Listener No 4859, “Forever”, A Setter’s Blog by Twin

[New comment layout] - details here

There are many great Listener crosswords that are much-loved because of their complexity, involving a series of ideas that build upon each other to form an intricate and satisfying whole.

By and large, though, I have tended to go in a different direction, aiming for puzzles based around one simple final idea – even if there may be complexities along the way for the solver (and setter!). For example, for those who remember my puzzle Singles Only from a few years ago, that one can be summed up as ‘the grid becomes a sudoku’, but it took a few steps to get there.

Forever is another Listener with a relatively simple idea at its heart. I’d been wanting to make a puzzle where a grid could be filled with something other than the solutions to crossword clues, and it seemed to me that first letters of words could be used to achieve that. In its original form, the solution was going to be the second grid – the one formed by the opening letters – with the highlighting in place to make sure that there was some purpose to the first grid. Fortunately, my first test solver pointed out that he was able to complete the entire final grid – and figure out the highlighting – without solving a single clue, making it an incredibly unsatisfying experience for him. An easy fix, happily, to ask solvers to submit the first grid instead, but a very important one.

With the idea in place, I had to decide what message should be spelled out in both grids, and I recollected there was a Bible verse saying something appropriate about words not passing away. I am a Christian – and indeed I was working for a church until recently – so I hope the Listener audience will forgive me spreading the Good Word by stealth in this way. Who knows, someone may have picked up a Bible to check the verse, found themselves intrigued, dug a bit deeper…

Anyway, putting the full Bible reference in the second grid meant it was very constrained in terms of construction, and in particular CD-RW isn’t an entry any setter would be delighted to use, but I thought it was more forgivable in the second grid than in the first. The first grid was also relatively constrained, though, so I wasn’t able to choose as many easy-to-clue entries as I would have liked: the hardest were the shortest words, especially where I had to get a definition and wordplay into just four words, say, with the first letters of those words all decided already. SHWA, in particular, took many attempts to define, with Roger & I finally figuring out something workable in the latter stages of the editing process.

Speaking of which, I’d not made life easy for the editors – again – but yet again they rose marvellously to the task. This particular gimmick also meant that a lot of clues had to be edited for length, to try and get them down to a single line in the newspaper. Just in case the clue-writing process didn’t have enough restrictions. It’s fair to say that not every clue in the puzzle has a surface that would win awards – OK, many of them would make strong men break down in tears – but at least they all work as clues, which was probably the extent of my ambition in that respect.

A couple of things that solvers might not have spotted: the HEAVEN & EARTH in the first grid ‘fade away’ in the second grid, in keeping with the rest of the verse in Matthew; and the title ‘Forever’ gives a hint to the highlighted shape via ‘Diamonds are Forever’. In fact, the title was a relatively late change, as I’d struggled to come up with something I liked – ‘Remains of the Day’ was how it was first submitted, but I was never really happy with it – and indeed this was the first time I’ve submitted a puzzle and then re-submitted it a few months later with a number of changes, as they’d niggled at me in the interim.

Thanks as ever to Shane and Roger; to my test-solvers; and to those solvers who have sent or posted comments.