Arcadia’s Unrepeatable Offer
A few solvers have asked for a brief blog on how I managed to construct two such Playfairs. Having read the editorial comment in Issue 259 that “Anyone who was astounded that Arcadia came up with...
View ArticleIrrational – Miles Writes
I was sorry that much of the reaction to Irrational concerned the ambiguity surrounding the C and F values. In retrospect this could have been avoided by clarifying in the preamble that √C was a surd...
View ArticleTwin on Splitting the Atom
I have been delighted to see the recent increase in the number of blogs on the Magpie site, following my rallying cry earlier in the year. It would be churlish of me not to contribute to their number...
View ArticleWan on Formulaic
I only came across the Mandelbrot Set a few years ago on the Youtube channel Numberphile, which I find very interesting. It struck me immediately as suitable for a crossword theme given it had both an...
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Knighty Knight (Quadratum VI by Oyler)
Since The Magpie didn’t do blogs in their pre-electronic era you were spared blogs for QI – QIV. Those of you who are old enough would perhaps have thought that it had something to do with Spike...
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Pandiculator Remembers His Password
I suspect I’m far from unique in having thought about QR codes as a possibly useful tool for a thematic crossword. That said, trying to make a crossword that doubled as a QR code initially seemed like...
View ArticleGareth’s Meta-reflections
I like a meta-puzzle. I think any set of individual puzzles can be immediately improved by the addition of an over-arching meta-puzzle that links them together. This requires co-ordination, but a...
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Twin on Shaken: E.g. Blog?
I have always enjoyed a game of Boggle. In my family I am banned from using a pencil while playing, because the manic scratching is off-putting to the other players. At a friend’s birthday party a...
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Vagans on Playful Search
or May A Guest Prelate Indicate an Explanation (of how the puzzle came to be) Vagans regrets to say that the original title of this puzzle was “Baywatch” – not you understand that he has ever watched...
View ArticleAreas of Triangles – a View for Miles
I read that several solvers approached the Areas of Triangles puzzle by seeking out Heronian triples on the Internet and bypassing the intended logical deductions. I feel that this was a shame, but...
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