Ever wondered what DA looks like?
I certainly haven’t, but when I came across the DA column that runs in the Sydney Morning Herald and the accompanying mug shot, I was nonetheless unsurprised by his appearance, thinking he looked much like a crazy cruciverbalist would look like.
Here he is, and his column:
And is the quick crossword a new DA extravaganza, or has he always been doing one and I never noticed before?
The Age quick crossword doesn’t show the id of the setter, but the online crossword service (which closed down last week) did, and it was always the same as for the cryptic for that day. And whenever I checked, they were the same crosswords as published hardcopy in The Age. So it looks to me like DA’s been setting Friday’s quick crossword for as long as he’s been doing the cryptic. Bit hard to imagine him setting a quick crossword, isn’t it?
I never bother with quick crosswords because I find them so frustratingly ambiguous.
I figured DA would have felt the same way.
Odd indeed.
Me too.
And this week he used the same grid for both Quick and Cryptic!
SMH cryptics and quicks have, in my admittedly short memory, always used the same grid and setter.
I used to be an Age reader and I thought the grids were different for a while recently. Perhaps not.
The new DA grid in the Saturday Age is pox. I just about need glasses to read it and fill in the clues, and there is rock all spare space for doodling.
By way of a comparison.
The new Sunday Times crossword grid, and layout, in the Weekend Australian is simply marvellous. Big grid, heaps of white space around, a winner.
Weekend Australian 1 – Saturday Age 0
I’ve got photocopies of the Saturday crosswords for the last three weeks (ever since DA moved to Saturday) and not only are the grids for cryptic and quick different but also the grid size is different. The cryptic is 15×15, the quick 13×13. This seems to contradict a few comments above. Maybe you’re looking at the SMH and maybe the SMH quick crossie is different from the Age quick crossie.
People look at the quick crossword? Bizarre. I thought the problem was that the grid for Saturday DA is smaller than the grid for Friday DA.
That’s right RB. I’m looking at both in front of me now (Saturday’s Age & SMH) and only the SMH has the same grid for both. The Age’s quick grid is indeed 13×13. I wonder who compiles it and why they don’t just keep things symmetrical. Ah, the arcane world of crossword syndication.