Dan Peake has been a Magpie subscriber for some time now, but the Magpie only lasts one month, and Dan likes a long haul, so he has set himself a meatier challenge. We told you a little about it when he originally proposed the idea. The challenge is to solve 2500 Guardian cryptic clues in the year, and it is explained in full on Dan’s challenge page.

Dan is reaching the end of his marathon now, and reckons that he’s on target to just about make the 2500 target by the end of the year, but it looks like being a nail-biting finish.

The whole thing is in aid of ReThink, which is a mental health charity. Dan explains why he has chosen this charity on his web site. He has a Just Giving page, which makes donating easy.

By Mark Goodliffe

My next-door neighbour at the 1999 Times Crossword Championship final noticed me struggling with the Listener in between the competition puzzles. “I’m the setter of next week’s,” he told me, which didn’t help settle any nerves. So began a friendship with Roddy Forman, who I was to meet regularly at Listener events as well as solving tournaments.

Three years later when Simon & I floated the idea of following Mike Rich’s Tough Crosswords, Roddy tracked down a phone number for me and gave us plenty of advice. He entered Magpie history as a setter in issue no 1, and maintained an annual average of one puzzle solo and one in collaboration thereafter.

Often trenchant or punchy by email, he was the soul of geniality and generosity in person. Chris Lear was among the many people he introduced to the Crossworld by inviting them as his guest to the Listener Dinner, though for some reason he felt Chris had deceived him by not being related to Edward Lear.

When he contacted us in November with a puzzle for which he had a grid and preamble but no energy left to complete the clues, it was a pleasure to pitch in so that the puzzle could be published quickly. Roddy even saw fit to compliment the clues, to my surprise, though not my minor tweak to the preamble, to whose precision as always he was fiercely attached.

Roddy was a solver and setter of great repute. As well as several Times Crossword final appearances, he was a multiple all-correct in the Listener and had won the Salver. His puzzles always drew rave reviews and he was rightly considered a doyen. He was comfortable in both cryptic and numerical fields and happy to act as a test-solver, and constructive advisor, for a huge number of compilers. He will be much missed.

Roddy died on Monday, January 27th, 2014

In the months that saw the release of the albums Animals by Pink Floyd, Songs From The Wood by Jethro Tull and Works Vol I by Emerson Lake and Palmer, Games and Puzzles magazine published a series of three articles written by Rhombus on the setting of crossnumber puzzles.

As a teenager I had collected about 50 issues of the magazine. Unfortunately when I moved home from Saltcoats to St Andrews I found that they had gone missing. Some years ago John Gowland, a setter living in South Africa, contacted me about crossnumber puzzles and in particular those by Rhombus. It transpired that his puzzles were very much in the Rhombus mould and dealt mainly with poker hands! In our communications he mentioned puzzles that Rhombus had set and that had been published in Games and Puzzles magazine along with a series of articles on how to set them. I have to confess that I didn’t remember any crossnumbers appearing in G&P let alone articles on how to set them. So as a Christmas present to myself in 2012 I purchased a complete set of the magazines on ebay – how sad is that?

In these articles he described the setting of a puzzle that involved the cubes of the first nine positive integers. The grid was one of his customary rectangles, 7×4, and the clues were the sum of two distinct cubes that gave a three digit result and of course didn’t contain zero. Of the 36 possible bicubes only 23 fitted the bill – 126, 133, 152, 189, 217, 224, 243, 341, 344, 351, 468, 513, 539, 559, 576, 637, 728, 737, 756, 793, 854, 855 and 945. Fifteen of these had to be fitted into the grid which is shown below.

Prospective setters or those interested may care to undertake this exercise!
After having read the articles my first thought was to have the clues as the sum of 3 distinct cubes that gave a three digit result but with zeros allowed. There are 84 possible tricubes and of these 64 fit the bill. You will have noticed that the grid Rhombus used is asymmetrical and has just under 40% unches. I looked at rectangular grids but couldn’t find anything suitable so opted for a 7×7 square with the central cell missing instead. I prefer to have my puzzles with a much lower percentage of unches, in this case 25%. Scanning through the 64 possible entries revealed that two were themselves perfect cubes – 216 and 729. I decided that both of these would appear in the grid in that if needed that information could be given in the form of an equation in the clues if the puzzle proved to be too hard. I toyed with the idea of having the central cell blank and have solvers having to place arrows (↔, ↓ etc ) in appropriate positions in that cell to indicate a thematic entry – namely a cube. Of course that would depend on whether or not I could fit them in!!

I started by placing 729 and 216 in the middle row and then tackled the bottom left hand corner. That done I edged upwards to the top left and outwards to the bottom right. I was left with the top right hand quadrant and no matter what I did I couldn’t get a fit. The 216 was the problem. I moved it but still no luck. I was at the point of starting all over again when I noticed that with a small change in the bottom left 216 could appear and the rest fell into place.

