Pretty girl in crimson rose

I have just read Sandy Balfour’s book Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8) . I had meant to read it when it was published in 2003 but never got round to it, until I was nudged into remembering during a recent Radio 4 Archive programme on crosswords.

Well worth the wait & a particular pleasure to read during these dismal winter days. Especially as I was beginning to feel so scratchy & irritated by some recent Times crosswords which do not suit my style at all, wondering sometimes if, after more than half a century, I might finally have to give them up altogether.

The book is a story of love, travel, migration to a new country – and yes, cryptic crosswords.

That particular British obsession is a trope which Balfour uses to explain his love for his girlfriend – who introduced him to the puzzles – and what it is about Britain that made him adopt it as the country in which he wished to live, in preference to his native South Africa. It is beautifully written & crafted, a good read even for those who regard crossword addiction as an affliction of the socially inadequate. I am by no means sure that too many will be persuaded to take up the pastime, but that really is not the point of the book.

I found it particularly intriguing that Balfour makes much of the idea that solving a puzzle is not simply a technical process – to really get the most out of the game you must see through to the stories hidden in the clues.

Some present day setters – drawn form the world of computing rather than the clergymen or Oxbridge classicists of the past - as well as the solvers, do indeed seem to treat both cluing & solving as a problem of pure analysis & reduction, but the real pleasure comes from that ‘A-ha’ moment, the endorphin rush which comes with the feeling, not of victory over an opponent but of minds meeting.

And this distinction between stories & analysis in the business of words is worth thinking about, along with all the thinking I am doing about the ‘problem’ of stories v statistics & the theory of probability.

I also loved Balfour’s insistence on the idea that those who race against the clock to complete a puzzle are missing the point.

And I treasure the quote from Shed (who sets puzzles for The Guardian) that Ximenes, like Marx, suffers from the quality of his disciples.

Links
From easy to cryptic: 100 years of the crossword
Related posts
Stories & statistics
How to fill in a crossword puzzle