In the sample clues below, the links take you to explainers from our beginners series. The setter’s name often links to an interview with him or her, in case you feel like getting to know these people better.
News about clues
Some sad news. It seems like only the other day that we celebrated the 90th birthday of stalwart setter Rufus with, among other things, a tribute puzzle by Vulcan. And it’s only 66 months ago that Rufus retired after 35 years of setting; crossword editor Hugh Stephenson paid tribute and recalled a portrait in verse by Rufus’s colleague Araucaria.
Roger Squires, AKA Rufus, died on 1 June. An obituary is coming; in the meantime you can read our Meet the Setter interview, which gives a glimpse into a life that also involved magic tricks. In fact, it was because of a ban on Magic Circle members playing card games in his naval base that Squires discovered an interest in newspapers’ crosswords.
Here’s a clue from his final Guardian puzzle, which shows off his propensity for a couple of definitions …
20d Said to be like America? (6)
[ double definition ]
… in this case one straight and one cryptic, for STATED. It’s also a clue from his first Guardian puzzle, on 30 August 1982, as the whole thing was reprinted in 2017 as a farewell. We will always have the archive.
Because they can
The most recent Tuesday puzzle from the New York Times (which requires a subscription) comes, unusually, with a rubric:
Today’s puzzle has an extraordinary quality. Can you discover what it is?
Big words. Are they merited?
After a bit of staring at symmetrically opposite entries, I hope you’ll agree that they are; it’s all the more remarkable since solvers expect Tuesday puzzles in that paper to be more straightforward, and I count only one answer (52 across) as being there solely because it fits. The puzzle also appeared two days before this poem …
BoJo:
— Anthony Etherin (@Anthony_Etherin) June 9, 2023
Not PM,
to not MP,
to no job.#palindrome
… which brings us to the subject of our next challenge (and the subject of one of our For Beginners primers). Combining the “again” or “back” bit of “palimpsest” with the “running” or “racing” bit of “velodrome”, it’s a word which seems to have enjoyed many more mentions since the 1960s: theories welcome.
For our next word, let’s take the other adjective: reader, how would you clue PALINDROMIC?
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for WELSH SPRINGER SPANIEL, which I’m imagining is either in a jumbo grid or broken up across a normal one.
The audacity award goes to Newlaplandes for attempting and nearing an all-in-one clue with “Can it jump, point, run, stretch, and occasionally bite my trousers?”; Wellywearer2, meanwhile, is somewhere way, way beyond audacity.
The runners-up are Thepoisonedgift’s homely “One who might fetch fresh newspapers relishing collecting mail, ultimately” and Montano’s urgent “Dog barking, slipping harness? We’re back in control”. And the winner is the not-inaudacious “She’ll leave dropping her new glass slipper in confusion?”.
Kludos to Dunnart. Please leave entries for the current competition – and especially non-print finds and picks that I may have missed from the broadsheet cryptics – in the comments.
Clue of the fortnight
On the topic of clues that approach being an “all in one”, where the same words provide definition and wordplay, I always appreciate a hidden answer that I fail to see for a good time.
1d Spot of glorious mud? Genuinely (6)
[ wordplay: some letters in (‘spot of’) GLORIOUSMUDGENUINELY ]
[ definition: whole clue suggests what may comprise a smudge ]
Thanks for the SMUDGE, Philistine.
Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com. The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop
