As the Daily Telegraph's second cryptic puzzle celebrates a milestone, Alan Connor talks to setter John Henderson and editor Phil McNeill
On 2 September 2008, the Telegraph relaunched as a full-colour newspaper and marked the event by adding a new puzzle:
The Toughie is not like a normal cryptic crossword. It will be the most fiendishly difficult daily puzzle on Fleet Street.
It runs from Tuesday to Friday and if you're good at sums which allow for leap years, you'll have calculated that today's will be the thousandth Telegraph Toughie. Or you might have spotted the numbers on this week's puzzles – Tuesday's was number 998 and Wednesday's 999 – and wondered what would be in store today.
The answer is a puzzle under the name of Symphony, a nom de guerre for all the Telegraph setters, with its grid put together by John Henderson, who sets as Elgar and is better known to Guardian solvers as Enigmatist. It was overseen by the Telegraph's puzzle editor Phil McNeill, who describes it as follows:
For our thousandth Telegraph Toughie, we thought we should try something a bit different. So we asked every Toughie compiler to contribute a clue (a slightly grander version of Toughie 500, in fact). Not wishing to leave anyone out, we also invited the Daily Cryptic setters who don't compile Toughies. Clues were allocated at random and four setters had two clues each to set. The cast list is: Beam, Busman, Campbell, Cephas, Dada, Elgar, Elkamere, Excalibur, Firefly, Giovanni, Jed, Kcit, Messinae, Micawber, Jeremy Mutch, MynoT, Myops, Notabilis, Osmosis, Petitjean, Anthony Plumb, Shamus, Roger Squires, Warbler. You are invited to play Spot The Setter. After the solution is released, we'll list who did what in this 'Symphony' of setters.
I asked John and Phil for a little background.
What are the characteristics that make a Toughie tough? Those who haven't tried the puzzle should know that it's not a case of arcane words and references …
Phil McNeill: As you suggest, I very much hope that it's not obscure vocabulary in the answers or the answers within wordplay. I try hard to persuade setters that the Daily Cryptic and the Toughie should be a test of lateral thinking, not of vocabulary. What makes it harder than the Daily Cryptic is more intricate wordplay (though hopefully not to the point where it becomes a chore for the solver to wade through the thickets): cleverly concealed indicators, definitions and cryptic definitions.
The puzzles span a wide range of degrees of difficulty. I hope that the less difficult ones give solvers the chance to get a foothold, and that the mix allows regular solvers to enjoy a rhythm – pat yourself on the back one day and spend hours scratching your head the next.
John Henderson: That's a tricky question. We certainly don't set out to use more difficult vocabulary and we always use the standard dictionaries, but sometimes one or two rarer words appear, generally (as with today) to complete a hidden theme or "nina".
Phil McNeill: You might think that perhaps the Toughie would take some liberties with fairness or correctness of parsing, but I think the reverse should be true: the harder the puzzle, the more important it is to be fair and correct.
And how do Toughie puzzles differ from each other?
Phil McNeill: Ideally, every Toughie puzzle is very distinctive. In the Daily Cryptic, solvers generally want a level of consistency of style and difficulty. In the Toughie, we hope they enjoy a different solving experience every day.
The Toughie setters have different quirks (or should I say styles?). One challenge for the editor is to negotiate with the setter on the solver's behalf without ironing out the kinks: how do we keep the peculiarly Scottish flavour of a Myops puzzle, for instance, while ensuring that it's fair for all solvers? Micawber likes to play with current affairs – how much is it fair to assume solvers may know? In those examples, we are talking about content, but variations in setting style are also very important.
John Henderson: I don't set out to make my own clues tough. I just like to try out new ideas and avoid hackneyed breakdowns. I know that others in the Toughie team do the same – funnily enough, they seem to appear on Fridays, the "tough Toughie" end of the week.
John, were you around at the Telegraph when the paper started publishing a second cryptic?
John Henderson: I heard on the grapevine that a harder puzzle series was in the offing so I contacted Kate Fassett, who was then the crossword editor, to put myself forward as a potential setter. I have (not intentionally!) acquired a reputation as a tougher setter, so it seemed like a good idea.
My previous "history" with the Telegraph was when my dad sent a couple of my schoolboy cryptics to Kate's predecessor Val Gilbert in 1974. He received a very positive reply with detailed comments on the clues and a letter to the effect of "very promising but not quite good enough yet … contact us again in 10 years' time." Considering my first Guardian puzzle, which I now look back at and shudder, I'm very grateful for her response.
Can you tell us how the anniversary puzzle was created? How is it possible to attain a balanced puzzle with so many setters? Have you ever co-set with a bigger group?
Phil McNeill: Regarding Toughie 1,000, if it works, it's an accident. The only thing that was planned is the grid – a really clever grid by Elgar. After that, it's pot luck. Each setter was given an answer at random. The grid does have one or two obscure answers, so a couple of setters drew the short straw: how do you clue such a word in a way that can be solved by someone who isn't familiar with the answer?
John Henderson: I did solve an earlier proof of the puzzle, and was able to comment on some repetition of devices. As usual, I got stuck on my own clues.
Phil McNeill: I requested fewer changes to clues than I do on a lot of puzzles, because I thought it was important to let each setter's clue stand as delivered. There were one or two clashes, for instance where two setters had used similar wordplay, but that's all we changed.
Are there any other puzzles to mark the thousandth?
John Henderson: Not as far as I'm aware. But solvers might have noticed a theme in the previous puzzle in the series. And, who knows, there just might be a theme in the next …
And are you all gathering to raise a glass?
John Henderson: Not on this occasion, but there is always some sort of social event for solvers and setters just around the corner. The Telegraph team has met for jollies on a number of occasions in the past year or so. Cheers!
Many thanks to Phil and John and here's to another 1,000 Toughies – with the next thousandth appearing, I suppose, some time in March 2018.