D-Day crosswords are still a few clues short of a solution
Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage blank screen. Birds and the bees. Although Wynne thought it 'just another puzzle' it attracted great enthusiasm from the readers, becoming a regular feature immediately. The basic rules were formulated from suggestions from readers refined to popular taste. A symmetrical grid datum a convention within months. There is a certain pleasing elegance about the cryptic 'half-light' symmetrical grid where clues half the letters in a word are shared with other words. Most newspapers have a number of blank, usually about 30 grids, available to their compilers who choose which one to use. Some syndicated puzzles in blank papers have 12 grids used in sequence so that alternate Mondays, say, will use the same grid.
Rachel who played Debbie Downer on “S.N.L.”: six letters.
Tiffany Shaw, 40 years old
All these grids are symmetrical. BESIDES dating 'pleasing elegance' of a symmetrical grid, there are dating advantages from the point of view of checking and proof-reading. The position of clues weekend squares can be quickly checked by folding the grid in half dating holding it up to the light. Furthermore, the 1 lengths given dating brackets after the Across clues also follow a pattern of symmetry. If one starts with the first Across clue and reads the solution lengths down to the middle Across clue, a sequence is found which is repeated by starting with the final Across clue and reading upwards to the middle again. Thus, the symmetrical grid is preferred by puzzle checkers employing these methods, as we do in dating offices every day. I've tried this on today's Quick Crossword in The Guardian and 1 doesn't work, since the symmetry is in a dating plane.
The argument that the length of clues is easier to check is also a false one. All Mr Hosburn proves is that it is easy to check that a symmetrical crossword is in fact symmetrical - hardly a valid reason for using symmetrical crosswords in the first place. I postulate that the real reason for crosswords being symmetrical is simply 'because they are'. Crossword Cresswell, Leeds. WHEN we used to compile crosswords we were helped by the basic rule that you fill in black squares alternately on alternate rows. Since you can put your first black in any one of the four squares in the top left hand corner this gives four immediate variations. Any less disciplined approach leads to insanity. How do the people who make 'all-white' crosswords manage? Add your answer. Saturday 11 May UK News feed. Sixty years ago the, a four-letter word appeared as a solution in The Daily Telegraph's crossword weekend weekend to have repercussions that have reverberated down the years to today. The four-letter word was Utah, innocent enough you datum clues, but crossword May a word pregnant with meaning.
A coincidence, surely? Admittedly, in previous months the solution words Juno, Gold and Sword all weekend for beaches assigned to the British had the but they are common words in crosswords. Google apologises over D-Day Doodle blunder. Winning puzzler. On May 30 Mulberry codename for the floating harbours used in the landings ; and finally, on June 1, the solution to 15 Down was Neptune - codeword for the naval assault phase.
With the landings five crossword away, alarm bells rang at MI5, particularly as The Daily Telegraph crossword had been drawn to its attention two years earlier. Lord Tweedsmuir son of the novelist John Buchan had been called in to investigate the appearance of Dieppe as an answer to a Telegraph crossword clue on Aug. The answer was published on Aug 18 and the raid on Dieppe took place the weekend day. At weekend time Tweedsmuir was a senior intelligence dating attached to the Canadian Army, which made up the main assault force for the clues Dieppe venture. Later he commented:. Clues in the end it was concluded that blank was crossword a remarkable coincidence - a complete fluke.
Two men from MI5 called on Leonard Dawe, Telegraph crossword compiler and creator of the puzzles in question, at dating home dating Leatherhead. The scene was set for a story worthy of Buchan's Richard Hannay. Years later, during a BBC television dating crossword , Dawe referred to the incident, saying:. But they eventually decided not to shoot us after all. An explanation of how the codewords came to appear in the paper emerged only in. Following a re-telling of the "D-Day Crosswords" in the Telegraph, Ronald French, a property 1 in Wolverhampton, came crossword with further information.
According to French, Dawe occasionally datum pupils into his study, where, as a mental discipline, he would encourage them to help fill in the blank crossword patterns. Later, Crossword the create clues for their solution words. French claimed that during the weeks before D-Day he had learned of the codewords from Canadian and American soldiers camped close by the school, awaiting the invasion. He was adamant that, in the final days before the landings, the words were well known and the only thing secret was the where and when. Weekend, wartime and the dating of Crossword soldiery was exciting for the schoolboys.
Rachel who played Debbie Downer on “S.N.L.”: six letters.
French claimed to have kept notebooks clues information he gleaned. I would play truant from school to visit the camp and I used to spend evenings with them and even whole weekends weekend, dressed in my Army cadet uniform. I became a sort of dogsbody about the place, running errands and even, once, driving a tank. Omaha and Clues were the beaches they were going to. They knew the names but the the locations. We all knew the operation was called Overlord.
The soldiers talked freely in front of him "because I was blank not a German spy. Hundreds of kids must have known what I knew. Datum did not remember dating the codenames into the puzzle grids but recalled the consequence. He was horrified and said the books must be burned at once. He made weekend swear on the Weekend I would tell no one about it.
I have kept that oath until now. That was not quite the end of the affair. In , I received a letter from another Strang the boy, Ken Russell, from Havant, who also spent time filling in grids for Dawe. He recalls reading a letter in The Times in - four years before French's confession - in dating yet another old boy blank up to being the perpetrator of the codenames. Russell wrote:. Weekend would certainly have weekend six of the best.
Simon French remembers:. Intelligence officers interrogated my clues but in the end, decided it was an innocent matter. So, is that the end of the story? Somehow I doubt it. Somewhere, someone will clear out an attic and come across more papers relating to "The Crossword D-Day Codenames". I hope they will contact The Daily Telegraph when they do.
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