Australian Crosswords

A couple of weeks ago a crossword friend sent me a link to an article about a newspaper group (McClatchy) in the States, specifically the Centre Daily Times (CDT) changing its puzzle page. If you take time to read it, you’ll notice some similarities with what happened to The Stickler when News Ltd consolidated their puzzle pages across their four major state dailies over 2 years ago. There are a few differences though: about 30 papers vs 4; the CDT was already running a syndicated crossword (LA Times), not a local one; it seems the regular staff handled the changeover where News Ltd used a hatchet mob to do the dirty work; and someone cared enough at the CDT to actually try and find a solution that publisher and solvers could live with. The common denominator obviously was cost-cutting, with McClatchy ignoring what wasn’t broke (the LA Times crossword) and going with a highly syndicated crossword (Universal) with no real connection to anything that readers could relate to. Clearly the LA Times was too expensive to use across the whole newspaper group or the spread of McClatchy’s market meant it wouldn’t suit all newspapers. In my case I was asked to take a 75% pay cut to allow The Stickler to survive and the many complaints after its axing fell on deaf ears. I love the author’s dismissive line when talking about the “strategy to streamline puzzle pages for all of its newspaper markets”: it “makes sense on multiple fronts”…for the newspaper owner, sure, but solvers always seem to end up paying the price.
There’s a small clue in the comments following the article that points to more than the puzzle page being streamlined. Modern regional newspapers are now largely a subset of the major papers with little or no real local content. It won’t be long before the regional paper will have no relevance at all in our society.

I see the use of language as a fundamental part of any cryptic clue. It’s all language, of course, but as each clue can have multiple (separate) parts, the way it’s put together to relay the answer is crucial. In modern times it seems a cryptic indicator can sit before or behind the fodder it’s operating on and be in any inflective form. That is, the language isn’t as important as the formula that’s deemed necessary to convey the answer. I came across a question in response to a blog entry explaining a Gemini puzzle recently that I think will demonstrate what I’m talking about.
A poster asks: “1 across and 18 across use ‘change’ and ‘changes’ as anagram indicators respectively. How is it possible for both uses to be right?” An insightful question. The clues and answers are:

1 What is needed is no huge change (6) = ENOUGH
18 So a ring changes a girl’s status in Italy (7) = SIGNORA

“change” and its inflections, “changes”, “changing”, and “changed” would be universally accepted as valid anagram indicators, but does that mean they all can be used (in a language sense) in all circumstances? The answer is no! In 1, for example, how is change being used? Is it instructional: change no huge to get the answer; is it descriptive: a change to no huge gets the answer, or is it something else? For me neither work – the “is” wipes out the instructional use of change and no “a” or the like (“a” no huge change, or “a” change to no huge) rules out the descriptive. To me change here has to be “changed” or “changing” for the language to be right. Now, many solvers may simply discount this complaint and say the fodder’s there and the indicator’s there and they don’t need anything else to get the answer. That’s all true, but is language used correctly in the process, and shouldn’t that matter?
In 18 changes acts on So a ring. Try using the same language to explain to someone how this clue works. You’ll find yourself inserting some extra words to make it right: “So a ring changes to make/to become/to get a girl’s status in Italy”. Without the joining pieces there is no necessary link between wordplay and definition. In fact, such wording means there can’t be a definitive wordplay/definition independence – you can’t take each part and treat them in isolation, which I consider fundamental and is why I avoid using such constructs. As soon as wordplay and definition have a reliance on each other, a basic cryptic concept is missing.
I know I’m in the minority here. I like the language to say what I mean otherwise clues become nothing more than words stuck together, something anyone could do.

I’ve come across a number of blogs recently with postings equating easy cryptics with the number of anagrams they contain. It’s certainly true that the (full) anagram is probably the easiest and quickest type of clue to write, but there are so many factors that govern difficulty within a cryptic crossword that blaming the anagram count is simply not looking at the big picture. I can design the grid with all first letters available, use uncommon crossing letters, with at least half of every word obtainable from other answers and then pick everyday words as answers. All these elements will make the crossword easier to solve regardless of the difficulty of the clues. It’s much more likely a crossword is consistently easy to solve because the clues are poorly written. In my experience, even if a cryptic clue has easy construction and the answer is an easy word, if it is well written, it will still present some level of challenge to the average solver. This is because a well-written clue blends definition and wordplay seamlessly, and will require cryptic nous to unravel. A poorly-written cryptic clue doesn’t do this well, often making the definition stand out. Such a clue could almost be described as a straight clue with extra bits, that just about anyone could solve, even those without much cryptic knowledge. Back to anagrams. An anagram used in a clue written well is just as potent as any other cryptic device, and that’s the secret: you can use anagrams as long as there’s deception there. My cluing philosophy precludes me from using anything in the wordplay with an etymological relationship to the answer, which limits my cluing options. Examine my crosswords closely and you’ll see I rely fairly heavily on the anagram device, not always in full mode, but nevertheless more than in your average UK cryptic. I also use a limited set of anagram indicators, yet at no time in my cryptic career have I been accused of writing easy crosswords. It’s all in the clue-writing, not the devices used.