Australian Crosswords

Last week I mentioned that the medically-themed weekly cryptic I did for a medical publication was the hardest regular cryptic I’ve had to write due to the specific nature of medical words. The hardest non-cryptic I’ve written on a regular basis was for a Macquarie Dictionary website that offered various resources to school children. The brief was to cater for 11-15 year-olds, which sounds easy, but I can assure you this was no easy task. The difference in vocabulary on average in this age group is enormous, and if you allow for late developers and advanced students, you end up with a massive spectrum that’s hard to please across the board. There is, though, an approach that mostly works especially in an online environment that the crossword was running. I used nouns. As language develops, our knowledge of things increases gradually, but our ability to describe them increases at an alarming rate. That is, we know about a house from an early age, but the way we describe its shape, size, setting, colour, value etc comes over time as we learn more descriptive words. Therefore, an 11-year-old and 15-year-old will know HOUSE, but the 11-year-old is unlikely to know what a SEMI-DETACHED HOUSE is, where a 15-year-old might. To cover this gap in language, the key is to stick with more factual clues – objects, places, people, etc – things hopefully all the crossword’s audience know, and if they don’t know, the clue should supply enough information for them to find out. The crossword becomes essentially a specific general knowledge one. In an online environment, and using the software that I do, Crossword Compiler, that allows for online publication, it’s possible to link a clue directly to somewhere on the Net that gives the solver the answer.
I no longer write this puzzle (it went when its instigator left the company) but it was as difficult to put together as any Stickler, believe it or not.

In 2006 I was contacted by a weekly medical publication about doing a medically-themed cryptic. I’ve always had problems setting a price for crosswords of all kinds – it’s not totally about the time taken to set a crossword, it’s more about what the requesting publication is prepared to pay. I think of myself as an artist of sorts, and believe that years of experience should count more than the actual hours taken to set a crossword. The medically-themed cryptic had me at a loss – the task wouldn’t be easy, but the publication itself had a relatively small circulation (compared to state-based papers and magazines), so what should I ask for? In my experience such publications expected to pay a low amount, but I needed to make sure it was worth my time and effort, especially as I was creating an online version as well as part of the deal. Before I could submit my price, though, the medical publication told me the amount they were willing to pay (it happens sometimes) which was above what would have been my asking price. Just as well, since the medically-themed cryptic which I did for a year was the hardest regular cryptic I’ve written. To put it simply, medical terminology is very precise and generally unambiguous, making the definition side of any cryptic clue hard to disguise. Using definitions like “disease” or “complaint” isn’t good enough in a clue that could point to 1000s of answers, both common and obscure. I enjoyed the challenge though and it was amazing how many medical terms were buried in the dictionary and how many common words had medical meanings. The trick with all themed crosswords is to take advantage of all elements involved: answer, surface reading, words/terms in the definition, and words/terms in the wordplay. The simple inclusion of “doctor” = DR somewhere in a clue is enough to add to a theme even though the definition and/or answer may have no medical connection at all. After a year the crossword was axed due to falling income but I learnt a lot through the experience. The publication is still going but with different owners, and times are different now – a lot less printed advertising which ultimately finances the whole enterprise. I now do just one crossword a year for them which effectively summarises a whole year’s worth of articles, featuring the main topics. It’s not cryptic, but large and I have to read 50 or so medical articles and pull out key words in order to assemble enough fodder to generate a decent grid of words. Hard work, but in an environment where there’s not a lot of work available, I’m very grateful for it.