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Are you going to leave us hanging Regeff.... 😂

Here goes Brendan and Chrise (with apologies to anyone of a nervous disposition):

"9 across [which is spunk] with diarrhoea splattered, I gather.
(10,8)

Thanks Regeff, I think this is going to take a while.

This is already covered in the Viz thread, we don’t need it here as well.

Jono - and interested others - I see there's further discussion in today's Feedback column in the Times. I don't think anything particularly new was said, but what I liked was reference to how long this debate has been going on! There's mention of a reader's letter from 1953, where the writer and his crossword-solving friends had opposing views - sounds just like 2026...

Blimey, Malone - 1953! Someone's got a long memory.

I have harboured a (non-crossword) grudge against someone since 1990 and thought that was pretty impressive.

Thanks, Regeff. I expect the Times has always kept the readers' letters on contentious issues or on things that crop up time and time again?

Thanks Malone. I don’t have access to the feedback section it seems, but on exploring further I was amused by this quote from a saddened Times reader of 1930 who felt well and truly let down by The Times as it “succumbed to the crossword craze.”

“To some, the crossword’s only downside is the ease with which one neglects their chores while battling to complete the puzzle. For others, it poses the danger of turning your mind into a jaded jumble-sale of useless knowledge and in coming between a man and his wife!”

Jono, thanks for that wonderful, wonderfully horrific quote!

The text of their puzzles editor, Mick Hodgkin, read:-

Robots haven’t a clue how to do our crossword

A reader’s use of AI has led to a debate about whether that’s unfair, but it doesn’t matter: the answer it gave her was quite useless

‘Struggling with the cryptic crossword a few weeks ago, I asked AI for help,” wrote Jenny Kenyon in a letter last Friday, “only to be assured that ‘the perfect anagram for nationsmen is sentimental’. I think it has some way to go.”

Nicholas Pennington was appalled — but not at AI’s incorrect anagram. “I was concerned to note that Jenny Kenyon appears to be resorting to a source of reference while trying to solve the puzzle,” he wrote. “In my book, this is cheating. For me, a crossword cannot be said to have been properly and successfully completed unless this is achieved purely from one’s own knowledge and inspiration, without reference to the dictionary, encyclopaedia, Google or — far, far worse — AI.”

Martin Wainscott’s riposte to Nicholas was that “unless he was born with an innate understanding of 17th-century poets and obscure botanical terms, all human knowledge was acquired from dictionaries, encyclopaedias or experience at some point in time”.

This debate is far from new. In last week’s puzzles newsletter I cited a 1953 letter to The Sunday Times from JW Joel, who reported among his crossword-solving friends “a distinct cleavage of opinion on the propriety of the use of reference books in order to complete the missing words.

“Personally I feel that it is a matter of honour not to use a reference book,” he wrote, “but to profit from the knowledge gained in the subsequent week when the unknown words are disclosed in the official solution of the previous puzzle.”

There is no right answer to this. If you are competing in the Times Crossword Championship then exam rules apply but otherwise solvers are free to play by their own rules. In the case of Rae Robbins this means that “when my husband and I complete any crossword in The Times he places a large tick next to it. If we have had to resort to outside information he then crosses the stem once for each case. It doesn’t count if you are merely checking an answer, provided it has already been filled in on the grid.”

I certainly won’t judge anyone using solving aids when tackling the Listener crossword over in the Review section.