Australian Crosswords

A former member of the ACC, Gizmo, told me a story once of his attempt to be included on the roster of setters of a well-known newspaper group, or at least, to join the list of those waiting in the wings. His contact at the newspaper group passed a sample from Gizmo onto some incumbent setters who completed the puzzle and responded with comments. On the whole the feedback was positive but a number of negatives were pointed out. Among them, and apparently mentioned by all those who tried his puzzle, was the use of “definition‘s” at the start of a clue. Such devices interest me because I believe nothing gets into a cryptic clue/crossword without at least some form of acceptance at some level by someone. That is, someone considered it OK to use, so there must be explainable justification. And there is. The question, though, is how complicated is that explanation and how hard would it be for a setter to explain or a solver to deduce? Any difficulty, IMO, kills a device for me. Some such devices have become ingrained and accepted, others that are actually OK, like this one, get pooh-poohed due to lack of understanding. Here, the “‘s” isn’t possessive but an abbreviation for “is” or “has” (definition is/has), the latter I don’t like as a linker but still it can be interpreted that way. The “‘s” topic popped up on Derek Harrison’s Message Board but solely when used as “has” in wordplay to join components. You’ll notice its use this way was not universally accepted, but ultimately (after a bit of effort) an example was found to justify its use in this manner. (I don’t like it from a grammatical point-of-view, so I don’t use it). It’s the unobvious nature of this device when used in the wordplay part that makes it questionable for me – just imagine trying to explain it to a newbie. Of course, if you see it used often enough it becomes acceptable even if not fully understood, but that makes it deficient IMO. In the case of Gizmo, the setters who attempted his sample cryptic clearly hadn’t understood how “definition‘s” worked, and even though it’s perfectly acceptable as a substitute for “is” and “has” at the start of a clue, they flagged its use as faulty.

A while back I received an email from an old Stickler fan lamenting the loss of decent cryptics from the papers and complaining about the inevitable move away from the printed medium. He said he would love to do The Stickler Weekly but wasn’t tech-savvy and had no desire to become so. He suggested a service where I would print a month’s worth of puzzles at a time and send them to him. He was happy to pay for the expense of doing this and indicated that other people might be interested in doing the same thing. I suspect that there are people out there in the same boat, however, with no way to reach solvers except through the internet, it seems I’m caught in a Catch-22 situation.
I assume if you have friends who prefer doing The Stickler Weekly on paper then you are downloading the PDF and printing it off for them, so my current solver base probably isn’t a good source for partakers of a print-and-send service.
I’d gladly do something in this area if enough people were interested but how to reach them? Any suggestions? Any comments?

When describing straight and cryptic crosswords to new solvers, I point out that a well-written cryptic crossword is a straight crossword plus wordplay, that is, if you scrub the wordplay from each cryptic clue, you should end up with a bunch of definitions, which is effectively a straight crossword. This only works if a setter provides accurate definitions, ones that can stand on their own two feet and match exactly with the answers. For me, a correct definition in a clue is paramount, and the least that a solver should expect. A setter may include deception in the wordplay, or deception in how the wordplay joins the definition, but in all cases a solver must have the assurance that their answer at least matches what they believe to be the definition. It’s for this reason I’m not a fan of an example of the answer being used as a definition, for example, CAT defining PET or HUMBUG defining SWEET. The other way round is fine, of course, but as there are so many things that CAT could be (besides a PET) and those things to some extent are arbitary, it doesn’t properly do its job as a definition.
The English language is full of wrinkles and society likes to ignore history and iron them out wherever it can. One such area is gender, where there are specific words representing the female and male forms. I don’t see anything wrong with killing two birds with one word-based stone, and using a female form, for example, to tell the reader or listener an occupation and sex at the same time. These words aren’t always appropriate but still have a place in language and are dotted throughout our modern-day references. If one of these is a solution to a cryptic clue, say, for ACTRESS, then what could be a valid definition? Lady thespian? YES. She works on stage? YES. Thespian? YES. Stage perfomer? YES. One on stage? YES. No problems here. Now if the answer is ACTOR, which is a gender-neutral term, which clues still apply? IMO, only those definitions that are themselves gender-neutral are valid. The others are incorrect as they make the solver look for a gender-specific term or a particular person – there’s not proper equality here. I’ve seen some setters (both male and female) make this mistake with their definitions, possibly to champion their own sex, but it’s not helpful for the solver – it’s purely a misguided indulgence of the setter.