The Stickler Weekly 11 Solution

It’s not uncommon to have a person’s name as an answer in a crossword, but have you thought about, in crossword terms, how different any proper noun (and names especially) is to an everyday word? First and foremost is working out the definition. Some setters are happy with something general like “writer”, but this is far too broad for my liking and not all that helpful to the solver. It has to be specific enough but not so definitive that it makes the wordplay element redundant. Then there’s the clue that leads to someone’s name: could it be seen as offensive or inappropriate? As we know, a cryptic clue shouldn’t be read like a straight clue, but you can’t help associating the whole clue with the answer, which may be a person’s name. Care is required. This may be why the Times prohibit the use of any living person as an answer in their crosswords. Cluing someone’s name isn’t always easy either as foreign names especially have tricky letters, and generally an anagram is the only choice. This week’s crossword had MAO ZEDONG as an answer at 15-down – thankfully what looked hard to clue at the start turned out to be relatively easy with the definition put at the start to disguise the need for a capital C for “Chairman”.