Solvers tackling last Thursday’s Guardian crossword will have noticed that the setter Philistine was on his usual witty, playful form. Non-solvers, brace yourselves, but we had, for example, “Help N-Z (4)”, where the word for “help” (ABET) is also, like N-Z, the second half of … well, ALPHABET.
Once they had filled the grid, though, some noticed a little bonus. There, in the Sticklebrick-like squares in the top and bottom row was … a message of sorts.
This struck a chord. Solvers messaged each other: “Have you seen …?” The Mirror’s associate editor tweeted a photo of the crossword page to his 189,800 followers, not all of whom will have been Guardian solvers. The Mail ran a feature that raised the issue of the effect of this crossword on children. To be precise: on those children who don’t know the word in question, and who are able to complete a cryptic crossword, and to notice TO BREXIT in the bottom row and to guess that the letters in the top row might complete some message. Later, our Q&A with Philistine shot to the top of the most-read chart (in the Crossword subsection, at least).
There’s always a frisson when a crossword appears to have a secret message: think of MI5’s desperate investigation when the spooks noticed that successive puzzles in the Telegraph contained as answers the top-secret codenames for D-Day. And sometimes there really is some extra trickery going on, besides the twists and turns of the wordplay: back when the referendum itself took place, Boatman had a Guardian puzzle with two equally valid but different solutions.
Philistine’s puzzle has something extra, though … crosswords don’t tend to take such a forthright view. The Guardian’s crossword editor, Hugh Stephenson, tells me: “I am in principle against the crosswords being used for editorialising, but for a long time the Guardian has run editorials and comment pieces that, in one way or another, convey [the same] message.”
Deb Amlen, the setter in charge of the New York Times’ crossword blog, messaged me tersely: “This is amazing. We could never get away with this” And Philistine’s intervention shines a light on a difference between how Americans and British people get their news.
Over there, newspapers valiantly strive for even-handedness and respectability, which you wouldn’t say often of the British press; meanwhile, it’s fair to say that there’s no equivalent of the BBC dominating the American airwaves. Amlen adds:
As a dedicated subversive, I loved Philistine’s idea to hide a political message in his puzzle. As an editor at the New York Times, also known as the Gray Lady, I would say: ‘Shame on him.’ As long as anyone is looking.
Historically, our crosswords have been a refuge from the news, so a message like that, no matter how well hidden, would not pass muster. But the subversive in me would like to see someone try.
What of Philistine himself? Before we hear, you might want to read his words knowing that his voice is the mellifluous one heard below, where the setter is wearing his other hat: the almost equally important job of heart surgeon.
Did he inform the Guardian’s crossword editor of his covert campaign? “Not as such,” says Philistine, suggesting that there’s some understanding among crossworders that they all know that each other might be up to something, “but when I sent him the puzzle, I asked if it could be published before the end of October. I believe that was an obvious ‘flag’.”
And why this puzzle now? “I have no political influence or online presence, but the crossword medium gives me the opportunity of a voice. I took it.”
No online presence, but this is a reminder that I’ve been meaning for a while to discuss with Philistine the books about cardiac surgery that he has written and that I have found astonishing. I’ll be back with those.
