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Crosswords and Prizes

Posted in Crosswords with tags , , , , on June 24, 2012 by telescoper

It has been a while since I last posted anything in the box marked Crosswords, so I thought I’d while away a bit of this dreary Sunday morning with a few thoughts on that topic.

Less than a year ago, I switched my Saturday newspaper from the Guardian to the Independent (see here for the reason). I’ve been doing the Independent Prize Cryptic every week since then, except when I’ve been away. I find it significantly more satisfying than the Guardian puzzle. I’m not sure the Independent‘s crossword is harder – although some of my friends think so –  but there seems to be better quality control there than at the Guardian.

I still occasionally do the Guardian puzzle at weekends by downloading it from the web. Yesterday’s celebrated a centenary – not difficult to guess whose! – but it wasn’t a particularly interesting puzzle, and I thought some of the clues were very clumsy.

Anyway, somewhat amazingly, I’ve actually won the Independent crossword prize no less than six times in the nine months or so since I starting doing it. An immediate inference from this is that there must be many fewer entrants than for the Guardian weekly puzzle, which I only won once every few years. The other side of this is that I’m accumulating dictionaries at an alarming rate. The prize for the Indy cryptic competition is The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, a substantial tome that retails for about £20. I now have one in my study at home, one in the sitting room, and one in my office at work. I gave one to my mum a while ago, and the other two I’ve given to colleagues at work. I’ll probably be disposing of a few more copies like that if things carry on the way they have in past months. I’ve even started taking advance orders…

I haven’t been doing so well this year in my favourite crossword competition, the Azed puzzle in the Observer. I started well enough, but then drew a blank on a number of occasions and slipped back down the table. However, this week I got another score with a VHC (“Very Highly Commended”) in Azed 2087, and am currently in equal 24th place. There’s only one competition puzzle left, and I’m a long way off the pace set by the leaders, so I’m not going to finish much higher than that even if I do well in the last competition.

Anyway, my clue for the word ROCKET was:

Dicky ticker – love might make this one race!

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to parse, although it involves a “comp. anag.” It goes without saying that the prize-winning clues are much better than my effort!

Incidentally, I noticed yesterday that my post about the Azed 2000 lunch a couple of years ago was getting a bit of traffic. I don’t really know why, but in the course of looking around I saw that there’s a nice collection of photographs of the event here. I couldn’t embed any of them here as they’re protected.

The general reaction of people I work with to all this cruciverbalism is that it’s a waste of time. I actually don’t agree, except insofar as everything is a waste of time when you think about it. Crosswords for me are a form of mental jogging. They exercise a brain in a way that’s different from the usual things it is faced with. In my case, a lot of my work involves puzzles of various kinds. Some are mathematical, connected with my research, but the most difficult ones are bureaucratical: trying to work out what all the paperwork is for and how to fill it in without losing my rag. Despite a complete lack of empirical evidence to support this assertion, I think doing crosswords keeps my brain from ossifying and enables it to think more flexibly. Or maybe I protest too much. Perhaps I just enjoy them.

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The VHC that wasn’t….

Posted in Crosswords with tags , , , on October 9, 2011 by telescoper

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…

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Telescoper Crossword Competition

Posted in Crosswords with tags , , , , , on September 14, 2011 by telescoper

Having had a busy weekend reading grant applications and referee reports in advance of next week’s meeting of the Astronomy Grants Panel, I’ve been unusually late completing the weekend’s crosswords. As I mentioned a while ago, I’ve given up buying the Guardian in favour of the Independent, whose crosswords are much better in my opinion. I managed to do the prize crossword in the newspaper without too much difficulty, but the magazine supplement has a much more testing one called Inquisitor. In addition to being quite a challenging cryptic crossword, this usually has a twist in that one has to highlight (or sometimes delete) letters entered into the grid according to some theme. I’m a bit skeptical about these extra tasks, I suppose because I think a good crossword doesn’t need any such embellishments. I have to say, though, that it is  a different kind of challenge from the usual cryptic and I might warm to it given time.

