I chose the former and had no need to agonise over a title as it was to be called The North American One. It had been agreed that the puzzles should be themed around continents to coincide with the Tokyo Olympics and, by the time I came along, only North and South America were still available. I need not have worried as I have received great support from Shirley, Steve and others. Although naturally excited, I was slightly concerned as to whether I could produce a puzzle of the required standard to order.
Fortuitously, she had arranged with Steve (proXimal), the EV editor, to have a Lady Setters’ Month in July and there was a vacant slot which I was invited to fill. A second puzzle was published by The Crossword Club in January of this year this was well received and was spotted by Shirley (Chalicea), who discovered I am female. I had another go and was thrilled when my puzzle was published in February 2020 – we raised a glass or two of champagne. It was rejected for various reasons: although I was aware that one should avoid double unches, I was ignorant of numerous other rules, such as the requirement generally to have an average word length of 5.5 or greater and the limitation on the number of unches allowed in words of a given length. I decided to have a go at setting puzzles in 2019 and submitted one to The Crossword Club. We asked my mum to send us the EV from her Sunday Telegraph and we joined The Crossword Club in 2017. Once we had become addicted to the barred crosswords, we needed more. We bought a selection of Listener crosswords published by Chambers in 2008 and arranged in ascending order of difficulty this was very useful in developing our ability to solve them. At first, we were put off by the seemingly unintelligible preambles, but in 2010 started attempting a few which did not look too daunting. We began with The Times daily crossword and the FT Saturday crossword, moving on to The Times Jumbo, while eyeing with curiosity the barred thematic Times Listener alongside. Eventually we got started, initially relying on the Shorter OED and gradually accumulating the aids – Chambers, Bradford, the Chambers Crossword Dictionary, Chambers Crossword Completer and Bloomsbury Anagram Finder – which enabled us to solve them and learn the crossword language. TONY and MARIA cross the ETHNIC DIVIDE, desiring SOMEWHERE.īoth our fathers enjoyed solving The Daily Telegraph crossword and my husband Peter and I always intended to have a go at cryptic crosswords when we had more time. Paired answers are synonyms for JETS and SHARKS from WEST SIDE STORY extra letters give SONDHEIM and BERNSTEIN. Enigmatic Variations 1494 The North American One by Sea-kale Setters Blog
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