The G&T Quick Crossword #1 Quickies Posted by Jonathan Capps on 27th October 2021, 12:23 Over the last 18 months of fuckery a lot of people have turned to puzzles to occupy their minds, as evidenced by the high popularity of YouTube channels like Cracking the Cryptic. So, we thought why not have a stab at creating our own Red Dwarf crosswords and pit you all against each other? My personal preference is for kinder puzzles such as the Guardian Quick and the New York Times crosswords, and so our first attempt at constructing has been very much in their vision. Laid out in the UK style, but with clues more inspired by the NYT, I think what we’ve ended up is something that is quite tough but should also be fair. You can play after the jump and see how you do and let us know your times (although be careful not to spoil any answers). I should warn you all now that Ian and Danny are more immersed in the murky, scary underworld of the Cryptic Crossword so consider that a warning for the future! The G&T Quick Crossword #1
This is a very fun idea. Great stuff. One thing I’m slightly confused by – the clue for 21A contains a reference to 14D, but there isn’t a 14D, just a 14A (and even then I’m not sure the reference makes sense) – was this meant to refer to something else or have I misunderstood?
This is a very fun idea. Great stuff. One thing I’m slightly confused by – the clue for 21A contains a reference to 14D, but there isn’t a 14D, just a 14A (and even then I’m not sure the reference makes sense) – was this meant to refer to something else or have I misunderstood? Sigma 14D reference I presume?
Currently stuck on half a dozen after 15 minutes, but this is a great little idea. As for 14D – yes, I’m taking it as an in-Dwarf thing, as opposed to a clue direction. Still one of the ones I’m stuck on, mind.
And yeah this is a really neat idea! 3 to get, but I’m not sure what they can be – hopefully I’ve not got something else wrong (unthinkable!)
Done! Must admit I guessed the last one (5) but overall that was a lot of fun and some tricky clues in there!
I finished it in 15m54s and got 260 points. Some of those were tough – my daughter had to help me get the last one!
24 across is my last one, and I’m fucked if I can think what it is. I’ve been taking my time, doing other stuff as I’m going about it, so I’m on about 35 minutes now (any excuse, right?). No speed rewards for me.
Done! I may not be fast but I get there in the end. My brain just needed food. Those last two were pretty obvious after I’d had lunch.
I’m really glad people are managing to do it, I wasn’t sure if one or two of these were going to be too difficult.
45 minutes, 20 seconds. Fuck me. I finally got that bastard at 24 across, only to discover I’d got 11 across wrong.
Those last two were pretty obvious after I’d had lunch. I found the ones I was missing came fairly quickly after I’d eaten, too.
19 down and 8 down had me stumped for aaaaages – I spent about half hour on it, then had to go away and move to a different machine, and restarted it – blasted through adding in the answers I got previously, when 19 and 8 finally clicked! Huzzah!
I think the level of challenge was just about right here. I’ll be screwed if things start heading more in the cryptic direction as I can never get my head around those things!
I’m currently on 24mins (just came back after a massive break) and really stumped on the last few I need. Definitely behind a lot of you guys here. Missing 5A 4D 11A 14A 17A 20A 24A 21A 19D Bloody loving this though, very well done.
5, 6 & 21 are proving bastards. I somehow can’t get 24 either, even though I’ve got half the letters, unless some of those are wrong. Some of these have been less Red Dwarf knowledge and just filling in the recognisable word when I got enough letters, like the potato salad one which must be from a less familiar episode.
5 I’ve no idea of and 6 is really annoying me as the things I think it should be aren’t 5 letters. 24 took me looking the crew up and then I spotted something that lead me to that answer … it’s definitley not the sort of thing you’d ever really think of I don’t think I really requires having a good number of the letters to fill in the blanks The potato salad one I managed to get, and I know it’s a cat line, but I can’t remember from where.
Just noticed the ‘check’ function and 19 wasn’t the obvious one as suspected. I also don’t know how to spell in French.
When I figured that answer out I had to look up the spelling. I didn’t realise “fr.” in the clue meant “in French” … at least I assume that’s what it is.
6 was kind of tricky in that I don’t think it’s the most obvious thing you would think of – but once you get the words it connects to then there’s only really one option.
43:21, 260 points. Though I don’t consider it a true victory, because I totally got frustrated half way through and just started brute-forcing it. Crosswords… may not be my thing. The answer to 19D is so obscure that I had to google it afterwards just to convince myself that you didn’t just make it a completely random 4 letter word as a joke. I was never going to get 5A either, but from the clue detail I knew straight away that was just a gap in my knowledge.