About a year ago at the Azed 2000 dinner I had the opportunity to chat with some professional crossword compilers. It seems one gets paid around £150 (give or take) for setting a crossword in a national newspaper which isn’t a lot considering how difficult it is. One of the features of the Azed puzzles in the Observer is the monthly clue-setting competition, which I enjoy entering, but I’ve never tried to compile an entire crossword.

However, after finishing this week’s Azed  and Inquisitor puzzles I suddenly hit on a potentially lucrative idea. I’ve decided to start a crossword competition of my own. Here  is Telescoper Prize Crossword No. 1, inspired by Azed’s “Carte Blanche” puzzles…

Instructions for solvers. To enter the competition, devise a set of clues and solutions that fill the above grid in the manner of a typical Azed puzzle. Mail completed grids, together with clues to me at:  Telescoper Prize Crossword No. 1, PO Box 16  (across), Cardiff. The best entries, as judged by me, will win 27p in (used) postage stamps plus the chance to see their crossword in a national newspaper with my name as setter.

As a business plan, this simply can’t fail. It’s nearly as good as running an academic journal!

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Crossing Words

Posted in Crosswords with tags , , , on February 27, 2011 by telescoper

It’s been a while since I posted anything about crosswords, so the fact that I saw my name in today’s Observer gives me an excuse to do so now.

First, I was delighted to get another point for a Very Highly Commended (VHC) clue in the ongoing Azed clue-setting competition. The latest competition puzzle was Azed No. 2019. This was an interesting one, incorporating a variation on the “Plain” Azed puzzle in that the 12 by 12 square grid was actually divided vertically into two rectangular puzzles side-by-side. Clues for each half of the resulting “Right & Left” puzzle were run together, usually without punctuation, and with either side coming first. Solvers had to determine the location of the join between the clues, solve each part, and then figure out which side of the puzzle the answers had to go. I think it was a very enjoyable puzzle, with Azed’s skill strongly in evidence not only in constructing the clues but also in disguising the splices.

The two words for which clues were invited for the competition were OVERAWE and HENOTIC; the latter is a fairly unfamiliar term, defined in the puzzle as “tending to unify”. The clue that won me a VHC was

Cow or ewe cooked with odd bits of veal serving to make one nice hot stew?

Here I’m using “cow” as a definition of “OVERAWE”, with subsidiary anagram of OR+EWE+VA (odd bits of VEAL), with “cooked” as an anagram indicator; “serving to make one” defines HENOTIC, clued with another anagram NICE+HOT, with anagram indicator “stew”. I think it’s an easy clue, but I was quite pleased at the way the two halves run into each other to  produce a reasonable surface reading. Above all, I think it’s fair – no superfluous words and no dodgy syntax.

Anyway, I’ve now got 3 VHC mentions this year, which is as many as I’ve ever won in the annual competition,  so if I can just get one more it will be a personal best. There are 5 puzzles remaining this year, so maybe I’ll manage it!

A few weeks ago I won a prize in the Everyman crossword competition – also in the Observer. This is a much more straightforward puzzle than Azed and I usually do it more as a warm-up exercise than anything else but still post the completed grid off every week. One day last week I came home from work to find a note from DHL saying that they’d left a package with my next-door neighbour. It turned out to be a package of Penguin books: a Concise English Dictionary; a Concise Thesaurus; a Dictionary of Proverbs; a Dictionary of English Idioms; and the Penguin Book of Facts (a kind of encyclopedia). Anyone who’s been to my house knows that I have no shortage of dictionaries already, but I’m pleased with the others.

I finished this week’s Everyman just before starting to write this post. For the second week running there’s a clue formed by an indirect anagram. In this instance it is:

End of game inventor reviewed (2-4)

The answer is NO-SIDE (the signal indicating the end of a rugby match). The subsidiary indication is an anagram of EDISON (“inventor”). This is called an indirect anagram because the letters to be formed into the anagram do not actually appear in the clue. Most British setters frown upon this type of clue, not because they are hard – the one above certainly isn’t difficult to solve – but because they aren’t Ximenean and are therefore unfair.  Azed would certainly never countenance such a clue, though an increasing number of setters – especially those for the Grauniad – seem to adopt a much more libertarian approach.


