The Death of the Times Crossword Club

148 comments on “The Death of the Times Crossword Club”

1. To paraphrase Mark Twain, it would seem that reports of the death of the Times Crossword Club and the Times for The Times blog have been greatly exaggerated. Apart from the Grouchos (grouches?) that wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have them as members?

   I jest – let the serious stuff continue.

2. Like others I got my death knell email late last week. As you can tell from my moniker, I live in the US and really don’t have any conceivable need or desire for a subscription to the Times of London for the newspaper itself. I started doing the crossword when Mr. Murdoch bought the NY Post, and obligingly began including it there, albeit with around a 2 week delay. After I discovered this blog, I joined the Crossword Club to be able to get the current puzzle and join in the commentary here. My schedule doesn’t allow me to have ever volunteered to blog, and I usually can’t even comment until late in the day. I don’t know yet what I’ll do when faced with the choice whenever my Club sub runs out. Depending on the exchange rate (can you believe I actually had to say that?) my cost would be around 160 USD annually, or between 40 and 50 cents a day. That’s not terrible. But if this blog declines by attrition to the point that the discussion lacks the present vitality, I’d be less inclined to continue especially when there are free alternatives like the Guardian, which I also do every day. Obviously, I don’t know what led the powers that be at the Times to this course of action. But their puzzle, to me, is only the vehicle that becomes the center of discussion here, and that’s the only reason I have a Club subscription in the first place. So if TfTT withers as a result of this, I won’t need the current Times puzzle anymore, and I certainly don’t need the Times newspaper at all. Sorry to be so wordy, I’ll stop now.
3. I live in France and have little interest in reading the whole paper. However I think I would pay 33p a day for the crossword, plus the concise which Madame enjoys, plus the Codeword also a joy of hers recently missed since the free Times access was dropped. I for one would pay £104 a year, and hope this site continues even if it evolves. £25 a year was a ridiculous sum especially after VAT and World Pay (RBS) had taken their cut. TFTT could survive as a healthy blog without some poor designated blogger staying awake to post the answers before we tackle the puzzle.
   1. If only it was as simple as 33p a day. Were it the case that puzzles could be bought singly for this amount, I doubt anyone would complain; but The Times has a significant retired readership/solvership, and it’s that big single annual hit out of what may in some cases be a stretched pension. It could turn that body of solvers away and towards freely accessible puzzles.
      1. Just for the record, it doesn’t have to be a “big single annual hit” as you put it as subscribers can pay by the month at no additional cost.

         I pay £8.66 per month for the Web Pack, so £103.92 per annum which works out at only 28p per day, not the 33p quoted above. Put like that I am finding it very hard to understand what some of the fuss is about, but I do know how badly the whole thing has been handled – including letting us have the Club so cheaply for so long – at least 7 years to my knowledge.

         Edited at 2013-06-10 09:00 pm (UTC)

         1. I wasn’t aware of the monthly option jackkt. Thanks for the clarification!
            Incidentally, I wonder if there might be some mileage in still offering a one-shot puzzle payment option of, say, 50p?
            1. Hi Anax – I’m pretty sure Giles Coren wrote a piece in The Times years back suggesting something like a fundable account, to be topped up as one chose or with a monthly spending limit, with which one could drag and drop a coin icon onto a page (or indeed, a crossword puzzle) on a ‘pay per read’ basis. Google have been doing something like this for years with their Adwords service, where you can cut your cloth to suit your means. I thought it was a splendid idea when Coren suggested it and I still do.
      2. Thanks for sticking a hand up for those of us on pensions Anax. By the time my bank has taken its international currency fee, the £25 becomes $AUS45 or thereabouts. I’d be happy to go up to about $60 overall. Just have to spend a couple more days a year in the dumpster.
4. The cost of the paper version is extortionate. 25 quid has been a gift 100 is less of a gift but still good value for money. I will subscribe.
   B Spain
5. My access ends in June 2014. I won’t renew after that, the increased price is too high for me. Very sad, I will miss the Times crossword. I hope T4tT can continue despite the change.

