Phi Crosswords

Over the last few months I seem to have recorded anniversaries with worryingly large numbers: fortieth, thirtieth, twenty-fifth. It’s a relief to have one that is only the tenth.

On 27 September 2012 I posted an ‘Opening Announcement‘ followed by a ‘Formal Opening‘ on 5 October.  That looks like two bites at the cherry, in retrospect, though the announcement was several lines longer than the actual opening. All those two announcements did was note that the series of APEX puzzles I had composed to that date were up and available. More was promised, subject to the six cats that might get in the way.

I’ve managed to put something up more-or-less fortnightly ever since (and we now have ten cats – but that’s another page update I have yet to do), expanding out to include republishing puzzles where outlets agreed (and thanks to all of them yet again). I did attempt some early pages on the techniques of setting and solving; somewhere I still have the schedule for the updates to those, though it’s turned a bit yellow now. There have also been book reviews, and I have an extended series of setter’s blogs. I don’t think I’ve missed putting up a blog about a thematic puzzle other than the APEX series in that time.

The puzzle this time may break that run, as I haven’t decided on the protocol of ‘setter-blogging’ a puzzle that has only appeared on this site (and there’s another one of those coming along at Christmas). For Cipher, Read Love is a puzzle created specifically for this post commemorating the site’s birthday. It’s an idea I’ve had floating around for a while, generally as part of a bigger concept. But that concept never quite gelled, so here’s the offshoot that does, I think, work. There is a Playfair cipher (applied to unclued entries, no less) – but even the code-averse should find it solvable.

Another feature over the decade has been the announcement of forthcoming puzzles, and this time I have to note that I’m not appearing next Friday in The Independent – it’s Monday 3 October instead.  There’s a Times puzzle on Wednesday 5 October, and normal service is resumed with an Independent puzzle on 14 October. 

But now the big numbers return: having just sent off my100th puzzle for a particular series, I have to turn to the 101st.

I did wonder what might happen were the Queen to die without there being time to edit the crossword in the paper the next day to remove the reference to ER.  As it happened, my puzzle the next day had a Rex and a Regina, both innocuous enough in their contexts. I cannot remember which of the various puzzles I have in various pipelines will have ER in them – some won’t be appearing until well into next year. By then we should be far enough away from the events of the last few days for it not to be a problem. It will probably be several years even before ER has to be ‘old Queen’ (as is needed for the odd occasion one gets to use VR; thinking of which, has anyone ever seen AR?) since she will be the only female regnant monarch for quite some time.

The words in the clue pile this week did not throw up much in the way of CRs – just DECREPIT, which was not auspicious. No doubt they will come in due course.

Anyway, the garden calls, and there’s something bigger coming next time, so I shall be brief. The puzzle this week could be said to be under royal auspices, as it’s from the Church Times, very nearly exactly four years ago.  My next Church Times puzzle is still a way off – November, in fact – it’s one outlet where you do get a good deal of notice. Others are a little tighter in the notice stakes – I can note that there’s another puzzle squeezing into what I had down as a spartan September: a Toughie on 29 September. coming shortly after a Times puzzle on 26 September. The Independent Friday slots continue, though there’s a rejig for one week which I’ll mention next time.

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Naturally, no sooner had I said that I had very few puzzles lined up in September than some proofs come through. Not only that, but the puzzle is appearing today (3 September) as the latest Inquisitor. So rush out and get it. A setter’s blog will follow. Other than that, you have Fridays in The Independent to look forward to.

Those of you in the UK will have noticed that the BBC Music Magazine is celebrating its 30th anniversary with the September 2022 issue. (Here in NZ we have just received the April 2022 issue at the newsagents, while my postal copies have stalled at February 2022. Odd, since until this year, the magazine was coming through pretty much on time, Covid notwithstanding.)

What I only realised at too late a stage was that September 2022 also marks the 25th anniversary of my first puzzle in the magazine. I would, I think, have done something with a silver lining had I realised in time.

I don’t recall there being much of a 5th birthday feel to that particular magazine, and there was no particular announcement that, with puzzle no. 60, a new setter was appearing. But here we are at puzzle 376 – of which 313 are mine (in the early days there were some to work through from the preceding setter). 

It’s still much the same process, though I no longer particularly start the grid with whatever I’m currently listening to (Lowell Liebermann’s Variations on a Theme by Mozart, since you ask), but work more with the anniversaries of the particular month. The magazine itself can be less precise, contenting itself with getting merely the right year – and, anyway, if you want to do a big feature on composer A, whose bicentenary coincides with the sesquicentenary of composer B, for whom another big feature is demanded, then one of them will have to shift months! So, if you arm yourself with a list of likely anniversaries for the forthcoming months – well, you’d better hope it aligns with mine.

The grid-filling process is still much the same too, getting a framework of thematic words in, and then draping other musical references around them. It’s very satisfying at the end to count up the obvious musical references, but less so when you find you have to find something musical in a clue to AVOIRDUPOIS (say).  No, that isn’t a real example.  The deadlines are still four weeks, so the magazine can appear thirteen times a year with a special issue at Christmas. Except, of course, that in the run-up to Christmas, they get concertinaed to three weeks, before the chance to relax a little in December itself when you get near to six weeks for the March puzzle.

And coming up with something new for Christmas gets ever more difficult (and that’s the next one on the list.)

It’s only right therefore that today’s puzzle should be from the BBC Music Magazine. Now, when I started choosing I had a cat on my lap, preventing any real opportunity to check my boxfiles. So I went back to the earliest puzzle I have in the Cloud, which thereby became the most recent BBC Music puzzle on the site – from January 2021. Putting together the interactive version revealed a – coughs unobtrusively – deliberate mistake. 

Anniversary II will be along in due course. I’m merely grateful it has a lower ordinal number.

While it hasn’t been especially cold (our plum blossom is out), it has been very, very wet. We have escaped the worst – there are many places around the country astonishingly worse off – but it has been quite a concern. You drive past any steep hill wondering all the time whether a tree is going to come skiing down it, or a few boulders on a spree. Or even a house.

In eleven days time we have a change of month and we will have the radio solemnly intoning that the first day of September is also the first day of spring – and why hasn’t the weather changed? Spring is the least attractive season here in Wellington, especially if the vernal gales get their eyes in. But come December 1, it’s summer (and why hasn’t the weather changed?)

But a good winter storm keeps you indoors and able to catch up with things, which can be a blessing. Indeed, I had been planning a note on abbreviations, but time is short – maybe in a month. Next time sees an acknowledgement of an anniversary, and there’s another one of those looming a few weeks. So I thought I’d trot out an anniversary puzzle this time round: no. 10,000 from The Independent.

As for forthcoming puzzles, there’s a Times Quick Cryptic on Tuesday 22nd August, but I have nothing on the calendar for September yet, other than the regular Friday Independent slot. There are, however, what I suppose I should call ‘irregular’ puzzles on the horizon for October and November.