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Dingbats, surface readings, and literally what it says

Posted in Crosswords with tags , , , , , , , on August 22, 2010 by telescoper

It’s been a long time since I posted anything in the box marked crosswords, so I thought I’d remedy that today.

As I’ve explained before, I’m a regular entrant in the monthly Azed competition in the Observer. There’s actually an Azed cryptic crossword every week, but every four weeks there’s a special one  in which contestants have not only to complete the (usually quite tricky) puzzle, but also to supply a clue for a word for which only a definition was given. There are prizes for the best clues each time, as judged by Azed himself, and a league table is built up over the year.

I don’t mind admitting that I much prefer solving the puzzles to setting clues of my own. Perhaps that’s consistent with the fact that I don’t enjoy setting examination questions much! However, I do enter the clue-writing competition every time it comes up. I’ve never won it, but I’ve had several VHC (Very Highly Commended) which count in the honours table. I’ve gradually improved my ranking year on year, and perhaps one day I’ll actually win the  coveted Azed bookplate. However, I’ve got a long way to go before I can produce clues of the ingenuity and subtlety of the regular winners.

Last year, I started brightly and was for a long time neck-and-neck with the novelist Colin Dexter in the league table. However, over the last few months my clues didn’t find favour with Mr Azed while his were much better. He finished in 8th place, while I languished in joint 40th; the complete table is here.

My best clue last year (I think) was in Azed 1967 for the word SUBORDINATELY:

In the manner of an inferior sandwich, prepared ‘to a New York deli recipe’ (13)

It’s a fairly straightforward one, as these things go, consisting of two parts, a definition and a cryptic allusion to the word being clued.  “In the manner of an inferior..” is the definition, meaning “subordinately”. The cryptic allusion in this case is the word “SUB” (meaning an American-style sandwich) followed by an anagram of the collection of letters indicated by what’s inside the quotes, i.e. to+a+NY+deli+r, the NY and r being standard abbreviations. “Prepared” is an anagram indicator.

The clue also has a nice surface reading, I think, which is an aspect many setters don’t seem to bother with. The surface reading is just how the clue reads when you don’t try to interpret it as a cryptic clue. I much prefer clues that read like something that  as could be written or said in a different context to a crossword, as well as making grammatical and syntactical sense.

The winning clue for this word was by D.F. Manley, who is one of the setters for the Times, with an &lit clue:

As in ‘B-role’ duty possibly (13)

This type of clue is regarded by many setters as the cleverest kind, but I have to admit that I have a love-hate relationship with them. Here the definition and cryptic allusions are supplied not by two different parts of the clue, but by two different readings of the whole thing. The cryptic allusion in this case is an anagram indicated by the word “possibly”, i.e. SUBORDINATELY is an anagram of AS IN B ROLE DUTY. The definition is “&lit”, i.e. “and literally what it says”. This is where I think setters push the boundaries a bit too far. I don’t think “As in B-role duty possibly” is really a very fair definition of SUBORDINATELY, and this clue has a very clumsy surface reading too. It’s undoubtedly clever, but I don’t like it as much as some of the others. In general I think these kind of clues are more appreciated by setters, who know how hard they are to concoct, than by solvers.

Anyway, today saw the announcement of the results of the first round of the current Azed competition, and I got another VHC for the slightly obscure word FOULARD (a kind of scarf or handkerchief). My clue was

A square covering La Dame’s head? (7)

This is an “&lit” too, but the cryptic allusion isn’t an anagram. FOUR is a perfect square so “A square covering La” is FOU(LA)R, and Dame’s Head is D (first letter of “Dame”), hence FOULARD. The whole clue also serves as a fair definition, I think, because a “square” can be a scarf (the wikipedia example of a foulard shows the typical way of wearing it, around the head); it also suggests a French word. Anyway, I’m off quickly out of the blocks again with a VHC, and am currently in 4th place in the table! That might be the highest I’ve ever been. I doubt it will last, though.