Clue writing was simple to say the least. Then to the cold solve. I stared at the clues for ages and realised that I had broken the cardinal rule – I hadn’t set a way in. I’d been so preoccupied with the grid filling aspect and overjoyed at having fitted the numbers in that I’d forgotten about the most important thing of all. Pride as they say …. . I would have to resort to my skill as a solver, now sadly on the wane, to find a way in which is never a good idea.

I resorted to a constructing a frequency table of the number of occurrences of each letter which revealed that K appeared least often and so solvers would suspect that it would be 729 but it didn’t prove it. Ah! Then inspiration struck. Take them two at a time. This revealed that certain pairs never occurred in the clues, CK, KT and KU. The letter K was common to all three non-pairs so had to be 729. The numbers 343 and 512 were from a choice of the 3 letters C, T and U. The TU pairing could be eliminated fairly easily by considering the bottom right hand corner but the other two required a list of all possible entries and some sustained logical reasoning before the correct pairing was found. After that the letter/number assignments fell out fairly quickly as did the grid fill which was somewhat disappointing. Of course with only nine letter/number assignments to find it was never going to be that taxing. Nevertheless the puzzle gave Magpie solvers another glimpse into the past and the opportunity to experience the type of puzzle that was popular in the era in which prog rock ruled the world!

For those wondering as to the year it was 1977 and the months of Jan, Feb and Mar respectively and before you ask – “yes I do own copies of them!!”

Just in case Magpie solvers don’t use Derek Harrison’s Crossword Centre Message Board I have typed up all of the 36 Rhombus puzzles that appeared in G&P and are available for those who want to indulge in some pre-internet and pre-PC ( in both senses! ) entertainment. Yes those puzzles were solved without spreadsheets and fancy programming and should be attempted in that spirit. A good number are fairly trivial if you use a computer but if you do you are missing out. Finally I have to thank John Reardon who has not only solved all 36 of the puzzles but for pointing out various typos and anomalies and for producing the solution grids that come with the package.

The idea of a Henry Ernest Dudeney crossword had been in the back of my mind for some time, and his minimal triangle-square dissection seemed a possible candidate. Dudeney (1857-1930) was a prolific English inventor of puzzles, many of which were published in magazines and newspapers of the time, and in his own puzzle collections. He was particularly good at finding solutions to plane dissection problems, where one shape was to be cut into pieces and reassembled into another.

As published in his “Canterbury Puzzles”, The Haberdasher’s Problem is to find a minimal dissection of an equilateral triangle into a square. For the purposes of a crossword, I decided that starting with a square, rather than a triangular, grid would be more tractable. Exploring the geometry of the dissection soon revealed that many of the dimensions would be irrational numbers, especially as the fourth root of 3 was involved! The quest was then to see if this could be brought into the restricted world of the crossword grid with reasonable accuracy. Testing square grids with sizes 10×10 to 16×16, I was delighted to find that a 14×14 grid could be cut from external cell junctions to a point roughly half way along an internal cell edge with an overall dimensional accuracy of 0.7% or better for the dissection. (One solver calculated the angles of the resulting “equilateral” triangle and found them to be within 0.8% of 60°.)

It was then a matter of turning this into a hopefully entertaining puzzle which would celebrate Dudeney’s achievement. I wanted the word HABERDASHER to appear in the completed grid as a hint, and was very pleased to note that the word BERDASH would be very helpful in this respect. The draft puzzle was then sent to my trusty test-solver. This brought to light a feature which was entirely serendipitous – there was a second way of reassembling the four pieces which also gave Dudeney’s full name in the grid, but which used a different “N”. However, the resulting shape looked a little like a boat, so did not correspond to Dudeney’s dissection. The Magpie editors also discovered this, which led to the strengthening of the preamble wording to clearly guide solvers to the correct solution.

Another aspect was that the final grid to be submitted was triangular, whereas the solution grid in the Magpie entry form needed to be the original, square grid. The warning notice on these entry forms points to such possibilities.

Overall I was very pleased with comments made by solvers, and am grateful to anyone who expressed their views. That it’s impossible to please everyone was neatly summed up by these two comments: “I really did groan when ‘cut’ appeared in the instructions – I hate these ones” and “A welcome opportunity to get the scissors out”!

Returning to Dudeney and this particular dissection, I wondered how he might have arrived at it. A well-known approach to some of these dissections is to superimpose suitable, equal area, tessellations of the two shapes in question and look for an alignment that minimises the number of cut pieces. After a little experimentation, I found the following:

I feel it must be unique, but have no way of proving it, and would like to think that Dudeney was aware of it, but will probably never know!

As for puzzle’s title, “Turn, Turn, Turn”, this reflected the fact that any three of the four pieces can be turned, as if on hinges, to effect the transformation. The animation at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudeney is particularly striking.

Eclogue’s thoughts on the creation of this puzzle can be found here

For those interested in the setting of themed cryptic crossnumber puzzles the following article appears in the Mathematical Gazette 98 (July 2014) pp291 – 303. We would like to thank the Mathematical Association for their permission to reproduce it here.

