For so many, crosswords and other teasers are what the weekend is for. Regular readers will know that the Guardian’s puzzle pages come with an added challenge on bank holiday weekends: a cryptic crossword in more fiendish form either by size or complexity or both.
Last Saturday’s “jumbo”, by setter Maskarade, was no exception, featuring 15 unnumbered clues that were “composite anagrams of two associated creative themes”. With a host of other puzzles on offer, from Codeword to Maslanka, this might be considered brainwork enough.
Unfortunately, things were about to get harder due to a series of mishaps that left many of you more perplexed, and frustrated, than had been intended. “Weekend ruined,” was the two-word message, plus a crying face emoji, sent by one reader.
What follows is an attempt to bring a contrite knife to this Gordian knot.
The space needed for the special bank holiday crossword on page 50 of the main section meant three regular puzzles – the quick crossword, word wheel and quick cryptic crossword – were required to give way for a week. I am told the standard “quick” crossword was supposed to move to the back page of the Journal, but the quick cryptic landed there instead, while the word wheel was omitted from its revised slot.
For cryptic crossword fans the jumbo was no doubt a wit-pitting delight. However, as it lacked the usual labelling to indicate it was just passing through for the holiday and would be packing its trunk immediately afterwards, some fans of the smaller puzzles feared their favourites had been permanently and peremptorily “culled”.
Others were sure the missing puzzles must be somewhere if only they could find them. This was a reasonable belief since the solution to the absent word wheel (“Dribbling”, for the record) was published on page 49. Perhaps the word wheel had “rolled off the page”, suggested one; or maybe, said another, it was “a creative new version” where readers had to devise the wheel from the answer.
So, the word wheel solution appeared unnecessarily, but the necessary answers to Friday’s quick crossword did not appear at all (these are published today on page 12).
Then, just as the influx of weekend emails was abating, along came Monday, with the answers to Saturday’s nonexistent quick crossword published in G2. Cue readers telling us they had gone headfirst back into the recycling to reexamine the Saturday paper.
“Many thanks for providing the solution to this crossword in today’s paper. May we now have the crossword? I would particularly like to have it as I see that one of the answers is ‘Glamorgan’,” wrote Margaret from … Glamorgan.
While a number of readers found humour in the mix-ups – enquiring if “hunt the quick crossword on Saturday” was to be a regular fixture, or as one published letter asked, “a new teaser” – the Guardian hears the genuine disappointment caused when favourite items disappear. Through the emails received, it is clear they “belong” not so much to a newspaper but to its readers and their daily routines.
“What have you done with our quick crossword? For 50 years my husband and I have completed it every morning before getting up. Please can we have it back. Quickly!”
Of the word wheel, another reader, Michèle, shared this insight into Saturdays at home: “My partner times me to see how quickly I can get the full word. Just a bit of fun, and amidst the background of horror in the news at home and abroad something that makes us smile. On 24 August it seemed to be missing. We hunted through the paper, but no joy.”
None of the errors, I should say, were of the crossword editor’s making. Clare Margetson, meanwhile, the editor of the Saturday Guardian, has been away for the past fortnight, but I can attest to the serious attention she always pays to puzzlers. She has often sought me out to ask about feedback, and after adding pages during the Covid lockdowns was swift to listen when a move to return to pre-pandemic arrangements was resisted by readers. She also brought in the quick cryptic crossword in April this year to introduce novices to the form.
“It’s always mortifying when something goes wrong, particularly when it affects some of our most loyal – and wittiest – readers,” says Margetson. “Our aim is to keep people entertained and stimulated.”
One reader among those who tracked down the quick crossword online (it was also included in the Editions app and the Daily app), observed wryly: “1 across (Upset the applecart – and make waves?) seems an apt clue in the circumstances.”
The solution is likewise clear: that change requires explanation and abundant care.
Elisabeth Ribbans is the Guardian and Observer’s global readers’ editor guardian.readers@theguardian.com
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