Alan Connor asks whether your choice of writing implement reflects your feeling about whether every clue should have only one valid answer
I'm always delighted to find that my inbox contains some correspondence about crosswords, the more arcane the better. So it was this week, when a fellow solver brought up a Times clue from last week:
29ac Note Tuesday's arrangement is not fixed (8)
The answer is UNSTEADY, an arrangement of "n" and "Tuesday", defined as "not fixed". My correspondent had, however, entered UNSTAYED, also an arrangement of "n" and "Tuesday" and also defined as "not fixed".
It is not the business of the crossword blog to carp, cavil or censure – but it is of interest that a setter can sometimes write a clue without realising that it contains equally valid wordplay and definition for another answer.
Oxford's first citation of STEADY is from the royal tutor John Palsgrave in 1530, apparently from the obsolete noun STEAD, meaning stoppage. This would give it a different root to STAY and would make UNSTEADY and UNSTAYED one of those pairs of etymologically unconnected words that have the same letters and similar senses, as when "leading man" might equally validly suggest STAR or TSAR.
Such coincidences are inevitable, and sometimes will creep unnoticed into a puzzle. (And, my correspondent adds, "perhaps the clue itself, printed indeed on a Tuesday, hints at the very notion that it does not have one fixed answer".) This paper's crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, wrote about the topic in January following a clue by Paul…
25ac Misshapen genitals, funny things? (3,5)
… which asked for an anagram of "genitals" for TAG LINES but might arguably also indicate ODD BALLS. Hugh said:
It is an axiom of cryptic crosswords that, however clever or tortured the route may be, the answer to a clue, when you finally get it, must clearly be the 'right' one.
Reader JollySwagman gave a libertarian counterargument:
I'm not sure that (uniqueness of solution) is an axiom at all – more a common observation but by no means the basis for an immutable rule – of which the fewer the better.
I have no dog in this particular cryptic fight, but I do have a question. Does your choice of writing implement reflect how you read a clue?
That is to say, do those of you who fill crossword grids in pen regard the basic unit of information as the clue, and do you want to feel satisfied that the wordplay and definition give you enough information to be wholly confident of the answer without reference to the checking letters?
And do the pencil-users among you see the grid as the thing, with the letters provided by other clues taking on as much importance as the information in a clue?
It's a distinction that makes sense to me, except for two things. Firstly, it would suggest that nobody would ever begin a quick crossword in pen (and I'm fairly sure I've seen that happen). Secondly, perhaps you just solve with whatever comes to hand.
But it would be interesting to know if there's anything in the theory …