Cryptic crossnumber puzzles: a setter’s perspective by Alastair Cuthbertson (Oyler)

By Mark Goodliffe

Sad news reaches us of the death of Richard Wells, a long-time subscriber recently turned published Magpie setter. Richard was an entertaining presence at our annual Magpie parties, where even though he would keep his coat on as though permanently ready to leave, he would stay and comment learnedly on the many topics in which his feedback had revealed his expertise. Clearly a polymath, he would correct us gently on matters linguistic, zoological, mathematic or geographic, and sternly if lowbrow or vulgar content, as he saw it, had crept into the magazine.

Richard was for a time the solver to beat in Magpie terms, even though he had only originally attempted the word puzzles because he found them sitting near his beloved numericals – no other mathematical solver has ever reported that he found he “could do the word puzzles as well without much difficulty”. He hosted a convivial trophy handover meeting at his club once, and he was generous in his praise of his many favourite compilers. As a setter, he left a gap of over ten years between his first two mathematical submissions (rejected) and his last two (accepted), and it is poignant that his posthumous puzzle will be called Adieu by Omega.

Richard died on the 24th of July.

Blogs might not be everyone’s cup of tea and this is effectively three blogs in one, but if you are intrigued to know what aliens have to do with rolling balls then keep reading…and I also have a challenge that I am sure someone out there will be able to prove for me. First let me explain why you have had to endure a trilogy of D grade Shark puzzles.

Since February I have been away from home undertaking a specialist fellowship travelling back at weekends, and so both work and family life have kept me very busy. I knew setting time would be extremely short this year, therefore back last autumn I thought it would be reasonable to give the Magpie three connected puzzles to keep them going (or not as I will explain later). It was the third puzzle, “More Lines” that I created first. Interestingly it wasn’t until I received the proof check from AJ shortly before the puzzle was appearing that he explained this type of puzzle is called Arukone (translation: Alphabet connection). I wonder how many of you realised it had a name. I suppose an idea of joining certain cells with lines had to have been done before and if you had to pick a country that would popularise a puzzle like this it would most certainly be Japan. However, in preparation for this blog, and after I created this puzzle, I have found out a little more about it’s originators. It seems as if it was Henry Ernest Dudeney (of the Haberdasher’s puzzle fame recently portrayed by Ploy in January’s Magpie) who used the concept of linking letters with lines back in his book Puzzles and Curious Problems in 1932. He called this puzzle “Planning Tours” using the analogy of cars driving to and from the same letters. I have reconstructed his puzzle if you would like to have a go.

It seems nowadays, numbers are much more common in this type of puzzle, but one of the most original methods was in Sam Cooke’s Cyclopedia of 5000 puzzles in 1914 entitled Puzzleland Park, where each family must go from their house to their respective gate without crossing paths. Here is the link for the original puzzle:

http://www.mathpuzzle.com/loyd/cop060-061.html

In “More Lines” I decided to use letters that occur less commonly in alphabet (e.g. X, Z, Q, J etc) as I was hoping it would be easier to ensure that these letters were not going to occur elsewhere in other entries. However, it took a considerable amount of trial and error and dead-ends to come up with a working grid. Normally, I construct a grid bit by bit altering bars to ensure real words. Here, I constructed the bars first because of the 90 degree symmetry and as the number of bars was already dictated. The part about rearranging bars was not strictly necessary to complete the puzzle, but I kept it in anyway as it was one extra layer of confirmation. A bit more fiddling around enabled me to use more that two occurrences of the remaining 16 letters of the alphabet. I sometimes do not know why I give myself these tasks as it would have been easier to use single letter occurrences. AJ also commented to me at the Magpie social that he enjoys it when I have thought of thematically relevant clues (e.g. boustrophedon moving letters, missing I’s, etc), so here I decided to use double letters in the clues. I needed another gimmick to lead the solver to this and standard style misprints seemed as good as any other. So that was the first of the Line puzzles sorted, and I had already an idea for the second up my sleeve.

I had previously thought of using rolling balls as a concept for a crossword and could easily make this into a line puzzle. Who remembers those cheap hand-held kiddie games that used to be found in Christmas crackers or children’s birthday-party doggy bags? I am sure I remember a huge version on the gameshow Crystal Maze. There are also apps you can download now on your smartphones where tilting the phone moves the ball around the maze.

So I wanted to create a puzzle that used the same principles as this novelty game where instead of using a maze, I could use lines to show the intended path. Below is the representation of the maze that I used in “Lines”.

As you will see, if you tilt the puzzle appropriately by set amounts you will move the three balls at the same time from start to finish. However there is one catch that you cannot retrace any step, which goes against the real life game. Now here is the challenge for a bright spark out there. I think, but I cannot prove, that this is the only possible way of moving three balls from diagonally adjacent positions to points where they all lie adjacent to each other in the same row or column (excluding mirror symmetry and in the confines of this grid). I therefore think a 12×9 (or 9×12) grid is the smallest possible grid in which this task can be completed. There are of course other ways of doing it in a larger grid.

