The fourth general meeting of council considers a device used in other countries
The Crossword Council is an occasional feature where we pretend to take ourselves overseriously and consider a potential item in the cryptic toolbox that might be workable – or not.
This time, our subject is workable, which is to say that it’s actively used in cryptic puzzles – if not in British ones.
8ac Weak characters from Istanbul can provide it (13)
Existential question latent in Brontë’s letters (2,2,2,3,2,2)
As time passed, we started using letter banks more and more, and in fact the practice has spread to other constructors. Fraser Simpson now uses them regularly in his weekly puzzle for the Globe and Mail. Cox and Rathvon have used them in the New York Times.
Flexible source of characters in Ecclesiastes (7)
everyone knows that if L and R were interchangeable FOOLPROOF would be a palindrome*, but what you may not know is that HULLABALOO and BROUHAHA would share a letter bank
*I'm getting word that not everybody knows this