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I collaborated with Allan Scott, Colin Gumbrell and – via the archives – the other three setters of the Everyman crossword since 1945 (Alec Robins, Dorothy Taylor and of course Derrick Somerset Macnutt) on an anniversary puzzle.

• Observer profile
• Anniversary puzzle
• Everyman #1
• Image: Suki Dhanda/The Observer

It’s my 200th puzzle for the Observer’s Everyman series.

There’s an interview at the Guardian; Enigmatist / Nimrod has kindly assisted in the unmasking there and in the weekend i (print/subscription):

Delighted to have created a US-style puzzle and “The Most Guardian Crossword Ever” for this. If you missed it, “Most Guardian” is here and US-style is in puz and pdf or interactive below.

Remembering Chifonie.

• See also: Gordius obituary; How to solve Cryptic Crosswords during Coronavirus

Two new features in my Guardian column. Recommendations for remote activities, and a collaborative playlist of music recorded under current conditions:

An unusual honour: featuring in The Antidote: the ‘list of non-coronavirus [Guardian] articles our readers spent the most time with’.

Attention should pass to St Christopher’s hospice in Sydenham.

Looking for a distracting hobby that takes a chunk of time? 

Maybe one with a bottomless supply that you can access without going out into the world?

But you find cryptic crosswords baffling?

Here’s a selection of understandable explainers from the Guardian (if you prefer, your local bookshop can get my book for you).

And another thing: crosswords are best learned with a friend or family member. Beginner-friendly puzzles: Observer Everyman; Guardian quiptic; Telegraph; Times2.

Cryptic devices

Right, these are the bits of business like anagrams that you find in cryptic clues: hidden answers; double definitions; soundalikes; initial letters; spoonerisms; Cockney rhyming slang; containers; reversals; alternate letters; cycling; stuttering; taking most of a word; making a word naked; first & last letters …

Bits and bobs

You also come across abbreviations and whatnot: Roman numerals; Nato alphabet; Greek letters; chemistry; abbreviations for countries; points of the compass; playing cards; capital letters; apostrophes; cricket; alcohol; the church; drugs; music; animals; cars; cities; rivers; when the setter’s name appears; when the solver appears; royals; newspapers; doctors …

Individual letters

A surreal set of “interviews” with the alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L …

Top 10 Crosswords in Fiction

10: Brief Encounter
9: PG Wodehouse
8: The West Wing
7: Martin Amis
6: Madness’s Cardiac Arrest
5: Rubicon
4: Alan Plater
3: Inspector Morse
2: Lord Peter Wimsey
1: The Simpsons

Interviews with setters

What makes these people tick: Paul; Enigmatist; Anax; Tramp; Boatman; Arachne; Rufus; Shed; Puck; Pasquale; Morph; Orlando; Gordius; Audreus; Philistine; Otterden; Doc; Crucible; Picaroon; Nutmeg; Chifonie; Screw; Chalicea; Knut; Styx; Marc Breman; Azed; Navy; Smurf; Enocta; Vlad …

Random bits and bobs

100 years of crosswords; commentary from the Times Crossword Championship; rudeness; plagiarism; David Nobbs; Steve Pemberton …

• If you prefer quiz, there’s a book about that too

Also known as Gordius.

A Smashed Hits about (the) Eagles’ Hotel California:

“Vaguery is the primary tool of songwriters,” Frey told a journalist during a 2003 pro-am golf tournament in California’s Pebbel Beach, where he was partnered with Huey Lewis. “It works, it means whatever the listener wants it to mean.”

Sources: History of the Eagles; Hit Story: It All Started Because Of Rattlesnakes; Rockin’ ‘Round The Round, SF Gate; Jennifer Parker’s McBusted: The Story of the World’s Biggest Super Band and this lovely data collection from Southern California Public Radio.

• More Smashed Hits
• The Magus
• Image: San Francisco, 2006

A quick piece for the BBC about double negatives:

It’s hard to understate how often we find ourselves using two negatives when we don’t mean to – in fact, this sentence begins with a common example

See also:

• Election Lexicon | BBC
• Guardian crossword blog

A piece by me for the FT’s Life of a Song series on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”:

Solomon Linda recorded the spine-chilling isiZulu-language ‘Mbube’ in Johannesburg in 1939. Some he improvised as the tapes rolled. And for those moments, the song belonged to Linda.
 
Then he was bought out for ten shillings by Eric Gallo, the Italian wideboy who owned the studio, and who now owned ‘Mbube’. Even when it became a local hit, Linda could have had no idea what he had given away.

I am indebted to Rian Malan’s collection of essays, and we are all indebted to his indefatigability.

