NEWSLETTER
This week, a few things of interest to the puzzles that you would otherwise miss.
Five chats with crossword puzzles…
First of all, if you’re a Mephisto-series solver, which is unusual in giving out the actual names of their setters, and you’ve wondered what Paul McKenna does when he’s not setting, now you can find out. The same underwriter is Jason of the Financial Times, and that newspaper interviews him as part of “an occasional series”:
Did your school mention crossword puzzle compilation in career discussions?
It was never mentioned as a career option. I am a construction manager in the oil and gas pipeline industry.
Happily, the Telegraph has also interviewed an underwriterexplaining:
It’s still a rare event for us to welcome a new compiler to the series. While records of the early days of our main puzzle are sketchy, it’s unlikely there were more than 35 compilers in all that time.
That setter is sometime language teacher and novelist Robyn, known locally as Picaroon. Curiously, Robyn was also interviewed by the FT, under the name of Buccaneer. (Before He was fond of guinea pigs and was in charge of the Zamorca library.known locally as Hectence).
The last interview for now is a long conversation with the crossword editor of the New York Times and general puzzler Will Shortz. Because he’s run by New Yorker puzzle and games editor Liz Maynes-Aminzade, he’s pleasantly technical.
There is a builder who gave us the word ‘dispense’ as a cross, and coming down is ‘nur’, which is an Islamic term. None of us on the editorial team were familiar with the term ‘nur’. You could change the ‘N’ to an ‘R’ and have it ‘scatter’ and ‘RUR’, like in the Čapek artwork, so that’s my preference for the grid.
I think it’s better as ‘R’. We’ll get to more solvers with that. But then there was the problem: did the builder choose ‘nur’ on purpose and thought it was something important for people to know about? And people would get it from the crossroads. The clue for ‘dispense’ would be very clear, and the other two cross answers would be easily obtained. In the old days, I definitely would have changed that to an ‘R’. Today, we are talking about that.
They also talk about the experience of finding love at 70.
… three chats trying to do crossword puzzles …
We’ve seen the subject of artificial intelligence and crossword puzzles before and will return to it shortly; meanwhile, some experiments with variable results.
Software engineer James Williams has asked the chatbot ChatGPT to try to solve some cryptic clues. The results are often strange…
1 ability remembered by Chap: something that is repeated often (6)
Mantra: The word ‘chap’ is a shortened form of ‘chapman’, which is an archaic term for a merchant or merchant. ‘Recalled’ is a clue about reversing the word ‘trader’ to get ‘redarat’ [sic], which is a homophone of ‘mantra’. ‘Something that is repeated frequently’ is a description of the definition of a mantra.
… but by no means all wrong. When it works, James suggests, it identifies a definition and “forces the cryptic solution back from there.” Don’t we all?
Less successful are efforts of Australian setter David Astleencouraging ChatGPT to write a cryptic hint for “jam”:
So I pitched in and invited the bot to stir jam. He fires back ‘a boy, marry’, which any Charlie can see is off the beam. Still, I root for my apprentice, as this is how the power dynamic has changed. I ask his electronic brain to combine the anagram and the definition, resulting in: ‘A boy may marry this sweet spread (7) [sic]’.
And much, much less successful, counterintuitively, is ChatGPT’s attempt to create a defining crossword under the guidance of Nayanika Mukherjee of the Indian Times. Here’s a sample track:
Small four-legged animal with long ears
You will literally never guess the answer..
…and some talk about crossword puzzles
Finally, good news for your ears:
Find a collection of explanations, interviews and other useful details at alanconnor.com. The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly, but not predominantly, cryptic, can be ordered at the Guardian bookstore
