Australian Crosswords

Some time ago Anax (Dean Mayer, a UK setter) asked a question on his blog about setter rustiness, that is the effect of having a break from setting (due to a holiday, for example) and then trying to get back into it. I replied, reflecting on how things used to be for me in such circumstances, but recently I’ve come to realise just how important having a fit brain is to not only the art of setting but to the art of good setting. The brain needs exercise like muscles do to stay in shape. When my business was at its peak I was writing about 1000 word puzzles a year, about 400 of them cryptic. It was mentally draining but manageable and over time I discovered little tricks to keep the brain from overloading. For instance, as I’ve mentioned before, I put a lot of energy into the grid filling part of compiling, making the clue construction easier; I intentionally stayed away from difficult words to clue; I didn’t do (many) themes (as someone famously said, “they don’t pay any more for theme crosswords”); I treated setting as a job and worked set hours, giving my brain a rest from words; and I left words I was having trouble with and finished what I could, getting the bulk of the crossword done (therefore relieving pressure).
My son works for a local web development company, Black Nova – he somehow manages to hop out of bed and get to work in about 20 minutes – I couldn’t do that and arrive in the right frame of mind for work. For most of my professional setting days the first thing I did was go for an hour’s walk – I’m convinced this time before work loosened the brain up and put me in the right headspace – the times I just got up and started work were a hard slog.
Leap forward to now and my brain is in a completely different gear. The demands of multiple weekly deadlines have gone and my brain has correspondingly slowed. For some reason much less work takes a disproportionate amount of time and I struggle where I never used to. My brain fitness has deteriorated – no doubt about it. I could put it down to “burn-out”, but mostly it’s the lack of daily stimulation that The Stickler and other puzzles provided me.

I think all solvers have experienced that phenomenon where a seemingly impossible clue or puzzle becomes solvable after a break or maybe a night’s sleep. It appears that previous misconceptions are cleared out and new pathways found or maybe the brain works in the background while the conscious is doing other things. The same thing happens to setters in a way as a word that appears to have only one clueing option suddenly reveals itself as a word with multiple opportunities. There’s a major difference, or course, in that a solver is looking for the only path while the setter looks to explore many paths in order to find the best one. I’ve always believed that every reasonable word has a “best clue”, but time often prevents a setter from finding it. It’s always about time and effort and a minimum standard. When I used to write the daily Stickler I gave myself a max of about five minutes per clue, any more and I simply wouldn’t have enough time to get it done. In some ways I cheated, as I avoided difficult words and included only words (at grid-filling time) that I thought wouldn’t be too hard to clue – I actually formed an idea in my head about each clue before committing answers to the grid. This didn’t always work as a crossword’s answers and clues mustn’t be considered in isolation so changes would often be needed to the original ideas. Mental tiredness and illness are also handicapping factors as a setter must be completely switched on to produce a good crossword – I could tell how good I was originally feeling as I did my final check of a week’s Sticklers (created some six weeks before) at the time of submission.
Does your performance as a solver vary or does it totally depend on the crossword?