Now you are doing the same. I made no such assertion. I did not say people wanted easier puzzles. I did not say people would prefer easier puzzles. I said that those people who normally struggle will have found this easier. That means their ability level has been better catered for. Everybody needs encouragement sometime, that need (the word I used) was served by this. Those people will be “the silent majority” many of whom never come on here, or if they they do are frequently too timid to post. We have had several people who have posted once, usually after a Rufus, who have said they were nervous about posting especially as they didn’t normally finish.

There is a distinct difference between saying this will have brought more success to saying easier puzzles are desired. I said the former, not the latter. To say that I did say the latter is reading between the lines and getting it wrong. I give up on English, nobody seems to understand it, that or people are reading what they want to read.

In any case, why would I want easier puzzles? There isn’t a setter I haven’t finished several times. Ok, that’s maybe not often with some of them. Somebody has to think of the full spectrum of solvers, including the perennial non-finishers as some people only care about what is good for the expert. Read today’s thread again, two first time completers (@26 & 30). Can’t you imagine how special that feels for them? Do you seriously want to deny people that feeling by always pandering to expert expectations? No? Well then, the occasional easy one shouldn’t be sneered at as some did today. By all means say it was a too easy for you, but don’t sneer. Those people should bite their tongues and consider the bigger picture. The selfish ones wont of course.

SO, one last time, let’s get this clear, I was commenting on other peoples comments, nothing more nothing less. Anything more is a total misread of what I said. Do we all get it now?

“all turds over ten pounds in weight MUST be lowered by hand”

as a plumber (working class northerner??) i thoroughly endorse that motto.

“you can piss down my back, but don’t tell me it’s raining”

we all have favourite quotes we can recollect.

Cholecyst: According to Rishi @39, a previous Logodaedalus drew 70 comments. Perhaps it’s the need to expend pent-up creative energy! As for Browning, I regard his works in the same light as Crossword setters — some are a lot better than others. But he does offer a couple of lines that seem quite apposite right now:

“What if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one’s eyes and laugh at a fall and, baffled, get up and begin again.”

“Fail I alone in words and deeds? Why, all men strive and who succeeds?”

“Ambition is not what man does… but what man would do.”

And what a stupid thing to ask? How on earth do you measure all those people who quietly try, get part way and get stuck? Where exactly do expect to find their efforts recorded? Try to be sensible for once.

Do you know nothing about life? In any human activity the distribution of ability is always like a diamond shape on a playing card. There a few experts at the top, a few totally abysmal at the bottom, and the vast majority in the wide bit in the middle. You don’t need numbers to know that. You obviously don’t.

Nor did I say anything about not attempting harder puzzles in order to improve, that was just more of your desire to be nasty on no evidence.

Try sticking to what is actually said in future.

It seems to me that Mr. Lazenby is being equally selfish in demanding crosswords that he’s capable of doing. If today’s is a typical sample of what he can manage, then I suspect (without having any scientific figures upon which to base my supposition) that it would drive many of the Guardian’s regulars away.

I wonder if the people who don’t often complete the daily cryptic share his views? For my part, it took me years before I finished my first one and some setters still regularly defeat me. All the more reason to keep taking them on, I think — “Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

TimR @2, it’s OK, there are some of us here who also don’t ascribe Biblical infallibility to Chambers, though some rather amazingly do.