This time the puzzle is from October 2011, and it’s a rather special one – my one thousandth daily cryptic for The Independent. The puzzle had to be solved in the dead-tree edition to get full value – the software for the online version simply could not cope (and, ten years of weekly puzzles on, still cannot, as far as I can tell – happy to be disabused of that opinion, though).

Milestone puzzles like this can be fun, though this one had a particular set of constraints which made clue-writing entertaining. Very recently we had PINK regathering to set Inquisitor 1,700 – I dare say there’s a good chance in two years or so that we will be back for the next century-marker. And I have my three-hundredth BBC Music Magazine puzzle coming up later in the year, and more of that at the time. 

The issue for many of these types of puzzle is much the same as for any themed puzzle – it’s important to make the thematic element sufficiently subservient that the puzzle can be solved without ever appreciating that that element is there. Funnily enough (see the fifteensquared discussion – after solving, please), the mismatch between the paper and online versions demonstrated this rather well.  Online solvers saw simply an ordinary Across/Down puzzle, and not the paper version (which is presented here).  It was a tough puzzle, though I don’t know that the differing presentations had much effect on the level of difficulty.

I suppose the Inquisitor series, being thematic throughout, suffers this rather less – certainly 1700 was part of the theme in that puzzle, and solvers had to work out how it applied.  

We are creatures of anniversary and milestone, of course, and these puzzles will continue to occur. As a dedictaed cataloguer of appearances I can also identify things like my 1,000th published puzzle overall (Independent 4,359, since you ask) though these tend to creep up on me, and do not get special treatment.

Bearing all that in mind, I can let you know that for the rest of the month my appearances are solely in The Independent Friday slot, and you may want to give them a whirl. If you nip off promptly and subscribe to One Across magazine, you may well get the June issue (just out) which has a puzzle of mine within.

The news here will soon be full of how winter is starting next Tuesday (June 1) – we do like our official datelines. Nevertheless, there is a distinctly wintry storm about, giving the South Island a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ battering. That’s this year’s ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ battering, you understand, or, at least, the first of the sequence. And there was I thinking people were living longer.

OK, so I forgot the eclipse. The change in weather is the more noticeable because a few days earlier we had been out in the garden late at night watching the ‘blood supermoon’ (I think that’s what it was called to stir the sluggish brains of newspaper readers). The observing conditions were almost perfect – a beautiful clear sky, the moon at the zenith, nestling against the Milky Way, and your eyes dark-adjusted because you were out watching the earth’s shadow creep across the moon’s disc. Today if you went out and looked up, you’d have to mop your face with a cloth.

It hasn’t stopped our garden from producing stuff. We spent today gathering the last lot of feijoas – just as we did last week, and the week before… The fact that we accumulated 30 or so today suggests that there’s still a few to come. And they aren’t all small – our youngest tree has a habit of fruiting late, and producing the biggest crop. These three are all from the last fortnight, sitting next to the teaspoon we will use to eviscerate them:

Not record-breakers by any means, but the largest we’ve had to date.

To crosswords: today’s puzzle is a BBC Music Magazine puzzle from 2011.  Next time around will be a special Independent daily puzzle from about ten years ago, in time to point up a June landmark.

Before that, there will be a Telegraph Toughie from Kcit on Thursday 3 June. If that deters you and you run to The Times – hard luck, I’m there as well, in the 15×15 slot. The smaller Times Quick Cryptic sees me appear on Friday June 11.

We went to our local second-hand book fair the other week. It was larger than ever, because they had accrued so many books over the two years since the preceding one. As usual, I came away with something slightly out of the common run.

Das Große Kreuzwort Rätsel Lexikon (published by Duden) to be exact. Or (it’s German, after all) Das Große Kreuzworträtsellexikon, as it says on the spine. It contains more than 160 000 Rätselwörtern, as it says once on the front and twice on the back making it “das umfassende und kompetente Nachschlagewerk”. Certainly the back cover contains the highest density of German polysyllables I’ve seen for a while.

I have acquired the 1990 and perhaps only edition – Duden no longer list it on their website, though they have a range of children’s puzzle books, as well as a lot of general language references. A lot is made of their collaboration with the Rätselagentur (or puzzle agency) Lackner + von Berg who are very much still around.  

The layout of the book is very similar to that in Bradford (especially the electronic Bradford). You start with:

Aa: 8 – Bergbach

and end 831 pages later with:

Zytosom: 5 – Zelle; 11 – Zellkoerper

My German is not what you would call good – indeed, it struggles to be what you would call bad. I can make out Hillbrook and the Aa is a river, so maybe it’s an alternative name. At the other end of the alphabet I’m fairly confident about ‘cytosome’ and things cellular.

In between you find several splendid lists. The birthplaces of famous people, for instance – or, at least, of Bach, Beethoven, Dürer, Einstein, Jesus, Luther, Mohammed, Mozart and Schiller, which is a pretty eclectic grouping. If you wish to offer any of them Geburtstagsgruß then you can try 13 – Happy birthday.

There’s quite a lot of English in there, in fact. Even the cover has the answer CAR. What, I thought, was that the German for? “engl.: Auto” (sic) said the clue. Crossing it was “olivgrüner Papagei”, three letters, ending in A. Kea gets everywhere…

This time around we have a Church Times puzzle from 2011. It was No. 1,114 on its appearance, and ten years on the sequence has rolled around to the low 1,600s. 1611 will be a special, and I’ll say more about that nearer the time (July 2).

But there’s another, more significant milestone before that, and I’ll say more about that in the next blog.

And even before that: the Inquisitor has a puzzle of mine this weekend (An Alternative Guide to Wonderland). That is No. 1,699 in the series, and elementary arithmetic will tell you that 1,700 must be hot on its heels. So you’ll get me back again as part of the PINK team.

 

Feijoas have nothing to do with crosswords, really – though the word is in one of the Apex puzzles if you want to work your way through them. But we’re at the time of year when every day seems to bring a dozen or so more feijoas off the trees, and they pile up waiting to be eaten or stuffed into cakes and jams.  Or muffins, which is my next target for the day, so I must be brief.

This time there’s a puzzle from the Inquisitor series – there is a solver’s blog for it on the fifteensquared site, and the link is with the solution.

The choice of an Inquisitor puzzle is sort of timely: May is a quiet month for me outside the regular Friday slot in the Independent (and that Friday slot moves to a Tuesday mid-month – you have been warned), but there is an Inquisitor coming up on 15 May. It is number 1699 in the series, and if anyone is wondering whether the succeeding double-zeroed puzzle will throw up a reappearance of PINK – well, you’ll have to buy the i on 22 May! I have had a lot of proofs to check this week, mind…

There’s also a Times Quick Cryptic from Pedro very soon – Monday 3 May, no less. And the BBC Music Magazine puzzle appearing later this month will have a slightly different theme, befitting its number.