Australian Crosswords

I was reminded a few weeks back that as a setter I must not only cater for a huge range of solvers with different abilities but consider where people may be at in their lives and what experiences they may have had. Even though I look at words as being made up of other words and letters, the words and answers I use, and the clues I phrase can mean different things to different people. I’ve often wondered whether I could get into trouble for writing a cryptic clue that reads as a disparaging remark yet the answer and how it’s derived bear no resemblance to the original clue. In theory the clue is a puzzle, and only the definition (and answer) means something, but a casual reader could easily be offended if they didn’t have cryptic insight. Some publications have crossword rules about acceptable answers that include the non-use of diseases etc and anything that may cause offence, which is rather broad. A cryptic crossword setter may get away with a risque word as the right clue will soften the blow creating a kind of inside joke.
One non-crossword word puzzle app I’ve done work on excludes words related to alcohol, tobacco, magic, religion, death and sex in order to secure a “G” rating. The context doesn’t matter so a word like “undertaking” can’t be used due to its association with death. It’s a black-and-white world when it comes to such things, with no exceptions. Thankfully with crosswords a setter provides a context and ultimately determines which definition is at play even if a clue may appear to be pointing in a different direction.

I’ve been solving cryptic crosswords since I was 15 – that’s almost 40 years. I compiled my first published crossword in my 20s in a staff magazine and considered myself a professional setter in my early 30s. Those early compiling days were interesting, not just because of the lack of technology, but because my setting skill relied almost totally on what I’d gleaned from solving. This had a profound impact on the crosswords I designed and the clues I wrote. It’s amazing how little I had really picked up as a solver, something I see repeated regularly when experienced solvers have a go at setting. Even UK Times solvers-turned-setters who have been fed the most rigid clues for decades can start using questionable devices they have never seen used before. How can/does this happen? A solver will break down clues, apply indicators, substitute abbreviations, extract letter fragments, all without really understanding what’s happening – they don’t need to understand to solve, they just need be able to piece together a wordplay and find an answer. Thus, as a setter, an anagram indicator becomes just a mechanism to change letters and its tense or position grammatically gets totally overlooked; or an indirect anagram is used even though as a solver they had never seen one used in a major publication. The use of obscure abbreviations is a common trap, where the novice setter has taken the use of some abbreviations in their favourite crossword as an endorsement of all abbreviations, no matter the source or usage. The lesson? If you want to have a go at setting, don’t totally rely on your solving experience to guide you – read books by professional setters, expand you solving horizon, read crossword blogs where solvers write about their concerns with clues, and get at least one person with lots of solving experience to test your work. This last piece of advice only works if you are prepared to act on any constructive feedback given, which is possibly the biggest stumbling block in becoming a respected setter.

Recently I was chuffed to find a reference to The Stickler Weekly in an article featured in The Atlantic, an American monthly publication. For many years The Atlantic published cryptics by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon, two of my cryptic crossword heroes. The article’s main thrust is the future of crosswords in a newspaper-free/digital age, and relays the views of two prominent crossword commentators, Alan Connor, who writes a crossword blog for The Guardian in the UK, and Michael Sharp who runs one a the US’s most popular blogs. Even though they both talk about “crosswords”, they are in fact talking about cryptics (in Alan’s case) and US-style 100% checked themed puzzles (in Michael’s case), and I think the distinction is necessary to get the full picture. I don’t believe cryptics translate to the online world as easily as other crosswords do, simply because of the time needed to solve them. Even if you ignore the fact that the majority of cryptic solvers are in the older age-groups that haven’t fully embraced the digital age, who wants to spend a couple of hours in front of a screen solving a crossword? I provide a printable version of The Stickler Weekly, but solvers have to go and get it, rather than it coming to them as with a newspaper. It’s very intentional and not everyone’s cup of tea.
Before reading the article I wouldn’t have considered the US-style crossword in danger of extinction, but it seems younger generations across the world aren’t captivated by what is now an old-style puzzle no matter what flavour it is or what form it takes.