The answer to 19D Some people need to be get listened to a certain recently concluded DwarfCast series. I think what I’m getting form this is I need to give a little more context to the more esoteric or deep knowledge based clues. Just maybe one or two small nudges for the harder ones might’ve made things a bit more satisfying.
I got 24 on second round, based on recognising the word from the letters again. That’s as much as I can do without trying out letters or knowing things.
I’m down to 4, 5, 14, 20, 21 Some people need to be get listened to a certain recently concluded DwarfCast series. You never said there’d be a test! I’d have made notes.
The answer to 19D Some people need to be get listened to a certain recently concluded DwarfCast series. I think what I’m getting form this is I need to give a little more context to the more esoteric or deep knowledge based clues. Just maybe one or two small nudges for the harder ones might’ve made things a bit more satisfying. I did wonder whether a “clue” feature existed (I’ve never used this crossword system before), but maybe it’d be too much work to set that up for each answer.
Some people need to be get listened to a certain recently concluded DwarfCast series. Uh oh, I accidentally ate my crossword dessert before my DwarfCast Book Club mains! I can’t believe I tripped and fell head first into a Hot Gazpacho level faux pas. The shame. Don’t worry though, I’ll catch up with those as soon as I motivate myself to actually re-read the novels. (Or, read for the first time, in the case of the Not-Available-As-Chris-Barrie-Audiobooks-So-I-Couldn’t-Easily-Listen-To-Them-On-My-Commute-A-Few-Years-Ago-After-I’d-Finished-The-First-Two-Novels Duology.) Then I just need to re-watch nearly every episode of the TV show so I can listen to all of the commentary DwarfCasts at the same time, and I’ll be all set! It would help me a lot if creatives could stop making new films, TV programmes etc. for a few months. Perhaps I’ll write a letter and ask them.
1hr 13 … but i basically had to cheat the last few and just brute them but going letter by letter and checking if it was correct. 19D feels really obscure compare to the rest. I feel like I knew 5A once but it’s nothing something thats ever discussed much. Very enjoyable though. Well done Cappsy.
50:59 was my time btw, but there was a pause for lunch. Anyone else put the too-obvious answer for 19D, then get 24A and think ha, ISWYDT, and only realise that was wrong as well when they got 21A? Kudos to you Cappsy, especially if that’s what you intended 👍
19D feels really obscure compare to the rest. Although obscure, I think I agree with JC that the obscurity itself is fine, but the clue should ideally indicate that the correct answer is not just the most obvious one that fits (e.g. if the clue is “_____ Rimmer (6)” I will confidently put in “Arnold” assuming that this is meant to be one of the easy clues to get you going, then not having put the correct answer of “Howard” will trip me up on the connected answers). Of course, for the very first official G&T crossword, having only one clue that I can legitimately gripe about is great. Looking forward to having my head hurt even more by the next one! Though given my… success with this one, I may want to warm my brain up with a few Red Dwarf wordsearches first.
Though given my… success with this one, I may want to warm my brain up with a few Red Dwarf wordsearches first. https://archive.org/details/reddwarfquizbook0000hook
19D feels really obscure compare to the rest. Although obscure, I think I agree with JC that the obscurity itself is fine, but the clue should ideally indicate that the correct answer is not just the most obvious one that fits (e.g. if the clue is “_____ Rimmer (6)” I will confidently put in “Arnold” assuming that this is meant to be one of the easy clues to get you going, then not having put the correct answer of “Howard” will trip me up on the connected answers). Of course, for the very first official G&T crossword, having only one clue that I can legitimately gripe about is great. Looking forward to having my head hurt even more by the next one! Though given my… success with this one, I may want to warm my brain up with a few Red Dwarf wordsearches first. But… that’s the joy of the clue, that it subverts expectations! Also crosswords are supposed to have an element of confirmation coming from collective answers rather than necessarily knowing that every answer is bang on first time.
I was never that grand at crosswords even before becoming beset by brain fog. However this is enticing me to have a crack at it – some time next week, most likely (yes I am expecting it to take the whole day’s brainpower). Oooh the anticipation!
23:55. Thanks for this, it made my whole day. But man, 19-down really made me go through the whole pantheon of insults from the entire show before I had to brute force it. I don’t care if the solution only is 4 letters, in my head-canon, the correct answer is “novelty condom.”