So this was the basic concept of the puzzle, but it didn’t make much of a thematic crossword as it stood and therefore I had to find a phrase of 28 letters (the number of corners) that somehow connected with this theme. So I put 28 question marks into WordWebPro and it gave 128 possibilities in ODE alone: for example, “being unable to believe one’s luck”, “beyond the bounds of possibility” etc. and then I saw “close encounter of the third kind”; this had a nice ring to it as the three balls had close encounters, not actually touching. Now here comes the answer to so many queries about this puzzle, it has nothing to do with aliens, especially the movie. In fact the movie is “close encounterS of the third kind” with an extra S. What I also thought interesting was the ODE definition…“used to describe encounters involving increasing degrees of complexity”. This was particularly pertinent as it was going to be the second crossword and it was appearing that each puzzle was getting increasingly more complex. Unfortunately this has completely been lost on most solvers and will now hopefully resolve the alien issue. Three balls was a fortuitous find in Chambers as I had to point the solver somehow as to how the lines were created and the fact that pawnbroker is the same length was a useful way of disguising this aspect of the puzzle.

Shark puzzles can often be tricky but to ask solvers to work out the path on their own is beyond difficult (despite in the back of my mind is Pieman’s quip that he wanted to create a puzzle that only one person could solve correctly). In addition, the fact that I could not prove that it was unique, led me to include the solution in the clues. How could I do that with so may S/N/E/W letters? I thought using the first letter in clue 1, the tenth letter in clue 10, etc. was an unusual gimmick. Again using misprints to lead to this was just as good as any other device to guide solvers. However, it seems the direction was not that easy to fathom out, a similar ring you might say to the third Line pizzle.

So onto the final puzzle that was in fact the first of the trilogy of puzzles published. It naturally had to be a puzzle with only one line. I find Saturday evenings a useful time to create, solve and blog puzzles and it was when Atlantis was on the TV that I had the idea. This TV programme was not really about Atlantis but a conglomeration of Greek mythological characters including Hercules, Jason, Ariadne and the anachronistic Pythagoras. So the adventures of Jason and the Golden Fleece were devised. I could use the parts of his journey with the Argonauts as a route around the grid and solvers had to draw the path with a single closed line. This is where I have to mention that my original idea is not what you solved. There were a number of extra events that had to be completed in the grid but were removed in the final version. Shark enjoys changing grids ensuring real words (as, for example, in Lines) and Line was no different. Apart from the Argo killing Jason by falling on him as you saw in the published puzzle, I also had HYLAS being removed from the grid (as he was lost), the FLEECE being removed from the grid (as it was taken), two letters of SIREN changing using the instrument that was used to get past them (LYRE) and the NAIL being removed from TALOS’s neck creating his name. Despite these subsequent editorial exclusions I accepted the decision and the puzzle has gone down well according to your feedback. However one aspect I did notice was that the deliberate red herring of ARIADNE appears to have resulted in making it a tricky to ascertain the endgame. Ariadne also appeared in the aforementioned TV show and so I included her as I thought some solvers might think the puzzle was in fact a maze using the thread (line) to escape out of the labyrinth. It appears so and therefore I do have to apologise for to those solvers who gave up failing to find the Minotaur.

I could not resist creating another set of thematic clues. The idea struck me when setting the first few across clues with pertinent thematic wordplay of “turn left”, “proceed slowly then race away” and “travel although not initially”. I then chucked all the definitions into the down clues and so it led to a very fun group of across clues to set.

There we have it, and I think that is enough line type puzzles for one lifetime. That brings me onto the point I mentioned earlier regarding Shark puzzles and my year away. I created these to give the Magpie enough to get on with, but in the end they wanted to keep the theme fresh in the solver’s mind especially as I used the same first paragraph in each of the three puzzles. For any of you awaiting another Shark puzzle, unfortunately you will have to wait as the editors have (and I have) no more puzzles for you at the moment…although I have managed a couple of joint puzzles you may see before the next Shark surfaces…see if you can spot them! Now that definitely is the end of the line.

I started setting this puzzle around about the same time as the previous two. TTT appeared in M91 in July 2010 and was rated a C with 49/56 and TTT II in M97 in Jan 2011 and was again given a C rating with 62/68. However I didn’t complete setting it in that whilst solvers certainly enjoyed them it was clear that the novelty value had worn off. So I put it aside. I found it again about 18 months ago and looked at how far I’d got which wasn’t that far. There was the parity aspect, the Latin square constraint, the filled in grids, the ascending order and a few clues. I racked my brains trying to remember what I’d intended and recalled that I’d wanted to remove as many clues as possible. I set to work and came up with the scenario that the missing clues had been stolen by the thieving Magpie. However I found that most of the missing clues would have to be given as otherwise it would become a total lottery. Since I’d invoked one of our cats, Tango, in a clue in EV1118 because of his 3-leggedness in that I needed the answer to be prime, I hit on the idea that Tango and our other cat Flo would launch a counter offensive and steal back most of the missing clues. Owing to space constraints in the magazine that didn’t make the final edit.