I also do the Guardian Prize crossword puzzle every week, which has many potential setters some of whom seem to bend the rules beyond breaking point. Last week’s Guardian competition puzzle (No. 25089) by Paul contained a number of clues that I didn’t like at all. They weren’t particularly difficult but had neither a  fair definition nor a good surface reading. Take, for example,

Dr Castier? (5,2,3,5)

and

M – give it ten? (5,2,5)

The question marks are a conventional way of indicating that something funny is going on, but they’re not sufficient to give   fair indications of the solutions in this case. These are, in fact, reverse clues of a form sometimes known as a dingbat or a rebus. The first one gives THROW IN THE TOWEL, which is clued thus: DR(CAST)IER,  with DRIER defining TOWEL and CAST defining THROW. In similar vein the second one is HAND IN GLOVE, via M(GIVE)ITTEN, with GIVE=HAND and MITTEN=GLOVE. Clever, but neither clue has any definition whatsoever of the answer phrase nor any surface reading other than gibberish. I might have forgiven Dr Castier? were it a familiar name from history or literature, but it isn’t. It was just made up for this puzzle. A very poor show, in my view. Anyone can make a clue by flinging random letters together.

There were several other clues of this type in the puzzle, so once you have one of them the others are quite easy.  However, in my opinion, they’re all pretty dismal clues on their own. I only ever buy the Guardian these days on Saturdays, largely for the weekend Prize crossword. If they carry on using puzzles as feeble as that one I’ll ditch it altogther. However, this week we were back to good old Araucaria, which restored my faith. My favourite  clue was

The wrong way to be (4)

The solution is left as an exercise.

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Acts of Remembrance

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , on November 8, 2009 by telescoper

So here we are again. Once more it’s Remembrance Sunday, an occasion to remember those who have given their lives in conflicts past and present. This is always held on the second Sunday in November in the United Kingdom, so that it is close to the date of anniversary of the armistice that formally ended the First World War, on 11th November 1918. Another way to commemorate this  is the observance of two minutes’ silence at 11am on 11th November itself. I plan to do that, this Wednesday (which is the 11th November). In fact, I shall  be in the middle of a PhD examination in Edinburgh at that time, so I hope the candidate and the internal examiner don’t object! It is, however, one of the very few things that I’m not willing to compromise about.

Another is the wearing of a poppy. The poppy appeal raises money for veterans and their families, but the wearing of these little red paper flowers is something that not everyone feels comfortable with. Some people think that to wear a poppy is to celebrate militarism or even Britain’s imperialist past. I don’t see it that way at all. If someone asked me to wear a badge to support Britain’s participation in the invasion of Iraq, I’d certainly refuse, in fact.

I wrote about my reaction to the horror and futility of war about this time last year, so I’ll try not to repeat myself except to say that, to me, the poppy is not about celebrating war or military prowess, it’s simply about remembering those who died. In fact, one of the main reasons the paraphernalia of  Remembrance Day observances (the poppy, the cenotaph, the tomb of the unknown soldier, and all that) were set up in the first place was to remind not just people but also governments of the devastation caused byWorld War One. That’s why the Remembrance Day ceremonial laying of wreaths takes place in Whitehall, right at the heart of government. The ritual  was specifically intended to be a warning to the politicians who had brought the conflict about not to allow it to happen again.

As a young lefty student I grappled with the implications of the poppy appeal. The Peace Pledge Union produces white poppies, as an overtly anti-war symbol of remembrance. For a time I wore a white poppy but, although I am against war, I don’t think a policy of non-violence would have helped much against the Nazis and therefore can’t really call myself an out-and-out  pacifist. One year I wore both white and red poppies, but since then I’ve decided to stick with a red one.

