Personally I would prefer the term ximhole to be reserved for the traps which over-zealous Ximenes acolytes fall into when wrongly interpreting their guru’s thoughts – and when wrongly accusing setters of sloppiness when in fact they are simply working to a different paradigm.

That avoids any smutty misinterpretation.

It seems to me that setters slagging the work of other setters (of which you are the worst culprit) on here must raise questions about their motives in doing that.

Most of the devices described by Ximenes as “unfair to the solver” are in fact quite fair and logical as long as you know they are possibilities. Actually Ximenes did make some sort of distinction between punctuation which intentionally deceives and that which happens to deceive but is naturally there anyway; a distinction which I can’t be bothered with.

Of course Ximenes and his ilk would have writen that as “a distinction with which I can’t be bothered” despite Fowler, Gowers, Churchill, many others having pointed out that there is actually no “rule” of English grammar against it – other than a schoolmasterly invention.

Please setters – deceive me as you will with punctuation, word-splitting, what you will. I learnt at my father’s knee (pre-Ximenes) rule #1 for solvers: ignore all punctuation, capitalisation and word-splitting (or lack thereof) – it may be there to deceive – that’s the whole idea.