    Reply
    • Phixwd says

      September 7, 2021 at 8:34 am

      Well, quite, though I think even he doesn’t take the palm in Roger Wolff’s latest collection! But KW’s puzzles are intricate and he wants the solver to enjoy the intricacy, so time and words need to be deployed.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Phi RSS feed

  • RSS - Posts

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.

Blogroll

  • Alberich Crosswords
  • Alchemi's puzzles
  • Anax Crosswords
  • Azed slip
  • Big Dave's Crossword Blog
  • Boatman Cryptics
  • Crossword centenary
  • Crossword Centre
  • Crossword Club
  • Crossword Unclued
  • CrosswordMan: Crossword construction software
  • Crosswords by Chameleon
  • Crosswords by Hasslethymi
  • Fifteensquared
  • George vs The Listener crossword
  • Guardian Crosswords
  • Hoskins Crossword
  • Hubble Crosswords
  • idothei
  • Independent Crosswords
  • Listen with Others
  • Listener Crossword
  • Magpie Crossword Magazine
  • One Across
  • Peter's Cryptic Crossword Corner
  • Telegraph Crosswords
  • The Stickler Weekly
  • Times Crossword Club
  • Times for the Times
  • Undisclosed Enumeration

Comments

  • Erin on A forthcoming loss
  • Tim Myall on A forthcoming loss
  • William F P on Happy Easter
  • Erin on Happy Easter
  • Erin on Under siege

Copyright © 2022 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in