But… that’s the joy of the clue, that it subverts expectations! Also crosswords are supposed to have an element of confirmation coming from collective answers rather than necessarily knowing that every answer is bang on first time. I mean… I guess? I thought the idea was the intersecting words confirmed your answer if you either didn’t fully understand the clue or were unsure of the answer, not that they could be an absolute requirement and you have no way of knowing for which clues that will be case. Maybe the subversion can work, but only if the remote possibility of the most obvious answer being wrong is in your mind. Personally I could have stared at the grid for 50 hours and I’d still be thinking “I know 19D is correct, so what kind of subversive answer are they going for with 21A and 24A???”.
I’ve been thinking about this as I’m quite proud of 19D’s fuckery and it’s definitely a style of clue you get in the NYT (where they lead you to think it’s the obvious answer but it’s something slightly more obscure), but I think the difference there is those layouts give you crosses on pretty much every single letter so it’s much easier to realise you’ve made an error. Because I’ve used the UK layout you have fewer crosses and so this clue has ended up causing more troubles. I’m fascinated by the polar opposite reactions to it, though!
I think what Jack said, about needing a slightly better clue, would have made the answer more fun to get. The answer as it stands, whilst something that is in Red Dwarf isn’t something I’d associate with Red Dwarf, whereas all of the other answers definitely are much more closely linked.
I’m amazed I didn’t get more hate for 6D and 20A to be honest, as that was a case of only having one option to put a word in and having to think up a Dwarfy clue. We have another grid already constructed for the second quick so any feedback on the clues is greatly received as we start writing those! Really pleased people mostly enjoyed this, though!
6D annoyed me it wasn’t the obvious 4 letter word answers, but the answer it turned out to be felt logical too. 20A I got just from having the cross letters, but if that’s what it is on screen (I didn’t check) then fair enough. At least that’s in-show geeky trivia. I think you nailed these clues mostly to be honest. Other than 19D not giving enough context for the answer, (and 5A being an answer to soemthing everyone had forgotten) everything else felt gettable.
After 17 minutes, just stuck with 11 across, despite having half the letters… That one really bothered me, but it is related to the answer you probably think/want it to be.
Yeah 11 across was one that my brain refused to put together for a while! Out of interest what extra context would people have wanted in the clue for 19D? “____ HEAD… not the one you’re thinking of!” or something? 3D also opened the context to include stuff beyond the episodes without explicitly stating it but nobody seems to have had a problem with that one.
3D is much more linked to the Red Dwarf universe. If you said the answer to 19D to me I wouldn’t have ever thought of RD.
I just had an epiphany of what ___ HEAD was, maybe it was seeing it as two separate words. My mind was stuck in the insults camp before, and with just vowels confirmed, there seemed to be endless options.
Looked up the series 1 casting page on TOS (‘Badiel’ has two Ds btw) to get the actress, and I got the Holly one as a result. 48 mins, not counting extracurricular thinking/frustration.
That was enjoyable, even though it took me 54 minutes to complete. I got 5 quite quickly, but struggled to get 3 as was looking for an anagram of ‘Earth left in a’
YOUR SCORE: 260 You completed the puzzle in 33 minutes, 6 seconds Some of those were absolutely fiendish. “____ HEAD” alone has multiple wrong answers!
I’ve definitely learnt to pay attention to what the crosses on difficult answers are. I think the fact that clue would’ve been much faired had it been for the first and third letters.
Ooh that was fun! I did it! With the help of the check function, and guessing letters for quiiiite a few. I accidentally pressed the ‘back’ button so I don’t know how long it took in total, but the 2nd go with maybe one third of the answers left to work out took 12 mins; I’m sure the first stint took at least that long but entirely likely longer. Looking forward to the next one – as long as it’s not more difficult! ;)
28 minutes, 6 seconds. Needed the check function for a few, but most of it came easily in the end. Actually got ____ Head quicker than some seemed to, but yes, pretty obscure.
Good fun, thanks. I did it in just over 37 minutes but had to ‘cheat’ a bit with the actress struck off, Holly lifting the mood and pixelated Holly, by using the check function.
YOUR SCORE 260 You completed the puzzle in 50 minutes, 4 seconds. …but I cheated for 1A, 10A, 11A, 19D, and 24A with the check function and took Jenuall’s suggestion for 21A and Warbodog’s suggestion for 5A. Much easier to cheat when you discover the “Error check mode” in the settings!
