Snippet of useful stuff: I’ve added links to online versions of the three UK dictionaries that are most useful for Times crossword purposes. In each case, although you get far more than what you pay for, you’re not looking at the dictionary that’s really important:
Oxford: the Concise Oxford is one size bigger than the Compact, the edition searched on the ‘ask Oxford’ site (despite what any search result URLs might suggest).
Collins: the version you get for free is understandably a subset of the full version of Collins.
Chambers: their “21st Century Dictionary” is not the one that used to be called “Chambers 20th Century Dictionary” (now “The Chambers Dictionary”), and is traditionally the favourite dictionary of British crossword setters and solvers, but not actually that suitable for daily paper puzzles and therefore NOT an official source for the Times puzzle. Any word in the current Concise Oxford or Collins is fair game as a grid entry in the Times puzzle. Taghairm, kilfud-yoking and all the others are not. (Before you ask: Highland divination/inspiration, esp. in a bullock’s hide underneath a waterfall; a fireside disputation.)
alanjc
Is there any real difference between the editing of the Times and the Times Jumbo? Obviously the max-one-hidden-word rule and similar can’t apply, but is there a slightly different stance, or is it intended to be more of the same, really?
http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/wordgames/word_wizards/wwizards.py/main
) seems to use The Chambers Dictionary and although it doesn’t give the definition it will at least tell you that, despite looking unlikely, Taghairm is actually a word.
And guanxi is actually quite a common word in Chinese since meiguanxi is the equivalent of “no problem” or “never mind” when someone makes a minor apology (“I’m going to be 5 minutes late”).
PS As an ex-OUP employee I have no vested interest in saying this. Collins and OUP have swapped posaitions in my pecking order these past few years. Don Manley
* tackling a couple of puzzles a day – add the Indie or Guardian to the Times puzzle
* doing some of the barred-grid puzzles to cover tricky vocabulary and be ready for some of the tougher wordplay – attempting them without the dictionary for at least some of the solve if possible
* start young (i.e. make regular attempts at cryptics before age 20) – it’s an old pet theory of mine, but the more I learn about other quick solvers the more convinced I am that this is the thing that really makes the difference
* be prepared for a long apprenticeship – I had a decade or so as an unremarkable solver before getting really quick. That was before blogs
However, since I discovered this blog, I have been fascinated to understand the science of the thing, the ‘no living people other than the Queen’ rule for instance, and to go through the explanations of the answers has, I reckon, halved my time and filled me with a new enthusiasm for crosswords. I have started to time myself (which I have never done before, with any accuracy at least) and three weeks ago I attempted my first barred grid crossword (Mephisto) and did okay with it.
So…I want to say thank you Peter for the excellent blog, it is a wonderful resource, the bloggers are very thorough with a fascinating depth of analysis, and contributions are, by and large, amusing, thought provoking and intelligent.
Thank you
Aelia
Given plenty of practical experience, understanding the wordplay better is fairly straightforward. The useless knowledge and big vocabulary take much longer to gather, so they make a bigger difference – and keep older solvers competitive when pure speed of though should favour the young.
The site that he links to says that access is available until 31 March 2008. I still have access at the moment – and make use of the resources a good few times a week – perhaps the deal has been extended.
My most-used dictionary is the Collins English Dictionary (1994 edition). I recently looked at getting a newer version, but I am not impressed with what I’ve seen. All the encyclopaedic and biographical entries seem to have been removed. I hope my current edition holds together for a long time – so I can find quick info on Honegger, Fischer Von Erlach, Kruger National Park, etc…
I have only found one error in this edition – an incorrect probability density function was given in the entry for ‘normal distribution’ – but I wrote to them and it has been corrected in subsequent editions!
Details at: http://www.oed.com/services/public-libs.html
Appealing but wrong possibilities can be a big problem too. That’s why short answers can be so troublesome – a cryptic or double def for a ?A?E word, for example. Or, remembering my trouble in last year’s final, an alternative that fits def and some of the wordplay – my APHASIA that should have been APHONIA. I could say that I should have checked the full wordplay for every answer. That would have saved me a few minutes of barking up a wrong tree on this answer, but it’s not clear that checking full wordplay for all the other answers I put in on partial understanding would have been possible in the few minutes gained. Ten seconds slower overall and someone else would have won the cup!