Here’s a playlist of the music mentioned:

• Similar pieces for the BBC’s Smashed Hits series
• Image of a lion from the Alhambra

A piece for BBC News about the use of Stand By Me at the royal wedding:

That’s why Harry and Meghan’s choice of song meant more than if they’d gone with, say, Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You. And the performance by the Kingdom Choir takes Stand By Me back further still, re-infusing it with the defiance as well as the devotion of gospel.

(more…)

I’m writing some American-style puzzles at the Guardian [feed].

For British solvers, the main differences are that abbreviations and fragments of phrases are allowed. All squares are part of an across as well as a down, so there’s more ambiguity.

The puzzles are presented as printable PDFs, but are better approached as .puz files using Across Lite or better still Crossword Solver.

1. And We’re Off! [ medium: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]
2. Cheers! [ medium: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]
3. PO… [ tougher: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]
4. Store’s In What? [ gentler: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]
5. Cryptic Currencies [ gentler: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]
6. (miscellaneous) [ gentler: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]
7. Money Talks [ tougher: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]
8. Shoot! [ gentler: .puz / .pdf / solution .pdf ]

See also:

• My book, Two Girls, One On Each Knee
• And also The Crossword Century
• Image taken in NYC, 5 Nov 2008, the day after the election

By me for BBC News: Election Lexicon, the words which “caught the ear” in a week of campaigning.

12 May: Battle bus, hovercraft, draft manifesto, shambles, blame
game, Monsieur Zen, airbrushing, photoshopping and The Big Six

20 May: Heineken politician, cockroach, cyber, Mayllenials, Robin
Hood tax, last-chance saloon, unique selling point, rent-to-buy,
insourcing and period poverty

27 May: [campaigning suspended]

3 Jun: Naked in the chamber, glumbucket, Brexit, Frexit, Nexit,
Brixit, hung parliament, negotiating parliament and Kobayashi
Maru

Here‘s a quickie Smashed Hits for the BBC News Magazine about Motörhead’s Ace of Spades:

Never mind what Lemmy said – with respect, Ace of Spades can be viewed as a metaphor. You could look at it as the Lemmy philosophy of living just how you want, in the full knowledge of the inevitable consequences.

(more…)

A Smashed Hits piece for the BBC News Magazine about this year’s X Factor Winner’s Song, Bob Dylan’s Forever Young:

The Dylans decamped to rural New York state for some peace. They didn’t get it. The presence of Bob Dylan gave the tiny town of Woodstock such countercultural kudos that its name was given to an “aquarian exposition” – the famous 1969 festival in a neighbouring county which didn’t feature Dylan, but did bring half a million people into his back yard.

For some of them, “Dylan’s back yard” was no metaphor, and they never went away. The Dylans soon wearied of finding hippies in the trees around their home and Dylan became frightened that he might have to use his “clip-fed Winchester blasting rifle” to keep them from his family. Onwards, then, to an Arizona ranch.

(more…)

A piece about the origins of Louie Louie and the FBI’s investigation for the BBC News Magazine.

The Kingsmen noticed that their audiences now included middle-aged men in suits and shades and were soon questioned by the Feds, apparently being told: “You know we can put you so far away that your family will never see you again.”
They insisted that Louie Louie was innocent, but as ardently as they’d sought reds under the bed, and over the course of two-and-a-half years, the G-Men contrived a series of eye-wateringly unpalatable images and practices from Ely’s mumbles.

(more…)

A short piece for the Guardian about “the best board games you’ve never heard of“:

Cosmic Encounter: Ignore the name. And the scifi-flavoured box. This is a strategy game, but the brilliance is that each player can utterly break the rules in a different way. One might be permitted to play out of turn; another might be allowed to declare themselves the winner if they go out first. What you do, and who you trust, is determined far more by this rule-breaking than by the straightforward mechanics underneath. The possible combinations of these disruptive powers mean that each time you play, it’s a thoroughly new experience – and each time, it’s the greatest board game you’ve ever played.

• Do Something: How to win quizzes – from pub contests to Mastermind
• Do Something: How to solve a cryptic crossword

On the 40th anniversary of Nick Drake‘s death, a short piece for the BBC News Magazine:

His first album, the pastoral Five Leaves Left, correspondingly begins with the lines: ‘Time has told me you’re a rare, rare find / A troubled cure for a troubled mind’.

The second, Bryter Layter, is purposefully upbeat and the last, Pink Moon, ends: ‘So look, see the sights, the endless summer nights / And go play the game that you learned from the morning’. This is music of comfort, not of despair; rebirth, not death.

Here’s the documentary mentioned, A Skin Too Few:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrmR_F5XgwQ

And there’s a John Peel version of my favourite track, Cello Song, at the Guardian.

• See also: Why does Everybody Hurt?
• A more fanciful piece on Drake, from 10 years ago
• Tree photo taken on the Thames, 3 Feb 2007