Of course many in the Establishment would like the poppy to turn into a symbol of obedience, a kind of alternative national flag. Some people choose not to wear it precisely for that reason. The sight of some hypocritical warmongerers wearing the poppy at the Cenotaph on these occasions sickens me, but their betrayal does not make me want to stop wearing it myself. Neither does the fact that our politicians seem content to give away the freedoms that so many died to protect.

Some poppy sellers use the slogan  Wear Your Poppy With Pride, but the original meaning  is much better expressed by the original, Lest We Forget. I’m not sure I wear mine with pride at all, in fact. What I feel is really more like shame, at the wastefulness and stupidity of armed conflict. I count myself incredibly lucky that I have never had to live through anything like that, not only because I’ve had a peaceful and comfortable life, but also because I have never been tested in the way previous generations were. I wear the poppy to acknowledge their bravery and to recognize my own good fortune.

On Friday evening I went with a bunch of  Cardiff astronomers to a pub near the department for a couple of pints, as at the end of most weeks. For a while we talked about poppies and their meaning. Some of us were wearing  them, some weren’t. Various views were aired. One view was that it they saw the poppy as supporting the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others expressed distaste for the fact that the poppy had become a kind of meaningless fashion accessory, or that wearing it had become compulsory, at least for newsreaders and other TV celebrities. Another pointed out that the last British veterans of the Great War, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham both died earlier this year, within a few days of each other, and that made the poppy irrelevant.

I respect these points of view, but don’t agree with them. I think the fact that there are no living survivors of the trenches makes it more, not less, important to remember those that died. It’s not just about the First World War anyway. Nor is it just about servicemen. When I stand for the two minutes silence I remember those all who fell fighting on all sides of all wars, and  fallen civilians too.

I didn’t support the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan and I don’t understand what the continued presence of British soldiers in such places is supposed to be achieving other than more death. But why should the dead of Helmand 2009 deserve less respect than those of Flanders 1917? I wear the poppy for them, not for the fools that sent them there.

When the newsreader Jon Snow decided not to wear a poppy on TV a few years ago, there were angry complaints. I’m sure he didn’t mean disrespect to the cause but disliked the pressure being put on him to conform. I can see his point. It has to be voluntary if it is to mean anything at all. I would probably refuse to wear a poppy myself if someone tried to make it compulsory. But in the end I agree with Euan Ferguson’s piece in today’s Observer. The picture shows a bunch of the contestants from X-factor (which is, apparently, a popular television programme) all wearing poppies.

Ferguson writes

I recall a time, it seems just – just! – about 20 years ago, presumably around the time most of these X Factor contestants were crying their first (but by no means their last) tears, that anyone handing the stroppy younger me a poppy would be met with mystification and reluctance, as if they were offering me a cormorant. Although it’s possible the group in this photograph was suitably “advised” for their very public trip to the West End premiere of A Christmas Carol, the many under-20s stopping outside London’s King’s Cross to buy poppies last week from squaddies suggests a real change of attitude. Gone are the sulky, rebellious, anti-poppy teens of old, now seeming as distant as CND marches.

The young appear not only proud to wear them, but are almost using them as accessories: here, oversized, silky, something even of a statement. Elsewhere, there’s the tasteful option of those rather fine little enamel badges. I’ve seen people take out the little green paper foliage and opt for the simple scarlet. Sarah Brown managed to attract criticism for sporting an extra large one.

Is it all healthy? Well, I don’t like pressure being put on people to conform. Orthodoxy and fear are always to be regretted and today’s society is over-condemnatory, swift to its manufactured outrage. But this change seems to have come from below, not been ordered by bullies: the daily reports of life and death in the forces, of the danger other 20-year-olds daily find themselves facing. And is the symbolism of the poppy being degraded as it is customised? No. You can’t do much to the fabulous simplicity of this symbol. And the poppy doesn’t preach: it’s not about “right” or “wrong” wars, but about brave dead soldiers. And the message was, never, Remember in the way we tell you to remember. It is, simply, Lest We Forget.

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