If you can’t do a clue, then yes you should leave it until you have some checking letters, but that barely counts as advice!
When a clue uses knowledge you don’t have, you have to be canny about exploiting the knowledge you do have – making sure the wordplay fits, for example when you don’t understand the def.
I don’t know either of the eliminator clues you offer.
Ideas that I might jot down next to the clues, in the same order:
* something about clubs or bags
* caddie = verb?
* why ‘casual’
* spelling = enchantment/magic?
* anag of (the last S)?
The best practical advice I can offer is to read what bloggers and commenters say about the clues they solved last and what stroke of inspiration got them over the hurdle.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/crosswords/printOn
Change the &day= &month= &year= to suit.
The tricky bit is the “type=” at the end. enter:
1 for daily cryptic
2 for daily concise
3 for Saturday cryptic
4 for Saturday jumbo
11 for Sunday Times cryptic
There are more settings and one day I will compile a full list
Listeners and Mephistos are not in the same archive. For recent ones, the best bet is just a search like {listener 3979} or {mephisto 2467} in the search box near the top right of any Times Online page in the green’n’black livery.
These are the other numbers for which I’ve done successful searches. There are some other categories listed on the search drop-down but I think they’re empty.
21 Club Monthly Special
36 Bank Holiday Jumbo
38 Times 2 Jumbo
39 TLS
40 Sport
42 Sunday Times Jumbo
45 Times 2 BH JUmbo
46 Driving
Edited at 2008-04-27 06:14 am (UTC)
I count this group (and RTC3) among my more valuable online resources. Thank you, Peter and other contributors.
Maybe these ideas are so basic that for experienced solvers they have become second-nature.
On another point Peter the Times Saturday crossword doesn’t seem to have been blogged. That’s a shame as I was looking forward to it. Have I just missed it somewhere?
Exotic letters and your Fe example are good ideas too. I’d extend the Fe one to considering all the possible positions for Fe in the answer if you reckon it’s likely to be used in the wordplay.
A report on the Sat 19 April puzzle will be up later today.
In a lot of cases it appears that the setter uses a word or phrase that enhances surface reading, so where a surface is paticularly smooth look for a word in there that can have another unconnected meaning. Of course, looking at clues in this way can have its drawbacks, like today when I took “complaint” to mean in the medical sense when in fact it was just protest.
Also be aware that the word in the surface reading can be pronounced differently from the defined term: one of 7dpenguin’s favourite ever clues is something like “Use shower for washing up and cleaning clothes?” (5,5). The answer is water meter where what you naturally read as use shower (rhyming with booze power) is actally use shower to rhyme with goose mower.
I suspect I’d get the first one given some checking letters. It was ANY OLD IRON. But the fact that this was a song sung by Harry Champion would have escaped me – I’m too young/ignorant to know who Harry C was. I doubt that even an eliminator would include a clue like this these days, which indicates the Champion connection by just putting in his surname.
The second one turns out to be CRISPIAN – a Shak. spelling of Crispin, the patron saint of cobblers, or “last saint” as the clue has it. Sure enough, Henry V Act 4 Scene 3 has “This day is called the Feast of Crispian”, as well as the more familiar (to me at least) “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day”.
As for “techniques of solving difficult clues”, the real key in each case is simply possession of the right music-hall or literary knowledge. Seeing the significance of ‘casual’ or ‘last’ might lead to a lucky guess, but not to a fully-understood answer.
These clues and others from 1970s puzzles aren’t much of a guide to what happens in difficult Times puzzles thirty-plus years later. In the document you link too (introductory material from the second book of Times Crosswords in the old Penguin series, and sample clues presumably from the same puzzles, which appeared in 1972 and 1973), there are example clues and bits of advice that wouldn’t help these days.