Puzzle setter Merl Reagle, who died at the weekend, helped to change the American crossword for the better
Devotees of British broadsheet cryptics sometimes give the impression that theirs are the only crosswords worth solving. But there are a few names from around the world that the curious should know.
I have enjoyed, from Ireland, Crossheir; from India, Gridman; and from the US, setters including Brendan Emmett Quigley, Anna Shechtman, Henry Hook, Trazom and Hot, Cox and Rathvon, Stanley Newman, Ben Tausig and, until last week, Merl Reagle.
You can’t use bodily functions in puzzles, you know. ‘Urine’ would bail me out of a corner a million times a year. Same with ‘enema’. ‘Enema’: talk about great letters. But you’ve got to keep those words out of puzzles, because it doesn’t pass the Sunday Morning Breakfast Test. I mean, there are people solving the big Sunday puzzle. They’ve waited all week for this. They’re sitting there relaxing, and here comes, you know, ‘rectal’? I don’t think so.
F A B D C A F D B B B C B B B C E F F F F
Continue reading...