Australian Crosswords

Exploitation. The job of a setter is all about exploitation. They exploit everything involved with crosswords, from language quirks, word classes, shapes of letters and things related to the orientation of answers in a grid and grid structure. They even introduce themselves on occasion. All these things incorporate valid devices that must be justifiable and solvable without making too bigger leaps. It’s important to remember that the fundamentals of the English language are always in play and should be relied upon by solvers. For example, solvers would always assume they are dealing with an answer that runs left to right and horizontal as this is the way we read words, write words, solve clues and mentally think of words. The answer may be put into the grid vertically but this doesn’t necessary change how the solver would normally approach solving, unless the setter makes an issue of it. A down answer is one entered vertically, not an answer with any special quality, no matter how the setter helps a solver derive it. The setter’s exploitation of an answer’s orientation in the grid is just another device that doesn’t dictate how we would normally approach solving clues. Thus all clues should be thought of in the horizontal, and only those that the setter chooses (by way of indication) may be considered in the vertical.

A couple of week’s ago a Stickler Weekly solver, Greg, noticed that my grid contained two clues that were fully checked, that is, the answers may be fully obtained from solving other answers potentially making the clues for these answers redundant. Take a look at the grid here. In a cryptic-style, blocked grid, where the black-square percentage is about 32, you won’t see too many designed this way. It was borne out of a need to maintain a minimum of half checked squares in every answer in the grid, something I firmly believe in. Noel Jessop impressed upon me the importance of having a grid that favoured solvers, and you would regularly see the crossover pattern in the centre of his grids. In this case it allows two 7-letter words to have four crossing letters, otherwise they would have three and be unacceptable.
It’s interesting to note that US non-cryptic grids tend to be fully checked, that is, if you solve all the across clues OR all of the down clues, then the crossword is completely solved.