alanconnor.com/log

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

A rapid-response piece for the Guardian about Primal Scream’s outrage over being played at Conservative party conference:

“But whoever initially misidentified the music must have a tin ear. Bohemian Like You sounds like a Rolling Stones megamix with an emphasis on One Hit (To The Body) off Dirty Work, while Rocks sounds like a Stones megamix with an emphasis on Little T&A off Tattoo You.”

I am also compiling a Big List of all music played at all party conferences, politicians’ Desert Island Discs, etc. This will help.

• My look at David Cameron’s choice of Benny Hill’s Ernie in his Desert Island Discs
• Image of some Rocks taken in Staithes, Yorkshire
• The tin ear has since been assigned to Kerry McCarthy [PA]

English asparagus is back for a new autumn season; I test the spears and tips for the Guardian.

I have happy memories of every spear and tip I ate between St George’s Day and Midsummer’s Night, but as the ancient folk maxim has it: “Never eat asparagus while watching Strictly Come Dancing.” And contemplating eating asparagus in September, it struck me: the elation I feel when the vegetable appears is bound up with the way it heralds summer. Pondering the changing of the seasons at this time of year is likely to throw you into a panic over Christmas arrangements.

So I put Santa out of my mind and the spears onto a plate.

• I detail my asparagus addiction here…
• …and here is my daily asparagus diary for 2011.

I’ve started a blog about the fun of doing cryptic crosswords at the Guardian. The first post is now live:

“Others suggest [that] those of us hooked on crosswords might want to justify the time passed by pointing to the large vocabulary we’ve amassed – or, perhaps, to our pleonasm, to our Brobdingnagian prolixity. Well, boo-poo to that. (I admit I enjoyed learning the word ‘pleach’ from last Tuesday’s Times, but it may be many years until I get to use it in a sentence near a hedge.)”

It’ll be a mixture of the week’s best and funniest clues, tips for n00bs and features on awesome stuff like when crosswords feature in programmes like Rubicon and The Hour.

• Topics [ongoing update]: Bletchley Park; Is cheating cheating?; The Ten Commandments of cryptic ethics; Which newspaper is most crossword-friendly?; American vs British crosswords; Where do you solve?; Times Crossword Championship; Meet Anne R Bradford; the 1920s crossword moral panic; what I’ve learned from cryptics
• Meet the Setter [ditto]: Paul; Enigmatist; Anax; Tramp; Boatman
• For beginners [ditto]: Hidden answers; double definitions; soundalikes
• What does each letter mean? [ditto]: A
• Best clues [ditto]: Meta, Morse and Arsenal; Lord Sugar, Rupert Murdoch and the flesh lance; gamesmanship, ice cream and haiku; Elton John, hidden Damons and Moses; Smiley and Nixon; Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and David Cameron; Blur v Oasis; chess and the Tube; booze clues; e-ologisms; should themes be announced?; loos in clues; the ‘scrambled eggs’ chestnut; Occupy London Stock Exchange; new words in Chambers; Romeo and Juliet and Ant and Dec; booze and Dylan Thomas; ErdÅ‘s-Bacon numbers; Yule clues; cryptic Dickens

• Photo is of Guardian 25,402 by Puck. The only answer I’ve put in is wrong. “A day in dopey stupor, endlessly like t-h-i-s? (6,3)” should give SPACED OUT, not SPREAD OUT as I thought. This bodes ill.
• In 2009, I explained to foreigners why some British families do a jumbo crossword at Christmas.

Day 64 and the end of the English asparagus season approaches, bitterly early. I have been eating the recommendations of Guardian readers and I offer my findings in a new piece headlined Tears For Spears.

“[P]eople ask coyly about the, um, after-smell. I’ll spare excess detail [but] I welcome it as a reminder of a glorious meal. Everyone’s smells, incidentally, but not everyone can smell it. It’s better to avoid picturing the medical research that led to that finding.”

The experiment is enough to give Comment Is Free users a good name.

• If you too love either asparagus or repetition, you can watch the slideshow of the 2011 season above.
• Recipes are either provided or linked to under the Flickr images.

I eat English asparagus every day in season. I have asked readers of the Guardian to help by suggesting recipes.

“I was able to avoid this punitive pricing, having heard that a pick-your-own 20 minutes from my home was planning a one-off ‘early Sunday’. Thrilling, certainly, and less than half the price of the supermarkets, but also tense. Word was sure to have spread – would the early crop be abundant enough? There were already nine other cars queueing 20 minutes before opening and the mood was edgier than a crack den in a power cut.

“Once the gate had opened and we were picking, one pensioner made the mistake of switching rows halfway. If it had been one of those farms that offers pickers miniature serrated scythes, he’d have perished among the remaining stumps.”

Update [13 Jun]: The results are in.