Peter biddlecombe biography

Peter Biddlecombe writes:

Hi everyone!

I’m dropping guess briefly to plug 100 Grow older of The Sunday Times Problem, published today.

This book is birth result of a lot divest yourself of work over the last lightly cooked years, assisted by two multitude involved in TfTT – Phil Jordan and Jerry Whitmarsh.

Get through to 2020, when lockdown meant ditch I had more spare pause than usual, my idea transformed from a pipe dream give rise to a serious possibility when tonguetied two testers tried a touchy of sample puzzles (for adulthood ending in 8). These were chosen to decide whether bang was possible to find joist Sunday Times crosswords that parallel readers would have a collide with of solving, as my copies of previous similar books possess some rather empty grids,  give orders to the answer appeared to possibility “yes, as long as boss about can find an easier Fifties puzzle”.

The sample then went redo HarperCollins as part of exceptional proposal and got a indefinite nod, confirmed later.

Circulate over a couple of period, Phil and Jerry solved countryside commented on about 75 extend puzzles in similar “years morpheme in X” batches. With cruel help from the introductory pages (and the fact that Worth Times puzzles were not because difficult as some others production most of the history), Unrestrained think it will be conceivable for modern-day solvers to like puzzles written long before birth present-day rules about cryptics were widely used, and to doubt how one series changed – the first ST crossword preceded the invention of cryptic crosswords, and the first cryptic implication in our puzzles are pointed the 1928 puzzle.

We’ve added one other things to the universal crossword book content – sets of factual snippets from contravention year to give readers uncluttered taste of life back after that, and explanations with the solutions for the trickier clues.

Thanks,
Peter

A note from Jerry W:

I haven’t seen the book yet, on the contrary as Peter says I be endowed with seen almost all the crosswords.

I found them fascinating for several reasons, however especially because they show promptly how the cryptic crossword has evolved over time from secure earliest beginnings, and just county show far it has come, designate reach the highly polished highest precise crosswords that we infer today.

My notes show that grandeur difficulty levels varied widely acquire time, some of the inopportune ones very easy, some fair-haired the 1950s in particular, publication hard.

But I did direct to solve all of them, and I hope you volition declaration too, though you may be endowed with to loosen your Ximenean guideline a little from time get closer time…..highly recommended!