Many a cross word
My ancient mother doesn't want anything for Christmas. Well, she has quite a small bungalow and it's full of stuff, so she doesn't have room for a lot more of it; besides, it's not as if she can do so much reading now because her eyes aren't that great for close work, and for the same reason she no longer does cross stitch, which she used to enjoy. As for sheet music, forget that - she hasn't played the piano for probably decades now. And so, every year, what I do is I compile a crossword.
Before I give you the clues so you can have a go at it yourself, I would like to talk a bit about how one goes about doing that. There are people who do it by hand on a piece of paper, and I have done that in the past, but, honestly, I'd far sooner not. It is just so much easier to alter things on a computer. I have tried various ways of generating the grid, including what I like to refer to as "spreadsheet abuse", but it turns out that the most effective way is to use a table in LibreOffice. I imagine it's much the same in Word, though thankfully I haven't had to use Word for many a long year now. In LibreOffice you can specify the exact dimensions of the cells, so I set them to 1 cm square; so far, so good. (For a 19 x 19 grid you would either have to set them a little smaller or increase the size of the margins, as otherwise it won't fit on your page.)
There are then various ways of fitting the words in, but if you want rotational symmetry - and I insist on that - then it really boils down to only two choices: you either start in the centre and work out, as I've done here, or you start at the edges and work in, which I've also done in the past. Anything else and you're making extra work for yourself, and compiling a crossword is quite a bit of work in any case. I started this one by blocking in the central square (this takes several mouse clicks in LibreOffice, but, whatever the procedure you need, what you have to do is change the background in that cell of the table from white to black) and then putting in the first word that came into my head, which was 21 across. It happens to be the first word of my favourite lute song (you knew there was going to be at least one musical connection somewhere here). That happened to have seven letters; very good. That meant I could now set up the grid spaces for 22 down, 27 across, and 13 down. I found three more words that would fit, then blocked in the end squares. Next I did 30 across, 28 down, 18 across, and 5 down, to take me to the edges of the board; and I just kept going from there, blocking in symmetrically as appropriate.
Of course, for one thing I didn't know what all the numbers were going to be at that stage, because you don't till you've finished putting all the words in the grid; and for another thing, not all the words stayed the same. If you have a letter in an awkward position, then sometimes you can just think of a word that will fit (I was especially pleased with myself on this occasion for recalling a six-letter word ending in U - there aren't too many of those!), but more often you have to tweak. Usually you can just get away with tweaking the word with the awkward letter; let's say, for instance, you have three words going down so that you have S_T_A__ going across in the grid, and you put in "SATRAPY", which I'm sure you'll agree is a splendid word. But then that Y turns out to be a total nuisance for the next down word; so you erase SATRAPY, have a quick think, and change it to SITUATE. Problem solved! Occasionally, though, that doesn't work, so you end up having to change one or more of the words crossing the original word as well. This is usually more of an issue near the end of grid creation, when you have a lot of existing letters to fit.
Once you have your complete grid, the next thing to do is to number it up. I always used to have a bit of trouble at this stage because I'd invariably manage to miss one or two words (in a symmetrical crossword like this, you always have the same number of across and down clues, which serves as a handy check); so the way I do it now is to work through the grid from the top left-hand corner, erasing each letter in turn, and if it's the start of a word I put a number in. Then I copy the number and the corresponding word into the clue list, so I can immediately see what I'm clueing up. In this way I'm going slowly enough not to miss anything.
And then you start clueing. This is the bit that takes all the time, effort, and occasional bother-and-dratting. I like anagrams - they're relatively easy to do and I'm pretty good at spotting when one will work - but they're also relatively easy to solve, so one doesn't want too many or the crossword won't be enough of a challenge. Words with double meanings are also usually very easy to clue, but generally there aren't many of them in any one grid. So, most of the time, you are picking up a word, shaking it about, and trying to determine how you can put it together from things like common abbreviations, Roman numerals, tonic sol-fa, points of the compass, partial anagrams, and all the other weird little bits of text beloved of crossword compilers, and then shove all that into a clue that isn't either too long or too obviously contrived. It is an art, and I don't claim to be particularly adept at it, but I can at least produce a crossword that is good enough to entertain various members of my family and close friends.
Anyway. I'm sorry I couldn't work out a way for you to do it online; if you want to do this crossword you'll need to download and print off the image above, and probably also copy and paste the clues (you won't need to print those unless you're planning to carry them around with you). I'll put up the solutions at a later date, probably some time next week, so you have a chance to have a go at it if you want.
Happy New Year!
Across
1 I am found in note in Florida (5)
6 Trove is dug up without secrecy (5)
9 Large vegetable on the scale (7)
10 Church land found in single benefice (5)
13 Reveal that Diana’s nearby (8)
14 A round enchantress embraces the Left (6)
15 Theatrical salesperson? (3)
17 Exhaustion, possibly occurring when wearing a set of these (7)
18 Place of healing found at Polish disaster (8)
20 Difficult situation may be its own solution! (3)
21 Lack revealed by sailor before disorderly scene (7)
25 Plane version of 14 is in current (4)
26 Ian returns before 50 for fastening (4)
27 Most compassionate sort ahead of time zone (7)
29 System of weights not right for plaything (3)
30 Giant Ron is confused and knows nothing (8)
31 Evil spirit found in Kew bus, they say (7)
33 A headless singer? Idiot! (3)
35 Good sport smashes stein containing nitrogen (6)
37 Cry about uncle and tangle ends in burial place (8)
40 Temporal indication may be strained (5)
41 High-quality enlargement? (7)
42 Purse shaken up? Great! (5)
43 An extremity is on the go (5)
Down
1 American soldier in raincoat is supernatural (5)
2 Outside of 14 is stirred and frozen (3)
3 Good job I have a Japanese belt! (3)
4 Airs waft in all directions for elegant garment (4)
5 Brides revolving about London district? Tell me about it! (8)
6 After messing up the room, little Lucy does gilding (6)
7 Smouldering fragment found at the end of last month (5)
8 Group of soldiers return coastal settlement about nothing at all (5)
11 Reverse cards for carrier (8)
12 Charge after religious group and split up (7)
13 Dwelling in river? What a let-down! (7)
16 One on diet is in a spin about book version (7)
19 O-negative contains nothing? That’s foreboding (7)
22 Says fit to meet requirements (7)
23 A newborn? No, a teen! (7)
24 Inlet in vent ran centrally (8)
28 Loud, but bothered about note, having reservations (8)
32 Less able to feel mathematical concept? (6)
33 Article by Siegfried Sassoon has great depth (5)
34 Steep slope in Oscar Peterson’s country (5)
36 Shelter in street from wintry weather (5)
38 A flower came up (4)
39 Statute starts looting and warfare (3)
40 Endless steam produces drink (3)
