In the Dark

I was delighted to see, when I turned to the Azed Crossword in last week’s Observer, my name  among the list of those awarded a VHC (“Very Highly Commended”) for Azed No. 2049. A VHC is a sort of consolation prize for clues judged by Azed to be not quite good enough to win one of the three main prizes. Although I enjoy solving the puzzles I know I’m not very good at setting my own clues. I therefore find the monthly competition exercises me considerably and am usually more than happy to get a VHC! Also, these score points in the annual league table in which I did pretty well last year, finishing in joint 15th place – my highest every position

However, my delight turned to frustration when I found out that my name and the clue I submitted (for the word PARTY-POOPER) did not appear on the corresponding Azed Slip, a monthly report on the entries for the competition crossword. I’ve therefore not been credited with a VHC in the league table to go with the one I got the previous month in Azed No. 2045. Worse still, I didn’t keep a copy of the clue I submitted and now, over a month later on, I can’t remember what it was. I imagine Azed throws away the original entries so he probably doesn’t have it either.

It may be that my name was put in the Observer list by accident and the Azed slip is actually correct. The other possibility is that Azed forwarded the correct list to the newspaper but inadvertently skipped my name when compiling the slip. I did try emailing about this, but haven’t had a reply so I suppose I’ll have to give up on it. It doesn’t matter very much in the great cosmic scheme of things, so I suppose I shouldn’t be bitter…