A happy new year to you all! The crossword gremlins seem, relatively speaking, to have been kept at bay over the holiday period. And the Christmas seasonal spirit also seems to have had a mollifying effect on the crossword angry brigade. I know, from past experience, that this will not last long, but December produced only one Disgusted-of-Tunbridge-Wells-type missive. It concerned Quick crossword No 13,601 (for 11 December), where the clue for 21 across read "Clotted blood (4)" and the expected solution was GORE.
A retired haematologist went for me at once:
Sorry but that really won't do – in 40 years of practice I have never heard the term applied to clotted blood … Clotted blood is a 'thrombus' in a tube or a blood vessel, or a circulating clot is an 'embolus'. A poor clue and a disappointing inaccuracy on your part!
My normal position in such circumstances is to assume that the setter has made a mistake and that I, knowing next to nothing about haematology, have failed totally in my role of editor by not spotting and correcting it. My standard practice is to run the (alleged) mistake past my in-house focus group, but on this occasion she had gone out early. So I fell back on that crutch for crossword editors, the dictionary.
What a relief. There had to be some difference in plain, as opposed to medical, English between blood and gore or the two words would not be linked so regularly in one phrase; and there is:
gore – (Collins) blood shed from a wound, esp when coagulated; (Chambers) clotted blood.
I can only suppose that my retired haematologist was for 40 years dealing mainly with blood and clots within the body and not with blood that has escaped from those who have been gored, which then clotted.
On Saturday 4 January a memorial service was held for John Graham (Araucaria) in the village church of Somersham near Cambridge, where he lived, conducted by the Bishop of Huntingdon, a crossword enthusiast and a fan of John's puzzles. The church was packed with people who knew and loved John primarily as a neighbour and a friend in time of need and with people who knew and admired him primarily as a crossword setter of Genius. Both sides of this wise and gentle man's life were properly celebrated.
His sister Mary Holtby, widow of a former Dean of Chichester and a poet of distinction, wrote a poem about John, which was printed in the order of service:
He understands the meaning of Hamartia and Hendiadys,
Can name the Tribes of Israel and inform you what a Naiad is,
He soars above our dullness like a gleaming helicopter, a
Magician, or an eagle, or those curious Lepidoptera,
Which gaily cruise the continents, though storm winds seem implacable
And only by the experts can their enterprise be trackable.
As one who scarcely has the skill to trace a parallelogram
And from the dear familiar ounce has never learned to tell a gramme
I can't decide if knowing him is pleasanter or scarier –
The man a famous critic calls 'The Mighty Araucaria'.
The December Genius (No 126 by Crucible) produced a rather smaller final entry than usual (280 in total by the deadline), which may have been because all the clues except one lacked any actual definition. Or it may have just have been due to all the competing attractions of the holiday period. The solution to 16 across was SELF-CENTREDNESS and all the other solutions contained in them either I, ME or EGO.
Congratulations to E.J. and R.M. Westbrook from Coventry, a couple who are jointly the winners of our December Genius puzzle. Eric Westbrook is a name that will be familiar to many as a result of his work in promoting crossword programs for visually impaired solvers and for being the driving force behind the development of the three-dimensional crossword puzzle. A 3-D crossword calendar is now published annually and he has organised two (modestly entitled) 3-D Crosswords World Championships (one in 20111 and one last autumn), all raising money for BBC's Children in Need Appeal and for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). Several Guardian setters have contributed to all of this.
We hope you enjoy our crossword service. If you have any technical problems with it, please email userhelp@theguardian.com. If you have any comments or queries about the crosswords, please email crossword.editor@theguardian.com. For Observer crosswords please crossword.editor@observer.co.uk.
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