Tango – the nice one!	Flo – the evil one!

Given the Latin square constraint the puzzle proved not too difficult to set. I await the stats and comments with interest as I have a few other ideas that may fit this format!!

Thanks for coming to London to celebrate the Magpie’s 12th birthday with us. Darren Roberts walked away with the new trophy, the PotY potty, donated by Mash, for the amazing More Lines. Simon Melen was awarded the solver award for keeping up with Matthew Auger for the whole of 2014.

Lost Property: a dark blue chunky wool knit scarf was picked up at the end of the evening. If you think it is yours, please get in touch and we will try to get it back to you.

Party Puzzle [updated]: Gross Misconduct by Mr Magoo was handed out to everyone at the party. The prize for the fastest solver went to Ray Parry-Morris, and the Nina prize has now been collected. Congratulations to everyone who sent it in, and especially Philip Sant, whose e-mail reached us first. Here is the solution.

Early last year I started typing up all of Rhombus’ puzzles that appeared in Games and Puzzles magazine in the 1970s. I sent my first batch toJohn Reardon who replied almost instantly with the solutions. He also pointed out the odd typo some of which were mine but others were in the original magazine. Between us we managed to cobble together something for puzzles that were in the latter category and a zip file is available for anyone who would like a copy.

I was particularly struck by one puzzle in particular – ‘Square Hole The puzzle had his trademark lettered rectangular grid and involved three 3-digit numbers that between them contained all of the digits from 1 – 9 such that when squared their sum was a 7-digit number the middle three digits of which were a perfect square. The clues were just the grid entry letters for the three 3-digit numbers and the embedded square. The other four digits in the 7-digit number were also given.

What would have been really nice is if the three 3-digit numbers had also been perfect squares but there is only one such set which I leave to the reader to find as an exercise! [The set does sum to a 7-digit number which has a square number as its first four digits. ]

I started to look at three 3-digit triangular numbers that between them contained all of the digits from 1 – 9 and quickly discovered that there were no sets so I decided to investigate using two instead that contained six distinct non-zero digits that when squared and summed gave a 6-digit number the middle two digits of which was a triangular number. I put the numbers into a spreadsheet and did the calculations and was pleased to find that there were a number of solutions so set a puzzle and sent it to John for his thoughts. He solved it and suggested that I remove the somewhat frivolous denouement which I did.

I then turned my attention to using prime numbers instead as there are far more 3-digit primes than squares or triangular numbers. It was at this point that I wondered if I could lure some solvers into using a spreadsheet and set a puzzle that was tailor made for this purpose but with some neat clueing would prove to be unnecessary and actually take them longer! I get the impression that a number of solvers like to solve a puzzle as quickly as possible and will use any aids available in order to do this. How many solvers just read the preamble and launched straight into a spreadsheet without looking at the clues carefully?

To this end I rejected the idea of using three 3-digit primes and settled for using just two as in the triangular version. I had the spreadsheet done in a few minutes and with some conditional formatting highlighted the 6-digit results. I went through them to find those that had a 2-digit prime as the middle two digits and re-tabulated all the results. This took some time and there were just over a hundred solutions. [ I do the hard work so you don’t have to! ].

The first thing I noticed was that all the answers ended in 0, 2 or 8 which if you think about it they must do. Next was that some of the primes appeared in more than one solution set. Finally some primes remain prime when the digits are reversed or jumbled. [ Roddy would have hated this I know but if it was good enough for Rhombus then … ].

I decided that only the last digit of the 6-digit number would be given and set about constructing a suitable sized grid given that some entries would appear in more than one set and I wanted about a dozen solutions. A 7×5 looked good.

I spent a lot of time staring at my table of solutions before selecting 389 751 53 and positioned them in the grid then 157 389 59 before finally barring off the grid. The remaining solutions used would have to fit in to what was left! Setting went well and I soon had 13 clues and a filled grid.

Solvers who went down the spreadsheet route would have to find the dozen solutions I chose out of the just over a hundred that were available which is akin to finding a needle in a haystack!

The cold solve came next and I typed this up as I went along and took about 45 minutes. I read it over and realised that one clue set was redundant so removed it and checked that it didn’t affect the solution and sent it away.

AJ’s logical solution pathway is different from mine by the way and if any solver would like a copy of mine then they can get in touch.

