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.

 

I thought I would have to resign myself to there being no puzzle this time round, as it is a very busy weekend. But somehow I have squeezed in producing a barred and a Jumbo grid, and I still have time to put up a daily puzzle from November 2010. There’s a Nina for you to find, and the solution page contains a link to a solving blog.

I have also expanded my blogroll after receiving the request I have finally authorised in the comments. I am happy to add blogs (I keep having to increase X in the Show X entries box) though I do have a look at them first. This one is an effective gathering of links to various puzzle sources, including Sudoku and computer games like The Room (I have Volume 1 and am still trying to find time to explore it…) The  range of crossword items is very good and I will have to look at a few of them myself. This new addition is called Undisclosed Enumerations.

Some thing called Undisclosed Enumerations is bound to be some way down an alphabetical list. It reminds me that, back in the day, and back in my home town, taxi firm names evolved from ABC Taxis to AABC Taxis and eventually reached AAAAAAAATaxis, before Yellow Pages got overtaken by the internet.  AAAAAAATimes for the Times, anyone? (Not that starting with U seems to have disadvantaged Uber particularly.)

Back in a fortnight. There’ll be a blog on Targeted Treatment going up in a couple of days, assuming I find time to write it. Then there’s a Times on 18 March, but otherwise you have my Friday appearances in The Independent to look for. Next time I will be encouraging some of you to tackle the Inquisitor of 27 March, if only because the Listener and EV puzzles that weekend are both by me.

“You don’t expect me to work in this heat,” said my lithium battery, and promptly discharged itself, leaving me with an unresponsive mower, and two lawns still to mow. It has now relented and is agreeing to charge.

So time generated to put up this fortnight’s puzzle, which is from the Church Times in 2011.  I’ll be looking at other puzzles from that period in the next cycle, if anyone is attempting stylistic analysis. And if they aren’t, of course – from my point of view, I just have one box-file open at a time!

It’s a busy weekend for us with a large fun-run-cum-walk on in Wellington tomorrow. It’s faintly odd that we have to travel in wearing masks on public transport, only to mill around with a few thousand unmasked others to walk Round the Bays. But it’s looking to be a good day, and perhaps fortunately not as hot as today is turning out. It will delay me downloading Azed until almost the time UK newsagents open. But it is all a bit sudden after a week where we’ve been back at a higher level of lockdown, with many in Wellington working from home, even though the community outbreak was in Auckland.

Forthcoming puzzles include next week’s Inquisitor (27 February) and a Times Quick Cryptic on 3 March. The Independent daily on 26 February has a theme that originates here in Wellington as well, but you’ll be doing very well to spot it!

I received an email the other week asking (a) whether I was actively updating my blogroll, and, (b) if so, whether they could be on it.  The answers were perhaps slightly contradictory: (a) no, not really (with a bit of a guilty start); (b) yes.  And then I had another email asking the same thing. 

So I had to rethink my attitude to my blogroll – not least, I need to find how to update it! It has been infrequently attended to and I confess to having forgotten which widget is which.  So the actual updating may be a while away, but that doesn’t stop me introducing the two new entries here.

The first is Unscramblerer.  It’s one of those useful sites where you can enter partial words and undertake a search to find solutions to fit the letters you currently have.  The dictionary in use has over half a million entries, and includes proper nouns, so it’s pretty comprehensive.  A further feature is that the ‘Crossword Solver’ isn’t the only element – there’s an anagram solver, and a few useful Scrabble utilities as well, so you don’t have to switch between sites if you have a variety of items to check.  It’s the brainchild of Randoh Sallihall.

The second site contains puzzles by a new setter trying to make his mark. The pseudonym Hubble was always likely to go down well with an old astrophysicist like myself.  There are four puzzles there to date, with the promise of more to come.  From what Hubble told me in an email, it’s still quite a painstaking process to craft and create clues, and I can sympathise with that, thinking back to my own early days.  It does get smoother, and certain facilities slot into place.  But it’s useful to get something out there and to feel encouraged – the internet provides that in a way that wasn’t possible forty years ago.  The site is Hubble Crosswords, and Hubble is William Kenny.

I’m assuming both William and Randoh will be happy for feedback – I tried things out on both sites, and made comments, and they didn’t hurl e-abuse at me!

I will try and maintain (and update) the blogroll on a more regular basis in future, though I am very aware that a long blogroll has the potential to be off-putting. At the very least, it will keep me more in touch with my own site.

Meanwhile, there’s new puzzle up on the site – an Inquisitor from 2014. That’s recent enough for there to be both a fifteensquared review and a setter’s blog – links to both from the solution page (solve the puzzle first…). I can use this announcement to note that there’s a new Inquisitor coming up at the end of the month (27 February).  The other puzzle on the horizon is a Times Quick on 19 February.

I intend to collate the APEX entries on Monday 8 February, so any participants who still have not submitted a clue have a few hours yet to remedy the fact.

 
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