Australian Crosswords

Some cryptic crossword blogs ask readers to come up a clues for a given word. This is a good thing, giving readers to opportunity to channel their inner setter. Most crossword blogs are attached to a particular crossword or group of crosswords, so those brave enough to try their hand know that any submitted clues should have a similar feel. It also helps readers appreciate (I hope) how difficult it is to write a professional-style clue. On blogs like fifteensquared and Times for the Times, occasionally people will offer tweaks to published clues that they believe improve them. It’s common that people post their dislike for certain clues (as is their right), but rarely are alternatives offered. There are other blogs that list clues that the blogger doesn’t think are great and invites readers to submit replacements. I have mixed feelings about this style of clue analysis and emulation as the resultant clue offerings are sort of out of context. The clue submitters don’t have to conform to the standards of the original newspaper, they just write in their own style. You can’t compare the original and the submitted as they aren’t operating under the same rules. Most of the replacement clues simply wouldn’t be accepted by the original paper. Submitted clues aren’t assessed, even though the aim is to improve on the originals. Here’s an example from one such blog:

Original clue – Two men in kingly legend = ARTHURIAN [from Times 10679]
I understand the complaint here, two unqualified names butted together, one of them the name that spawned the adjective. The other problem, of course, is that the answer is an adjective and the clue asks for a noun.
Submitter’s clue: Are you Ben Fleming? The legend? Same construction (Arthur + Ian) essentially, but with added superfluous words, and one of the names is disguised by using a first name to indicate a last name. To cap it off, the same mistake regarding adjective/noun mismatch is also present.

I know that this is an amateur’s attempt at re-constructing a clue, but surely the same mistakes shouldn’t be made, especially as the original clues have been held up to ridicule to some extent? The owner of the blog too, I believe, should help budding setters by pointing out where clues fall down (this may be done offline, I don’t know). Some of the suggested clues might conform to the standards of the blog, but they certainly are nowhere near being better or even comparable to the original flawed clues that feature in the blog post.

I’m heading off on a tangent this week. The Oxford English dictionary announced its word of the year recently. It came from a shortlist of a “wide range of words which have had an impact on 2016, for better or worse.”
I’m not totally sure what this means in dictionary terms, that is, are these words specific to 2016, or have they been added to the dictionary on a short-term or long-term basis? The winning “word”, POST-TRUTH, seems not to be a word at all, more two normal words stuck together to describe a concept, something we all do in everyday speech with the words we already know. It also seems to be used largely in a political context and has been proliferated by journalists. I don’t know about you, but I read news, watch TV, listen to radio, read books, yet I’ve never heard of it. Surely a “word (term) of the year” should be known at least to some degree by the general public?
Dictionary makers face a difficult task in a world where no-one will wait 5 years for an updated edition, and look to keep up by adding “new words” on the fly, but I want real new words, not just new terms or overlapping words or blended words that used be made up just for fun.
As a crossword setter, I must pay attention to all words out there in the public space. I’m happy to rely on published dictionaries, although online versions are constantly being added to, so I could use these words in my crosswords. But generally, I don’t. The reason is simple. For me “new” words must stand the test of time to prove they are worthy of crossword inclusion. If they are still there when a new edition comes out, then they get consideration, otherwise I’m taking a risk using them as there’s a good chance my solving audience simply won’t know them. For some this doesn’t matter, as they like learning new words, but for most, at least having knowledge of a word is important – it gives them the sense that they could solve a clue without using references.