I can't be the only one here that enjoys a proper crossword, and John Graham (1921-2013) was the master compiler. His occasional 'alphabet jigsaw' puzzles were a particular delight: instead of numbered clues, he gave the initial letter of each solution but we had to work out for ourselves how to fit them into the grid.
He also set for the FT, under the name Cinephile. Curiously, I found his FT puzzles easier than his Guardian ones. Whether I was imagining it or he really was dumbing down for the plutocrats, I have no idea. Either way, Saturday won't be quite the same without him.
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We used to enjoy the Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword, so probably not in the scale of difficulty of other, more cerebral, ones.
We gave them up, along with print editions of the paper, once we lived in Spain,
These days, we cannot justify the cost of a dead-tree copy of the paper, so our skills have waned.
It take a while to get in the groove of a cryptic puzzle setter's style and thought patterns.
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Agreed. Crosswords are certainly a use it or lose it skill.
I used to, like Roger, do the DT cryptic of a Saturday and could usually manage most of it fairly speedily. Not done that for perhaps 30 years. Looked at it the other day, gave up after "Dad Reverses Into Underpants with Pope (5,3)" and looked at the quick one instead. Having then got stuck on "The capital of England (6)" I decided my powers have waned so much I can just about manage to make a cup of tea and shuffle off to watch daytime tv.
There used to be some ghastly thing in the Sunday Times called "Lights", where as I recall you got no numbers, no black squares, and as far as I was concerned you might as well have had no clues either. It was utterly impenetrable to me (9).
Last edited by: Crankcase on Thu 28 Nov 13 at 08:21
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I've been doing the Telegraph ones for years. That will cease from Monday when my sub runs out. It went up to about £85 a quarter. I have switched to "i" which is £45 a year for Monday - Saturday. I never open the Sunday Telegraph anyway, I can never find the crossword amongst all the useless sections and magazines.
I really like the i format and the puzzles are good, but the cryptic is harder than the DT and I've only finished one in two weeks. I don't usually bother to look up the answers but I'll have to start to get into them.
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There is a, to me at least, totally incomprehensible Xword in the Sunday Times, taken from The Listener. "The Listener Crossword currently has an average entry of around 600, although there is a huge variation in entry levels depending on the difficulty of the puzzle: a few puzzles each year have less than 100 correct entries and one in The Times had as few as 8; the very easy puzzles, intended to encourage new solvers, can get 1000 or more entries."
I am better at the General Knowledge one in the Saturday Times - one grid and two sets of clues - Cryptic and GK. They have a giant one over Christmas , 250 clues - challenging whichever clues one tries!
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Araucaria - Roger.