So the precursor to this puzzle was one that was published about 40 years ago when Annie Haslam [ Renaissance ] was utilising her 5-octave range to good effect on Northern Lights [ sorry but I had to get a prog rock reference in somewhere! ] and so some solvers may ask why I do this. Is Oyler living in the past [ there’s another ]? Well yes is the simple answer! However only solvers that are well into their fifties would have experienced a Rhombus puzzle at its time of publication. Back then all that you had at best to help you was a standard scientific calculator. No computer programs or spreadsheets and solvers may care to reflect on this. This puzzle was set in that spirit from bygone days. Of course once I’ve set a puzzle I have no control as to what methods solvers use to solve it. It is after all a bit of fun and not an exam taken under exam conditions. Although that might be one way to resolve all-corrects at the end of the year and have them sit a further few puzzles – word and number – without computer/internet etc and just a copy of Chambers/ODQ/Brewer’s and a calculator. Now there’s a thought!!

The bottom line and take home message is that in any puzzle be it a crossnumber or crossword you eventually have to read the clues!

Download issue 151 (July 2015) solutions

We have been contacted about a new TV quiz that is looking for contestants. Here is what Catherine Darcey, from Saltbeef TV, says:

“I came across The Magpie Crossword website and wondered if you could help me. I’m currently working on a BBC Four quiz show called ‘Hive Minds’ hosted by Fiona Bruce, and we’re looking for contestants. I’ve presumptuously attached a flyer of the show, in the hope that you might be able to circulate it to your members?
We’re looking for clever and interesting individuals who love quizzes and specifically crosswords.”

The idea for this puzzle came to me whilst I was toying with setting a darts themed puzzle along the lines of Pot Black which appeared on the CC in April 2015. It struck me that 180 has a lot of factors, 18 to be precise and that the word ‘numerical’ has 9 distinct letters which is half of 18.

The most common letter/number assignment puzzles involve a 1 : 1 correspondence and in a few cases an n : 1 correspondence has been used where n is an integer greater than 1. However I couldn’t recall the case of a 1 : n correspondence and so decided to give it a go with one letter taking the values of two of the factors of 180.  If any solver knows of a puzzle that is 1 : n then I’d be obliged if they could let me know.  A puzzle is not only an exercise for the solver but for the setter also. Would it be possible to produce a puzzle with a 1 : n correspondence? Of course the next logical step is m : n where m and n are integers greater than 1.

The word has good collection of letters so the algebraic expressions in the clues could be made to form real words. The next thing to consider was the clues and how the entries would be formed. I had already used the idea of each clue giving the same answer in Problemathic which appeared in M122 – in this case 60 and the entries were just strings of digits that were formed from the letter/number assignments in the clues. I decided that each clue would give an answer of 180 but how to form the entries? I didn’t want a massive grid as before and so decided on just adding up the letter equivalents instead. This meant that the entries would be 2 or 3 digit numbers. The number of clues and size of grid then had to be considered. With 18 letter/number assignments to be found you ideally want about 18 clues but as this was a type of puzzle I hadn’t tried to set before I decided that having more clues would be preferable. A 7×5 grid looked about right so I barred it off and the puzzle would have 28 clues with 20 2-digit entries, 8 3-digit entries and 4 unches.

The letter/number assignments came next and conscious of the fact that this type of puzzle was novel and that I needed a straight forward way in I decided on the power clue M^I. Some solvers tend to give up if they haven’t got an entry in the grid or made at least some progress within half an hour so this was a way of assigning two of the equivalences quickly and giving an entry. I decided that a factor pair using the same letter would also be useful and used two with A and R. I was tempted to have each letter with one low and one high factor but thought that might be too obvious so had one with two low factors ( E ) and another with two high factors ( C ) instead.

Next were the clues and some setters who are a lot more computer savvy than I am would probably write some computer programs to do this and ease the strain. I, however, am an old fashioned, living in the past fogey and just use paper, pencil and a calculator!  So I would write down a word then underneath it their number assignments and play around with the arithmetical operators to see if I could get 180.  This took some time and many albums were given an airing during the process.  Of course it is very easy to get carried away coming up with clues like CRÈME CARAMEL etc however you have to remember that the puzzle has to be able to be solved.  Having set the way in at 14dn I needed to build on that and went for 24ac which by using just 2 letters and after a bit of calculation yielded three possible entries, two of which could be eliminated and gave up more assignments.

Many words were tried and tested and of course there were the annoying times when a good word would result in an entry starting with zero.  There were a lot of 3-digit entries to get and in retrospect I should have started off by coming up with all of them first but I didn’t and it was hard towards the end to get suitable clues. The 2-digit clues were far easier to do and I had started off with a lot of them.

The cold solve was not as bad as I’d feared and I sent the puzzle to John Reardon for his comments. His response was not only quick but favourable – the only negative being that with so few unches some entries didn’t need to be calculated which I was aware of already.

Hopefully solvers enjoyed the experience as I’ve invoked the Jethro Tull principle – again! –  and put into practice what I’d learnt from setting this type of puzzle – use a smaller grid, have fewer 3-digit entries and a higher percentage of unches.

