It may interest people here to know that news of Araucaria's way of communicating the fact of his illness has now reached the French media: on "France Inter" radio a moment ago there was a short report based, I think, on an item in the newspaper "Figaro" today,describing in brief the latest developments, including his wish to be informed if the quality of his clues deteriorated in the future!Incidentally, I discovered the French have two distinct words, "cruciverbiste" for us solvers, & "verbicruciste" for the setters -- considering that the passion for cryptics prevails almost exclusively in Anglo-Saxon cultures (that's true, isn't it?),isn't it time we introduced the latter term into the English language?! gk