Some explanation first: Since handheld computers first appeared I’ve kept personal records of my times solving the Indy Crossword (including the IoS), mainly to compare the setters. When those handhelds went into the dustbin of IT history, I entered the info on my own PC. I’m happy to share it, now that this website has gone up.

There may be some very slight inaccuracies but they don’t affect the overall picture. Basically each day I enter the solving time in a spreadsheet under the column of the relevant setter. From 2007, I intend to record the date and number of the puzzle as well. I give the solving time only of puzzles correctly solved. Those where I made errors or could not finish are recorded as error.

Unlike Peter B and those experts at Cheltenham and elsewhere, I use every assistance I can get when stuck.

Overall Comment on the puzzles: I like the puzzles to entertain and to be within the range that (a) they are hard enough to be a challenge and (b) not so hard that they cannot be solved in the breaks one gets in a working day. Once again this was the case for me in 2006.

Editor: There was a change in editorship early in 2006. The new editor sets as Eimi.

Setters: The new editor has made significant changes. While five setters have a slot weekly (or close to it), new setters have been introduced, no fewer than 10 appearing who did not appear in 2005, bringing the total number of setters who appeared in 2006 to 22.

Puzzle types: There has been a move to themed puzzles and to more difficult puzzles (the latter especially in the Saturday edition).

Solving times: 364 puzzles in all (every day except Christmas!). Solved 352: Error 12 Average solving time: 23 mins. This compares to 21 mins in 2005 and rose in the second half of the year when the harder puzzles were introduced. Before that it was nudging 20 mins. Solved in less than 30 mins: 76%, less than 20 mins 55%, less than 15 mins, 28%

Quickest solve in this (or any other) year: 7 mins for a Phi puzzle early in the year. Slowest 115 mins for Monk - I think it was the puzzle with CATS and DOGS in the central row and column.

Solving times for individual setters

An error or failure to finish is my own mistake as a solver and in no way adversely reflects on the setter concerned.

I’ve divided setters into two groups - the five with a weekly slot and the others. I show the five in order from the quickest solve to the slowest. The others are shown in ABC order.

Phi (51 puzzles, 0 errors, average solving time 16 mins), Dac (54, 1, 16), Virgilius (50,1, 20), Quixote (53, 0, 22), Nimrod (37, 0, 33).

Alaun (1, 1, NA), Columba (1,0,17), Eimi (9, 0, 26), Empire (8, 0, 30), Glow-worm (6, 0, 16), Hypnos (4,0, 34), Mass (20, 2, 28), Math (15,1, 19), Merlin (12, 2, 22), Monk (11,1,46), Mordred (2,0, 55), Nestor (2,0,46), Obtrox (11,0,22), Papillon (1,1, NA), Punk(1,0,34), Scorpion (5,2, 66), Tees (10, 0, 21)

This was last week’s Christmas Eve puzzle so not surprisingly another seasonal theme but not cloyingly so: some toboggans, crackers, a carol, a miracle, a portent and bit too much drinking. WHITE CHRISTMAS (11A) is clued quite well. A couple of new words (LOLLOP and DIABOLO)…

Across

Down

Solving time 33:50

It’s good to be writing our first posting about a kind of puzzle I’ve looked forward to ever since I started solving cryptic crosswords. Back in the late 1970s, when there was no Independent magazine or Enigmatic Variations as an alternative to the Listener (which I wasn’t ready for anyway), Guardian Bank Holiday puzzles were a big event. One of my oldest solving memories is of a weekend with some family friends. The father, a maths lecturer at Brunel, had the puzzle on a clipboard which was passed around, and we chipped away at one of those double-grid puzzles. I miss those, and would rather see their return than the jigsaw/perimeter quote gimmick that’s been the norm recently.

This was a fairly easy example, maybe too easy - I spotted the exact theme (characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) when MOTH and COBWEB looked like possible answers at 41 and 42, and “stage set” in the preamble made it fairly transparent. (Always assuming you had a preamble - the paper version did, but yet again the Guardian’s crossword website left it out until they patched it up. You would think by now that they’d be able to get this stuff right.) There are arguably more characters in MND, but these are the ones in Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within a play, who are played by other characters. And if you’re wondering about Philostrate at 16, he (or maybe she?) appears in the “additional passages” at the end of the play in my complete Shakespeare, though not in the Dramatis Personae.

There are various things I could quibble about in the clues, but I’m not going to mention them in detail. And I’m keeping my Shakespeare handy just in case he does the same with Twelfth Night for the New Year puzzle.

Slightly trickier than usual offering from Phi, with an appropriate mini-theme.

Actually, fairly mild stuff from the octogenarian enfant terrible today - two of his trademark multi-word linked entries, and only a handful of  clues to wind up the purists. But I’m not sure I like reviewing Araucaria - his clues are often better enjoyed without deconstruction. 

 ACROSS:

1. HEREDITARY PEER. HERE + DI(T)ARY PEER. Nice clue - House of Lords reform means they will die out eventually. ‘In the Guardian’ = here.

10. LOW TOBY. ‘Talk of cattle’= LOW (i.e. moo), TOBY is a dog. Had to look in Chambers for LOW—- words for this, to me, unfamiliar word.

11. (s)ICILY. With I—Y I put Islay - I slay, which is giving someone the chop in a very unfriendly way, but would have been an outrageous and unsound clue, unlike this one!

15. COWES. Sounds like ‘cows’, and means a kind of sail, which sounds like ’sale’.

17, 6, 9. BATTERSEA POWER STATION. TATE BR* + SEA POWER + STATION. Dodgy. No  anagram indicator in sight - I suppose ‘that of’ is meant to refer you back to ‘building’ from the definition… I would prefer ‘redevelopment of Tate Britain’ or some such.

20, 13. RIGHT, LEFT AND CENTRE. RIGHT (just), LEFT (abandoned) AND (with) RECENT*. Good straightforward clue.

22. FONDA. FOND = A. Letter for ‘A’ is weak, but it’s not hard to get there. ‘From Henry to Jane’ is not a greatr definition either. ‘Henry or Jane’ would be better.

23. ECOLOGY. (th)E + LOG in COY. Company’s usually co, so easy to forget it can be coy.

24. NUNNERY. An old-fashioned non-cryptic literary allusion, unless I’m missing something.

DOWN

1. HOSPITAL CORNER. As in corner the market, and that special way they have of making the beds - good double meaning.

3. DAILY NEWS. ANY + WILDE’S*.

4. TUNE OUT. ONE TU TU*. Sounds like 1 2 2 if you pronounce it like Archbishop Tutu.  Indirect anagrams are generally frowned on - is this one? We’re given tu tu in two different ways, though it should really be ’said like the archbishop’.

7. EVOCATE. CAT in EVOE. Evoe’s the kind of word that crops up now and then in advanced cryptics, less often in dailies.

8. SYSTEMS ANALYST. NASTY, MESSY + LAST*. Nice anagram. Might there have been a better anag indicator than (possibly)?

14. DEER FENCE. ER in DEFENCE.

16. WIGTOWN. T + OWN under WIG. A town in Galloway. Does ‘more hair’=wig?

17. BYE-BYES. Vales as in Latin for farewells, I believe.

18. TITIANA. TITIAN with I moving + A, ref (Midsummer Night’s) Dream. Enough with the play already - was this a clue left over from the special?