I particularly like "ghost themes", where you know something is going on, but the setter has not given you any obvious signposts. Finding out about swan upping on the Thames is interesting researching the major rivers of Guatemala is not. However, I don't like themes that require detailed specialist knowledge or extensive research, even when you've worked out the link. They allow an extra dimension in the clueing, and an extra lightbulb moment in the solving. Do you prefer themed puzzles when wearing your solver hat? I also suspect that we setters overestimate the proportion of solvers who even notice who the setter is. However, I'm sure there is also plenty of "Oh God, it's a Gaff, it'll be a theme", followed by a return to the share prices. I'd hope for "Aha, it's a Gaff, so something's afoot", followed by an enthusiastic mental rolling-up of sleeves. I've also learned from the reactions to clues in the setting competitions on the Guardian blog and at the Crossword Centre that a bit of smut always goes down well with solvers! What do you think goes through an FT solver's mind when she sees that it's a Gaff puzzle? What makes a successful clue?Ī smooth, effortless surface that completely leads you up the garden path. Of the many other setters I admire, I particularly like Arachne for her mischievous sense of humour and for the hours she obviously spends polishing the surface of her clues in order to give us gems like this:Īnd the Times team keeps producing great puzzles to a consistently high standard – always a pleasure to tackle. It's going to be a less colourful crossword world without him. Which other setters do you admire?Īraucaria, of course, for his endless invention and his ability to make me smile, to laugh out loud, and to shout: "Oh you bugger - you've done me again!"Īnd he could bend the rules and still produce a fair clue, such as this from his sad announcement last January. Then I married a Guardian reader, discovered Araucaria and was hooked. I started out occasionally solving the crossword in my parents' Daily Telegraph. Something to do with the two sides of the brain, maybe? When did you get the crossword bug? When I create clues while looking at the words on paper, I tend to come up with "mechanical" ones such as anagrams and charades, so I take the dogs and some words that need clues on a long walk and come back with acrostics, puns and cryptics. I do my theme research and populate the grid in a quiet room with our two springer spaniels lying on my feet. So isn't about time that we met this setter? When/where do you create your puzzles? Gaff is a specialist in the themed crossword topics we've celebrated at this blog include Martin Luther King, GCSE RESULTS DAY, The Beano and Chinese New Year and some of those mentioned below. It was the occasion of one of the wonderful themed puzzles by the Financial Times's Gaff, known in the non-crosswording world as Peter Willmot. I know it doesn’t strictly follow the rules, but it’s still good.Last Tuesday was a good day in crosswording. That one was one of six contenders for Clue of the Day, the one I finally picked being 26 ac: “The result when one’s routed a different way (6)”. Consider, to take just one example, the clue for GIRDLE, where “Bird’s beginning to fly…” made me think the entry was a bird, and it had an F in it, whereas I should have removed the beginning of “bird” as part of the word-play. One of what I call a treacle-toffee crossword: chewy, but good. Mainly, however, it was the deliciously convoluted word-play and mischievous misdirection that made this puzzle both very challenging and at the same time an absolute delight to solve. These contributed a little to the toughness of the puzzle, as did the grid – nineteen out of twenty-eight entries have no crossing initial letter. This last was one of two or three obscurities that required me to check up in the dictionary or online. When I did, it helped with GIRDLE and DAL SEGNO. Unfortunately, I couldnt immediately call to mind anything to do with wallpaper, never mind the Oscar Wilde witticism, so it was quite a while before I got the rest of it. That helped a lot with EROSION and RED SETTER. As it happened, I got going in the SW quadrant, so WALLPAPER revealed itself fairly readily. Seeing that this was set by Serpent, and seeing too that it was one of those grids, I was on the look out for a nina. Difficulty rating (out of five): ?????