[We are publishing this on behalf of Boatman at www.boatmancryptics.co.uk]

They started as a way of celebrating the centenary of the crossword in 2013, and now they’re an institution: they’re the Boatman Masterclasses for aspiring setters and advanced solvers. Most of them take place in Brighton, which is where this summer’s masterclass will be. We’ll have the use of a quiet, airy room in the charming Friends’ Meeting House in the historic centre of the city, where lunch will be provided by one of our characterful local cafes and there’ll be good coffee & teas, fruit and other goodies available all day.

You can look forward to a stimulating class, with a group of people representing a range of experience, from self-confessed dabblers to those who are starting to have their work published, along with perhaps a few advanced solvers who’ll be able to enhance their enjoyment of crosswords by taking the opportunity to find out how setters’ minds work.

We’ll look at clue-writing, grid filling and theme development, with the emphasis on the things that make the difference between good and mediocre puzzles. You’ll receive a copy of the other participants’ work before the class, so that you’ll have a chance to think like an editor and to see your own work through other people’s eyes, and you’ll receive notes and personal guidance with suggestions for further work, and over 250 pages of course materials.

Whether you are just starting out as a compiler or trying to get your work published, or whether you simply wish to develop an appreciation of cryptic crosswords for your own satisfaction, this could be for you.

The cost for the one-day class is £150, including lunch, drinks and snacks.

I hope you’ll join us, and learn a lot about compiling from me and from each other.

Date                      Saturday 25 June 2016

Time                      09:30 to 16:00

Venue                  Brighton Friends’ Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton  BN1 1AF

Accessibility        Our room is fully accessible by stair-lift

Transport            By bus to North Street

10 minute walk from Brighton Railway Station:

http://www.brightonquakers.co.uk/about-the-building-2/map-directions

Parking one minute away in the Lanes (Bartholomew Square) car park

Cheaper parking by park & ride from Withdean:

http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=c1000782

Cost                       £150 including lunch, drinks and snacks

For full details and to book your place in the class, go to http://www.boatmancryptics.co.uk/index_files/CrosswordMasterclasses.html

[We are publishing this on behalf of the authors]

In 2007 and 2010 we placed adverts on the main crossword blogs and message boards inviting cryptic crossword solvers to take part in a survey of their background and solving habits. Over 800 of you replied, and we’ve just published some of the results in the Open Access international journal ‘Frontiers’. A link is available here for anyone who is interested in downloading and reading the findings (click on the ‘Download Article’ button for a pdf).

The article itself has two purposes: first to explain what cryptic crosswords are to a US audience (which always assumes that any reference to crosswords refers to their own definitional puzzle!); and secondly to try to establish a new methodological approach in the performance/expertise field. We’re suggesting that a good place to start is by characterizing the people engaged in a performance area, so you really get to know what ‘floats their boat’; surprisingly, this isn’t the normal approach.

Thanks to your help, we gathered a great deal of information about people who solve cryptic crosswords across the whole spectrum of solving achievement (whether casual hobbyist, speed solver, Listener (or Magpie!) solver, or professional setter). The questions we asked covered a wide range of topics such as education, degree subject, occupation, hobbies and motivation for solving, so there’s lots to ponder.

We do hope that you enjoy reading the findings: the plan now is to bring forward a number of papers which have been ‘waiting in the wings’, so we will be interested to follow any discussion on the website. Or do get back to us directly with comments if you would prefer: my email address is given in the paper itself (corresponding author).

Many thanks again to all those who participated

Kathryn Friedlander and Philip Fine
University of Buckingham

Full article reference: Friedlander, K. J., & Fine, P. A. (2016). The Grounded Expertise Components Approach in the novel area of cryptic crossword solving. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 567. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00567

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00567/full

A recent discussion about errors in submissions yielded this, which was put together by Teyrnon Powell some time ago, and which is worth sharing.

Categories of errors (adapted from a posting by Roddy Forman)
type 1: not solving a clue correctly
type 2: not grasping a thematic twist
type 3: not fulfilling an extra requirement (e.g. highlighting) from preamble or hidden message
type 4: careless error in entering answers, the worst being the (not uncommon) empty cell

Tip: if stuck with either a clue or theme, returning another time (with fresh channels of thought) can be a surprisingly fruitful ploy.

How to eliminate type 1, 3 and 4 errors, the commonest among top solvers
(adapted largely from Simon Long, the highly successful Listener solver)

The essence is to have two grids to compare.

1. Print two grids A and B. Put B aside and solve A.
2. Return another time to fill B tidily by re-considering each clue,
checking all definitions in Chambers and all wordplays.
3. If wordplay not fully understood, make a note (or don’t enter answer)
and don’t submit until understood.
4. Compare filled grids A and B ensuring B is correct:
(i) row by row
(ii) column by column
5. Carefully re-read the preamble and any hidden messages:
What extras (e.g. highlights) are needed?
Are these correct?
6. If transferring to an entry form:
copy from B by entering individual answers (not rows or columns);
repeat 4.

The best ploy to avoid all errors may be to solve a puzzle twice several days apart and to compare the two solutions (as in 4). This may reveal not only a silly error but also a ‘mistake rut’, an error of thought that repeats even on checking first time round. That’s probably asking too much of most solvers.

This puzzle was set shortly after t20 [ EV1118 ] and was destined for EV had there been a greater entry and a more positive feedback. However that was not to be! I held on to the puzzle for some months just in case Chris changed his mind but eventually submitted it to The Magpie. This was to make up for having submitted t20 to The Magpie first of all but for their website and not the magazine itself. This information must have by-passed Mark somehow as he’d already passed the puzzle on to AJ before I asked to withdraw it. So I felt bad about that.

This type of puzzle traditionally uses a blocked rather than a barred grid and so I followed convention. I’d really enjoyed the challenge of setting t20 and was on a bit of a roll.

An 8×8 grid with 8 to 12 unches seem to fit the bill quite well for this sort of puzzle as you require a reasonable number of unches in order to keep the dénouement hidden for as long as possible. It would be no good if the first few entries that solvers put in give the answer straightaway.

So what would the dénouement be?

Who wins and the scores.

How can this be brought about?

The puzzle is using number definition type clues wrapped up in a context. This context allows the solver to eliminate possible entries that couldn’t be if the context was absent as in a standard number definition type puzzle. For example a standard puzzle may have a clue such as ‘Prime [3]’. Well there are 143 of them. However if the clue was ‘Jimmy’s height in centimetres – a prime number [3]’, then the prime is going to start with a 1 or a 2.

Factors and multiples are very useful and I’d used dates which could be times in the 24hr clock in t20 which had some nice factors. I decided to go down this route again and use the Olympic years of 1972 = 2²x17x29 and 1976 = 2³x13x19 and to have that as the year in which the winner was born.

When setting t20 I found that the clue writing took a great deal of time as there was the context to think about. So I started off by writing down lots of things that happen in a round of golf. Next came the names and Rusty Irons had already appeared in A Round Around the Old Course [M44] and so I felt he was due for a reappearance. But who was he going to play? Well Woods is a real golfer so I thought about other clubs like niblick and baffie but didn’t really like them. It was then that I remembered the St Andrews graphic artist Jurek Putter and putter was perfect especially when paired with Bent named after the Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen. That was the names done and dusted.

An awful lot of scribbling and working out then followed using my knowledge of golf and trying to get things to be as realistic as possible. Some solvers may not have liked the context and knew nothing about golf but I would maintain that most was general knowledge.

It was then a process of fitting the entries into the grid and cold solving. This took a few goes to get right as my first attempts gave away the ending too quickly. Hence there was a fair bit of clue rewriting and/or repositioning that took place. Eventually I ended up with the published version which took about 3 weeks in total.

Oyler and Zag, of Magpie number puzzle fame, are planning a new number puzzle publication called Crossnumbers Quarterly.

Their web site is crossnumbersquarterly.com.

The launch issue is free and scheduled for October.

This is from Boatman at www.boatmancryptics.co.uk

My late spring masterclass will see us once again in Brighton. We’ll have the use of our favourite quiet, airy room in the charming Friends’ Meeting House in the historic centre of Brighton, where lunch will be provided by one of our characterful local cafes and there’ll be good coffee & teas, fruit and other goodies available all day. I’m looking forward to a stimulating class, with a group of people representing a range of experience, from self-confessed dabblers to those who are starting to have their work published, along with perhaps a few advanced solvers who’ll be able to enhance their enjoyment of crosswords by taking the opportunity to find out how setters’ minds work.

We’ll look at clue-writing (with the emphasis on the things that make the difference between good and mediocre puzzles), grid filling and theme development. You’ll receive a copy of the other participants’ work before the class, so that you’ll have a chance to think like an editor and to see your own work through other people’s eyes, and you’ll receive notes and personal guidance, with suggestions for further work, and over 250 pages of course materials.

I hope you’ll join us, and learn a lot about compiling from me and from each other.

May is a specially good time to visit Brighton, as it hosts its annual arts festival – the largest in England. Make a weekend of it and immerse yourself in some of the most thrilling theatre, music, literature and visual arts around.

Date                      Saturday 6 May 2017

Time                      09:30 to 16:00

Venue                  Brighton Friends’ Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton  BN1 1AF

Accessibility        Our room is fully accessible by stair-lift

Transport            By bus to North Street

10 minute walk from Brighton Railway Station:

http://www.brightonquakers.co.uk/about-the-building-2/map-directions

Parking one minute away in the Lanes (Bartholomew Square) car park

Cheaper parking by park & ride from Withdean:

http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/index.cfm?request=c1000782

Cost                       £150 including lunch, drinks and snacks

For full details and to book your place in the class, go to http://www.boatmancryptics.co.uk/index_files/CrosswordMasterclasses.html