Hello everyone.
I’ve only just come across this forum via a Google search, and I’m delighted to see it. In this centenary year of crosswording it’s great to see discussion alive and flourishing.
When Pete took over editorship he also brought in a new setting team. The result is that setting standards have actually improved a great deal but, of course, to those familiar with the way things used to be it can be a difficult transition.
I don’t want to get overly technical here, but cryptic clue-writing – traditionally at least – has been split into two camps, namely Ximenean and Libertarian. But in recent years these camps have moved closer together, partly because there are now more setters working for several different newspapers. While each series has a number of in-house rules (mostly technical and a bit boring!) each setter does have a personal style which crosses over to all of their outlets.
Before taking over the Sunday Times editorship, PB operated the Times for The Times blog – he has also won the Times Crossword Championship on a number of occasions – so his pedigree is almost entirely grounded in the pretty strict rules of the Times style, ie mostly – not absolutely – Ximenean.
As a result, Sunday Times puzzles are almost as rigorously Ximenean as their weekday counterparts, and my own experience is that editing of submitted puzzles is done very carefully, usually via telephone discussion. I can say with confidence if that a clue’s wordplay breakdown initially bamboozles, all will become clear if you examine it more closely. The task of the setter was best put by recently retired Times crossword editor Richard Browne – ‘to hide things in broad daylight’.
As for using phrases such as ‘go postal’ and ‘hotdogging’, it is true that these – and other – contemporary phrases haven’t yet been incorporated by all dictionaries, but there are a couple of things to remember; in the case of the ST, Collins is the preferred source of definitions – but an actual headword listing therein is not always a requirement. Also, setters seek to exploit current (and sometimes unusual) language trends. The English language is unique in its etymological backgrounds and multiplicity of synonyms for single words and different meanings of single words, and these are being added to constantly, often more quickly than dictionaries can keep up with. Part of the delight of cryptic setting is discovering how our language is being used right now.
All of that said, cryptic setting and editing is a human process, and occasionally errors will be made – we’re no different to anybody else. The Mother Theresa example is interesting, by the way. While its erroneous inclusion in a cryptic wasn’t in one of my puzzles, I did accidentally misspell it in the concise puzzle – fortunately it was spotted during editing and I found an alternative answer.