179 Crossword Issues

For the past 13 months, ever since Lockdown began in earnest, my daily life has followed an almost fixed pattern:

07:45   Get up.

08:10   Go into the kitchen and get a mug of coffee.

08:15   Start to read the online newspaper on my laptop.

10:00   Breakfast.

10:15   Back to the paper.

11:00   I start to attempt the various number and word puzzles in the paper and this can keep me busy for the rest of the morning.  

When doing crossword puzzles, I don’t attempt the cryptic puzzles anymore.  Thirty years ago, when I had an hour for lunch, I would occasionally finish it within that hour but today, I struggle to solve any of the clues at all.  Age?

I do regularly complete the concise crossword but compared with the cryptic, it is extremely easy.  A typical clue might be something like: 

Inclined; fished (6) 

The answer being ANGLED.

Recently, however, I have taken issue with some of the clues and thinking that he would be delighted and very grateful for my input, I emailed the Crossword Editor to express my dissatisfaction. 

The first clue that bothered me: 

Imaginary cause of motion deflections due to earth's rotation (8,5)

The answer: CORIOLIS FORCE   

I wrote to the Crossword Editor: “The Coriolis force is certainly not an imaginary force.  It is a fictitious force.  Those two words are not synonyms in this context.”

He replied and wrote,  “I have to admit that you are quite correct.  Why I substituted “Imaginary” for “Fictitious” I’m not now sure but this clue went through several desperate iterations in order to try to stop it swallowing up even more room on the printed page than it did.”

Recently, a clue was: University (3).  I knew the answer had to be ‘UNI’ but I couldn’t believe it.  I hate that word, especially when it comes from the mouths of vacuous teenagers interviewed on television on the morning that their ‘A’ level results come out.

I wrote again:  “I can’t believe you did this.  Giving UNI as the answer to the clue ‘university’ in the concise crossword is unforgiveable.  Can you imagine Oscar Wilde or Margaret Thatcher saying that they were off to uni?” 

I didn't expect him to reply but he did:  “The word is in wide use and has been in the Concise Oxford and Collins English Dictionaries for some time and is therefore legitimate for use in word puzzles, it seems to me.  

Language changes and mutates. I have no difficulty believing that significant numbers of my solvers use no other word than ‘uni’ to refer to universities nowadays.

A graph from Collins English Dictionary telling of the occurrence of ‘uni’ over the last 300 years, shows it to be in use at far higher levels in the 19th century than now.”

In reply to that, I wrote:  “Fair enough, but I'm never going to believe that a junior officer at Waterloo ever said something like, 'I've just come down from uni and I wasn’t expecting this.'  

UNI may have ancient lineage as you say but in what context?   

I was at university in the 60s and the last of my children left in 2002.  While there, I never heard it used as an abbreviation of ‘university’ and phone calls to my children inform me that neither did they.”

Often, I resist the inclination to complain.  I did not write in and object when SMART was the answer to: Astute, clever (5).  

That usage of “smart” is a horrible, fairly recent import from America.  Americans use the word when we would say “clever” and in my opinion, if “smart” isn’t used to mean something like “well dressed”, it means "wise" or "sensible" and never astute, clever or intelligent.

Nor did I complain about:  Throwing a cricket ball (7).  The answer was BOWLING.  

Any ball that is thrown by the bowler is a “no-ball” and so “bowling” is never “throwing” but my compassion for the editor’s  obvious and inexcusable ignorance prevented me from writing and pointing that out to him.

Recently though, my good nature would not allow this clue to pass without comment:

Reciprocal of zero (8), with the answer given being INFINITY.

That clue should never be used because zero does not and cannot have a reciprocal.  

I wrote: “The reciprocal of zero does not exist.  The reciprocal of a number ‘n’ is defined to be 1/n where ‘n’ is NOT ZERO.  No number may be divided by zero.  This is a dreadful clue.”

After several days and having heard nothing in reply, I assumed he had ceased being extremely grateful and had probably had enough of me.

But then, I had an email from him in which he wrote the following:

“Yes, it does certainly seem to be wrong, but in this instance, I will plead that I was misled by my references.  In Chambers English Dictionary, one definition given for INFINITY is 'the reciprocal of zero.’

It is not the first time I have been let down by one of my references but I hope you will recognise that in this instance the vast majority of the blame should lie squarely with Chambers.  

I only ever claim that the crossword is accurate according to the OUP, Collins or Chambers.  In this case I have been misled by what looked like a fun definition that turned out to be no such thing.  Apologies, nevertheless.”

To that, I have replied: “Thanks for this but in future,  perhaps it might be better to check things with me rather than with Chambers.”

He hasn’t responded yet but if he does take me up on my offer, I could be very busy in the years ahead and perhaps, I should think about negotiating a fee.