   – Shuchi

6. 
   Wow! What a lot of people read (and get an enormous amount of pleasure from) the TftT site! I certainly wasn’t aware that it was so very popular. (Just saying).
7. How about if all visitors to this blog subscribe a few pence to the regular solvers to keep their subscriptions. The regular solvers could then post the crossword with clues on a separate page so that some of us at least can print it off and have a go before visiting the solutions page? Just a thought.

   I don’t know if you realise as well that one subscription can serve many if the email address and password is published!

   1. people just stump up the money and pay for it. It’s not, actually, a massive increase.
      Also, there are, presumably, some people who contribute here who do the paper version of the crossword – just a thought. Or are they banned as scions of the evil Murdoch 🙂
8. Don’t see what useful purpose the blog served other than helping would-be solvers cheat and providing an outlet for a bunch of smug bloggers. Much better of without it, I say.
   1. And yet you clearly read it. What else would you be doing here?
   2. Is that you, Rupert?
      1. No, it’s the colonel!
   3. Your anonymous boorishness just feeds the smugness more 😉
9. I’ve read a lot here about refusal to put money into Rupert Murdoch’s pocket but it seems to me The Times don’t actually make much money out of crosswords. I happen to know that the cost in fees to setters of providing six daily cryptics, cryptic jumbo, Listener, six T2 and a T2 jumbo comes at somewhere well over £2500 per week. For all those puzzles, £2 per week really isn’t so much compared to the traditional cost of buying the paper at £1 per day for the crossword, even if only bought on a few days a week. As several have commented, some of the reaction to what looks like a large increase is The Times’ own fault for setting the figure for the Crossword Club originally very low compared to the cost of the paper and failing to raise if gradually in line with inflation over several years. By continuing to subscribe, you’re not supporting Rupert Murdoch, you’re supporting the setters who provide what hitherto most on here have seemed greatly to enjoy.
10. As usual I am pretty late to the party, having only just logged in this week, so the sticky is probably a few days old by now.

    I was the single reply amongst the bloggers who was a paper reader, and consequently I am actually better off for this change as I get the crossword club added in and my separate subscription cancelled (please dont pillory me for this). I have to say I am surprised that so few participants in TFTT are bog standard paper readers. It seems I am almost in a minority of one. I have never got my head around typing in answers on screen, and find the flexibility of doing the puzzle in the park/on the tube/on the lavatory etc etc much more enjoyable.

    That said, I would be in the camp where I would pay £2 a week for the privilege, if I didnt already have it!

    I am happy to take some daily blogs over if people are happy with kicking off nearer 9am than midnight. I agree with a previous poster who suggested that this may not be a bad thing!

    For what it is worth, I have no qualms morally with providing grids to other bloggers (if time permits) given that the blog probably provides added value and/or publicity to the newspaper for free. Furthermore having given it a smidgen of lateral thinking, I cant see how the legal eagles would proceed in the situation where a single subscriber shared a copywritten item with a single other member of the public (who could be reasonably described as a friend or associate) for no payment or benefit. The only grey area may be if they could demonstrate that this was done regularly, however proving this would be almost impossible.

    If anyone has a better handle on the exact numbers involved, and to some extent the various motivations behind NI’s decisions, other suggestions might be

    1) to set up an independent crossword site and to pay a small fee to syndicate the daily puzzle. Charge it at eg £50 a sub and try to break even. If the times truly believe that there is no crossover value in the crossword only subscribers, they may go with this

    2) if this works, hell, go the whole hog and take on the commissioning of the puzzles, payment of the setters, and then syndicate back to the times for their (limited) requirement….

    Just a thought, or three.

    1. I’d avoid this sort of thing like the plague. I’m not a lawyer but whether or not there are legal issues involved (and I’d be surprised if there aren’t) I think it’s wiser by far for this blog to remain a friend of the Times.
       1. Well said, and I’ll add my few pence worth (again) in support. What a rigmarole in order to avoid paying 28p per day for a quality product! We got away with 7p per day for 7 years to my knowledge and I see that as a bonus not as a right, and now we have to pay something nearer the market rate if we want our puzzle to survive. I still say the change is being very badly handled though.

          Edited at 2013-06-12 09:47 am (UTC)

11. Hi everyone,

    I posted a couple of days ago. My subscription is due to expire around the 28th June. I have received a letter today to say that I will have my subscription renewed until the 30th September. I thought that since my subscription ended before the change over, I would get the next year for the same amount? I am now confused.

    That said while the hike up is considerable, we have had a good run at a very cheap price for years.

12. Yes, those silent lurkers are terrible. Particularly when they eventually bother to comment, yet still can’t be bothered to create a proper identity to do so…

    JEH

    PS It is great to see how many people value this blog. The bloggers should definitely take it as a big compliment!

13. £2 per week for, in my case, several hours of entertainment per week, with access to over 9000 archive puzzles, seems pretty good value.
14. Apologies for the late entry into this discussion…

    As I see it, there are basically two arguments being held here, and on Derek’s site.

    1) The price hike is either very unreasonable (for pure CC members) or entirely acceptable (for current Times subscribers / paper buyers). I’m in the latter camp – I briefly held a subscription on the site, but only found it useful for early access to the Listener and occasional access to daily puzzles, but went back to buying the paper.

    So for me, it’s cheaper to get the paper pack (6 pounds a week once the half-price deal expires, compared with £6.50, plus I get access to the Sunday Times which I would never buy normally – which would increase that to £9).

    I always justify these things by value comparison with other forms of entertainment. So, assume you take out the £2 per week option – that’s at least 3 hours of entertainment a week, compared with £10 to go to the cinema for 2 hours. (I use this argument to justify buying Playstation 3 games to my Missus…!)

    2) People seem to object to giving Rupert Murdoch more money. Well, that’s fine, and I admire your principles and all that, but he owns the paper and by extension the crosswords and the Crossword Club, so how do you justify giving him any money at all?

    I don’t think any of the other media groups are better or worse. If you believe Private Eye, the Grauniad is pouring money down the drain by trying to maintain free online access, which is probably unsustainable. And I prefer the Times puzzles, which is why I get the paper. Not for the opinions expressed within.

    I think the Times – as a business – feels that the loss of subscribers to the CC will be more than compensated for by subscribers to the whole paper. And they’re probably right. So a few people will be disgruntled, but everyone else will get on with it, and the paper will continue to get money.

    I hope this blog continues, as I can see what a valuable resource it is to all of us – despite the snide comments made by the (unsurprisingly!) anonymous poster above, particularly given that the blog never covers live puzzles. I would offer to blog, but I’m not able to guarantee doing the puzzle and blogging first thing in the morning….

    Anyhoo, enough rambling, I’m off to consider my obvious lack of principles elsewhere!

    Oli

    1. I agree with you 100%, but it’s clear we’re going to lose some contributors, for reasons of principle or finances. A 300% increase is pretty brutal and it could have been handled a bit more sensitively. NI is not known as an unusually sensitive organisation though.
       Forgive my ignorance but who’s Derek?

       Edited at 2013-06-16 09:33 pm (UTC)

15. I just wanted to add my small contribution to this thread. I use the site every day (except Sunday!) and rely on it to help me with my amateurish solving, but post very rarely indeed, and I don’t have a user profile or whatever it’s called. I appear to be in a minority in that I buy the paper version – chiefly, it must be said, so that I can do the crossword on my daily commute into the City. I subscribe so I also get the online content, although it often takes me so long to the crossword that I don’t get to read much of the paper!

    Anyhow, I too would be totally lost without the blog and implore those who contribute to find a way to be able to continue – I’m sure there very many grateful lurkers like me too. As for the price – I have to say I’m in the “it’s not a lot for what you get” camp, although I appreciate that this is less compelling for those (particularly the overseas contributors) with no interest in the rest of the paper.

    So, please keep up the excellent work – and long may it continue.

    Bob

    PS isn’t it curious that the livejournal spellchecker doesn’t recognise “blog” (or, as it seems, “livejournal”)?

16. Comments seem to have largely finished on this item. Is it perhaps now time to let it drift down the blog and simply admit that opinion is fairly evenly divided and move on to see what happens as people drop out? It’s rather a knee-jerk headline item that has (for me) outstayed its welcome as the first thing seen on opening the page.

    Reading the comments, it does seem probable to me that there will be enough able and public-spirited solvers who think the puzzles worth £2 per week to keep the blog going (come on, people, who wouldn’t really, if we hadn’t been getting an absolute steal to date? Just compare to half-a-pint of beer in London or a large coffee per week?)

    1. I agree with your first point. There’s also been nothing new on this subject in the Club forum since Thursday evening.
       1. There’s also been nothing new on this subject in the Club forum since Thursday evening
          I agree.
          Issues have been canvassed, opinions have been aired, positions have been taken.
          Let’s call time.
          1. It also seems to be attracting more spam than comments at the moment and I am constantly deleting this.

             How about unsticking and freezing? We can always start a new discussion if circumstances change.

17. I actually tried to convert my “complimentary” subscription to a paid one so that I could continue doing the crosswords and failed miserably. The subscription management web page offered no mechanisms to change the subscription so I tried going through the normal “new subscription” mechanism but this failed because my e-mail address was already in the system. As suggested by The Times, I then tried subscribing using another e-mail account (my gmail account) but their subscription process said that this e-mail couldn’t be validated. The Times suggested that I should call their subscriptions number which I’m a little reluctant to do as it will be an international call and (in this modern age of call centres) I envisage spending several hours on hold.
18. So much said, so much to agree with!
    I maintain a website linking the Times and Sunday Times Cryptics to this blog so readers of “The Australian” can link to the corresponding blog for puzzles recently published here in oz approximately 7 weeks late. (See the link under “Syndicated Times Puzzles” in the right hand column).
    I think some real numbers would be useful.
    How many hits per day on TTfT and the Crossword Club?
    How many paid-up members of the CC are there?
    To get the ball rolling:
    An average of 136 individual Australian readers link to the TTfT blog every day.
    Roy Low, Newcastle, Australia.

    Edited at 2013-07-10 04:01 am (UTC)

19. I too will abandon any subscription. I only get the Sunday Times newspaper and certainly do not want an online version. Will switch to other crossword sources of which there are many.
20. I only discovered this blog today, alas. For what it’s worth–I am a US member of the Crossword Club; I have subscribed for as long as I have known of the Club’s existence, and before that I downloaded and printed out the crossword when it was free. This has been my (unfortunately solo) path to learning how to solve British crosswords, and it’s still a rare delight when I can solve one 100%.

    It’s been a daily pleasure and addiction, and I’ll regret losing it. But the cost of a subscription to the entire newspaper is prohibitive–and, for many of the same reasons as others, I don’t want to subscribe to the Times anyway.

    jkr

21. As with most things in this modern world , The Times’ handling of the changes to the club are all about money , and this is reasonable because that is all that the proprietor thinks about . I have on several occasions accused the paper of NOT being a news-paper ; little of it’s content is news . Most of that content is opinion – which is ephemeral – and pfaff – and the news is highly parochial and short-term. The Times’ crosswords are a cerebral exercise ; I cannot attempt the cryptic ones, my brain is not that badly distorted . I try to solve the (once called) general knowledge ones (basically the Jumbos, and I never read the published solutions . these are often enough to bring on an attack of apoplexy , which I am trying to avoid. When I made a sour remark (as in “this modern world”) I was thinking about the laws of contract . I was thinking that a contract was between two parties , each with particular benefit from the contract. That a contract could not be arbitrarily changed by one party without agreement from the other. There had to be mutual gain on each side . That a subscription by one party , accepted by the other , was a form of contract . How will the bloggers gain – or The Times lose – under the proposed changes ?
22. I have been doing this crossword every day for at least the past ten years. It is my life saver every morning I shall be devastated without it. I so look forward to it every day. I am 84 years old and like to
    keep my brain active, which we are all advised to do. Please can you
    do something about this ! It is my life honestly. PLEASE !
23. 
    Printing off the crossword has drastically changed,opening in PDF format with the clues being unable to be read despite resizing several times. Very disappointing changes and i will not be prolonging my subscription.
24. I have been ‘trying’ to improve completion of the Times Cryptic for about 4 years. I have really appreciated the effort and expertise that has appeared regularly in these blogs. I think it would be near to a criminal act on the part of the Times to reduce access to this invaluable activity. Let’s hope common sense and reputation trump money concerns.

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