When you’ve finished today’s puzzle, will you be tempted to solve one from last week? How about last year or last decade?
Our ongoing Meet the Setter series gives glimpses of the people behind the puzzles. But what about the men behind the men who work the soft machine, as Mick Jagger might have put it– not to mention the women?
There are two new interviews with puzzle editors for solvers to work on between grids. The Gloucestershire Echo meets Richard Rogan, editor of the Times puzzle, who discloses that it was a different paper’s puzzle that hooked him:
I got into crosswords watching my father. My dad did the Daily Telegraph crossword. It’s surprising how many people say they started by doing the Telegraph crossword. It’s an unseen force that leads you into the Daily Telegraph crossword.
I try to edit the crosswords to be timeless. Someone recently sent me a puzzle with ‘Grexit’ as one across. I don’t think ‘Grexit’ is going to last. It’s something that’s current, but I think six months from now that might sound dated, and I like the New York Times crossword to be timeless so that it can be reprinted for five or 10 years. So I rejected that puzzle.
19ac She excites all adult Greek men (6,6)
[ anagram of ‘all’, abbrev. for ‘adult’ and ‘Greek men’ ]
[ anagram of ALLAGREEKMEN ]
16d ‘I’m no lap-dog!’ snarled Alexis Tsipras, initially enraged (5,4)
[ anagram of initials of ‘Alexis Tsipras’ with ‘enraged’ ]
[ anagram of ATENRAGED ]
28ac Fool the king into leaving currency for 27? (6)
[ synonym for ‘king’ inside synonym for ‘fool’ ]
[ REX inside GIT ]