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.

This site was set up to provide a home for the ongoing series of APEX Christmas puzzles I have been setting for over a decade. It’s now time for the annual update that puts the latest puzzle online.

If you want the background to the series try here. Once you’re there, you can scroll down and head over the puzzle – or you can get the direct link here.

As always, the solution page lists the three clues judged best, and their authors.

Some other action on the site since the last update:

A setter’s blog on the Listener puzzle 8×8

(there are solving blogs on Listen with Others here; you will have to scroll down or search if you come here a week or more afterwards)

A setter’s blog on the Enigmatic Variations puzzle Spoiler Alert

(the fifteensquared solver’s blog is here)

A piece about the role of reference books in current solving practice

A quiet period for puzzles other than the Friday Independent appearances, and even one of those moves to a Saturday before the next update: the Independent puzzle due for 30 April will now appear on 1 May. But if you really want something from me on 30 April, do turn to the Church Times.

The puzzle for Easter is a Beelzebub puzzle from July 2011.

We have just had a flurry of reports about the various anniversaries of lockdowns and other aspects of the pandemic. One thing that I do now that I didn’t then is to consult Google Discover in my smartphone app. I cannot recall when I started  doing this regularly and I don’t think I’m too obsessive about it – at least, it’s not directing me to sites about obsessive use of apps yet. And it does throw up some oddities that I would not otherwise encounter.

I found this week that I had received a passing mention on a New Zealand news site, back in July 2020. The article is here. I’m delighted to note that David Tossman is back in charge of things cruciverbal at The Listener (NZ). There was a curious period in the middle of lockdown when the overseas owner (German, I think) decamped like a startled hare leaving a number of going-concern titles in the lurch. There was a hiatus while new owners were acquired, and the presses restarted, and all is now good (or as good as anything is in print journalism these days). David mentions meeting me (the late Rex Benson was also of the party) and in my rather lackadaisical way I have never followed through.

He is posed beside the UCL Jeremy Bentham exhibit (well, what do you call it?). I have passed it a few times and there was always Bentham’s skull in a sort of bell jar between his feet. There were rumours that multiple thefts of the skull – often for the purposes of rugby – had led to it being removed, and even its replica being withheld from display. I wonder if it was there then.

Once you start thinking about the oddities of lockdown, other possibilities come to mind. I have largely stopped using cash – New Zealand always had a focus on electronic payment methods, but I kept coins and notes around for buying coffee and so on. But no longer – it still seems odd not to hand over money for small purchases, but I’ve just stopped.

The other odd thing lies in a couple of subscriptions I have, both to BBC monthly magazines. These are both published by the same not-quite-BBC company, distributed by the same distributor, and even come in almost identical envelopes. Last week, both The Sky at Night and BBC Music arrived on the same day at the end of March. The music magazine was the April issue (with an excellent couple of Malcolm Arnold symphonies on the cover disc), but The Sky at Night was the February edition full of conjunctions past their sell-by date. Obviously there was still plenty of interest (astronomy doesn’t move that quickly), but the two month gap is curious for two horses from the same stable.

I have just sent out the Apex 2020 results to the regular participants. The puzzle itself will go up in a fortnight’s time, along with the winning clues to – well, that would be telling just now. Between now and then, apart from the usual Friday appearances in The Independent, you get a full range of my Times puzzles: a daily cryptic on 8 April, a Jumbo on 10 April, and a Quick Cryptic on 15 April.

There’ll be a couple of setter’s blogs added to the site in the course of the next week, covering 8×8 from The Listener and Spoiler Alert from the Enigmatic Variations series. Just got to write them now…

 

In these current times, ‘dinner’ is not the word – but I’ll use it.  I’m getting this weekend’s update published promptly so that I can get my beauty sleep before my first breakfast-time Listener Dinner. The timing is fine – 8 am NZ time – and would have been much worse in a couple of weeks once both sets of clocks have changed (and in opposite directions).  Still, Marjorie has a 6am Zoom this coming Wednesday (but we can blame Americans for that…).

I have no skin in the game for this year’s announcements – my next Listener puzzle pops up next Saturday (27 March), so next year’s event is the one I will have an eye on. And no need to come up with an apology for absence this year – somehow one never wants to say the same thing over and over again, but new ideas come at a price too. The opportunity to augment events by prudent use of Zoom, Teams or whatever the Google one is called may be one good thing to come out of the current situation.

It will be interesting to participate in what will be my largest ever Zoom meeting. While the maximum number of attendees has been set at 500, I doubt we’ll get that, but a three-figure quantity seems guaranteed. I think my previous best has been the low 70s, which is a fair bit scrolling sideways on a Zoom screen.

The day after the Listener puzzle comes an appearance by Kcit in the Enigmatic Variations series in the Sunday Telegraph. A quiet weekend for solving – and fortuitously just before the deadline for submitting my next BBC Music Magazine puzzle. Which is what you have this time round – from April 2011. Do get the latest issue (April 2021) with its symphonies by Malcolm Arnold.  The centenary of his birth actually falls later this year and, yes, there will be some puzzles from me about it. Otherwise Phi-day in The Independent will roll around as usual, including a Nina on Good Friday.

There will, of course, be setter’s blogs on both puzzles from the weekend of 27-28 March in due course.

The quiet of next weekend will allow me to get out a reminder to APEX participants to vote before the deadline of 31 March. Many have and we have a contest under way. There are still about seven clues in contention for the honours so do not think it’s too late to have an impact. I will collate the results over Easter, and at the start of May you will get the 2020 puzzle as the puzzle of the fortnight.