Australian Crosswords

If you read this blurb regularly you’ll know that I do a weekly search using google.com.au to see if anything is happening with cryptic crosswords in Australia. The actual search I do is “cryptic crosswords -youplay -lovatts”. The search will exclude any results (apart from paid ads) that contain the dash words, -youplay and -lovatts, as these tend to dominate the results and I’m not interested in them. The next step is to use Search Tools in Google to limit the results. Under All I select Country: Australia, then Any Time: Past Week. These results are presented as Sorted by Relevance, and I often change this to Sorted by Date. Nothing much changes from week to week – it’s a matter of sifting through the results looking for a newbie or something a little different possibly in a blog post. A while back I did this and multiple entries appeared containing exactly the same wording about a grid/clues mismatch, all on different regional newspaper websites. It turned out that the same crossword (and clearly the same publishing process) was used in dozens of regional papers owned by the same company, and therefore the same mistake hit them all. It highlighted a number of things for me: almost no-one is employed in sub-editing any more; there are just a few newspaper groups controlling many newspapers; there’s so much shared information that regional papers no longer represent their local community as they used to; and one (cheap) crossword now services a huge area making crossword setters almost redundant.
My weekly search also makes it clear to me that there’s no growth in the solving of cryptic crosswords, if anything there’s a steady decline.

Last week I mentioned the ellipsis, which is the intentional omission of certain words based on assumptions made due to the context of the conversation or language. For a really good explanation of how ellipsis is used in normal English, visit here. How does this relate to cryptics? Well, the argument is that a setter can use the ellipsis device to define answers without a pronoun, thereby using a verbal phrase to define a noun. Here is the blog entry that isn’t directly about it, but mentions it. Look for Don Manley’s posts. The example given states that “eats many cakes” can equate to “he/she eats many cakes” because “eats many cakes” can be treated elliptically. I find the whole thing hard to swallow as it’s clear from the grammar explanation page that context is all important in the correct use of ellipsis. A key line for me is: “…when we use ellipsis appropriately, no one thinks we have ‘left out’ anything…”. In other words, deception or misunderstanding is contrary to how the ellipsis is intended to be used – it’s there to make conversation easier without losing any understanding. I would argue that it’s wrong to use it any other way than the original intention. Without context, ellipsis has no meaning: the word(s) left out rely on what’s gone before, and can’t be assumed without this prior understanding.

What do you think or this too technical to worry about?

Do you ever come across something in cryptics that seems wrong or not quite right, but, as it is published in a newspaper and doesn’t get criticised, you assume it’s not an error, instead that you are missing something? For me, if an experienced solver can’t see what’s happening, even after getting the answer, then the explanation better be rock solid and elicit an ah-ha moment, or the device has no right being used. Here’s an example: I could never understand why the use of ” ‘s ” was acceptable in circumstances where it appeared it was being used in a possessive sense. It had no role, it appeared, except to improve or enable suitable surface reading of a clue. I just accepted it as lazy cluing and began to ignore it after a while. That was until someone explained that the ” ‘s ” wasn’t possessive, it equated to “is” or “has”, which was a valid reading of the device and that it therefore had a role in the clue. Now I know, I accept it and use it with the full knowledge of how it works so that I don’t misuse it and can explain it if necessary. Blindly using cryptic devices without full understanding of how they are used will lead to faulty clues. Recently another cryptic chestnut came up in a UK blog that I’d never really understood: the ellipsis, not the “…” kind, but grammar kind. I’ll talk about it next week.