Australian Crosswords

It’s often said that the job of a setter is to entertain solvers, provide them with a diversion that evokes a sense of pleasure during and after solving. For some solvers, entertainment is all that matters, that is, it doesn’t matter necessarily how good the clues are as long as they have a sense of fun about them, use interesting techniques, and touch on things that solvers can relate to. The emphasis is on the big picture, not the detail, and the odd superfluous word, dodgy definition, or wrong tense, doesn’t interfere with their fun. They probably want to know how the wordplay works to add to their enjoyment, and this isn’t quelled even if the wordplay is faulty. Clues with humour or that are slightly risque raise a wry smile, and popular references make them feel up-to-date. Difficult crosswords that can’t be finished will probably elicit a negative response, as the entertainment factor has to extend right across the crossword. These solvers will solve any crossword that provides what they need but rarely compare the crosswords or setters at a technical level because that’s not what’s important to them.
I think there are setters out there who aim to entertain with every clue. I don’t think it’s possible without compromise, so I resist the urge to force something to happen, and settle for consistent, sound clues, which I hope, for most, provides entertainment enough.

Everyone makes mistakes. We know this and put mechanisms, procedures and safeguards in place to minimise them, but sometimes circumstances thwart our best preventative measures. Crossword setters suffer the same lapses as everyone else and rely on various means to end up with clues with integrity. I’m not talking about contestable “errors” like whether A is really a synonym of B or whether a word can be used as an anagram indicator, but the spelling mistakes in clues and answers, anagrams that don’t work with the letters given, the tenses of definitions that don’t match the results of wordplays and countless other mishaps that can occur during construction. The ideal situation for a setter would be for each puzzle to be checked by a test solver, and the revised result checked by a crossword editor before publication. For most of my Stickler career it’s been just me as test-solving needs the right person with time available and it costs money. The Stickler’s publisher, The Daily Telegraph, didn’t employ a cryptic crossword editor during my time and so there was no last line of defence. To compensate I had a process that at least made sure answers and the spelling of the clues were correct. Let’s face it, with electronic references available and Google, there’s no excuse for mispelling an answer or using a wrong answer, and the spellcheck inside Crossword Compiler ensured my clues were spelt Ok. In the absence of further checkers, I reviewed my clues three times before emailing them in: twice at the time of writing, and once (usually 6 weeks later) just prior to sending. I found the break useful in highlighting mistakes as the clues would no longer be fresh in my mind and I’d have to think through them without the possibility of being contaminated by misconceptions introduced at clue-writing time.
Cryptic crossword setters in some ways can get away with wordplay mistakes as the solver can never be entirely sure they haven’t missed something. I imagine a solver, satisfied with a definition/answer match, if pressed for time, could simply move on to the next clue without fully sorting out the wordplay, thus bypassing a setter’s mistake.