Frankly, if your brother is doing Fri/Sat/Sun in the Times, he’s good. I would recommend he do Thursdays NYT puzzles as well — they often have tricky grids (rebuses, secondary patterns, etc.) and so while the cluing isn’t as hard as Fri/Sat, they can be somewhat challenging. (I have on the rare occasion finished one before Ross.) And he should seriously consider coming to Brooklyn in February for the ACPT. He’d do well!

We like Cox & Rathvon’s acrostics in the Times. I’m afraid American cryptics don’t please Ross much; it may just be a matter of taste. We still do the Listener (the puzzle he used to edit) but as soon as we’ve won the Solver Silver Salver (its real name) for solvers who have been all-correct the longest, he may opt to taper back on the Listener. (Ross was all correct for so long in the 80s & 90s, they retired him and made him editor. In a sense, he’s been all-correct for over 20 years!)

I personally have always struggled with the blocked-grid cryptics in the daily papers in the UK. I think the Telegraph is supposed to be somewhat easier. We know the people who construct the dailies in the Times of London; the daily puzzles in the Guardian have more setters and more variation.

Your brother can contact us through the blog, or Ross’s website for his software: http://www.crosswordman.com And he should seriously think about competing in the ACPT — it’s a lot of fun, if only to see the guy who dresses up in crosswordy costumes; last year he was a toilet.

“I don’t know it. Looks interesting, though I’m not a total xword puzzle maniac….(I don’t do the NYT puzzle until Friday/Sat/Sun, for example).

Atlantic just printed its last cryptic puzzle. I am still doing Harper’s (and working backwards through their archive). I was in London last week and was thinking of having a crack at the Times cryptic. They are legendary for being obscure. I do think you have to get used to each puzzle creator’s “sensibility”, which can be frustrating.

I still think the most elegant puzzles were by Cox and Rathvon in the Atlantic. Maltby is OK but his puzzle outlines aren’t even constructed with “typical crossword symmetry” which is aesthetically offensive to me. (Hmm…maybe I am a maniac.)

Rgds!”

Ross used to be the editor for the Times of London’s toughest cryptic crossword, called The Listener and published on Saturdays. He moved here to marry me and started solving American style crosswords, most notably the NY Times daily puzzle. The blog is about his efforts to understand American clues and answers — sports, culture, automobiles, food: you name it, it’s not what he grew up with.

I post twice a week. Will Shortz does an on-air puzzle and challenge on NPR every Sunday morning. I post the week’s challenge after the radio broadcast, and then the answer on Thursday after the deadline. I also include a new puzzle based on what the on-air contestant got to do. I’ve recently started to include pictures and some chatty filler just because otherwise my posts looked anemic and colorless next to Ross’s!

As you say, the vast majority of authors don’t have PR people to advise them. Bearing that in mind, I have a certain amount of sympathy for authors who behave badly or lash out online, depending on the situation.

@Janet W The more authors participate in online promotion, the more they have to do it. It’s evolved from an innovative way to get free publicity to an absolute necessity.

I think it’s tough for authors who want to participate in general reader discussions as their words will always be judged differently to those of a regular reader.

But answering/commenting on all reviews, favourable or not? I just can’t see it. It doesn’t make me stand up and take notice. Comment on whatever general stuff, interesting stuff, research avenues, great new stuff from Candice Hern (for example), but don’t interject yourself (the author, the BFF, the defender) into a reader review. Of course, just my opinion, but the best way to be authentic is to genuinely want to join a conversation.

I do like the 48 hour rule but ……. well …… interesting blog!

In a similar but different context, I used to read & comment on one of the post-”Julie & Julia” blogs about cooking all the recipes in a cookbook, in this case the Gourmet Cookbook edited by Ruth Reichl. Teena (the blogger, also a mathematics professor) posted a poor grade for a recipe that just hadn’t worked for her (she trained at a culinary institute, btw, so she’s not your average domestic goddess). Well, the blog had just been featured in a Wall Street Journal article, so Ruth Reichl happened to be lurking. She posted a curt defense of the recipe (which wasn’t hers originally, so in large part she’d just leaped in to defend the original chef and his recipe!), and then all heck broke loose. Teena, the blogger, was immediately starstruck because, after all, this was Ruth Reichl!! I, for my sins, was pissed off because nowhere in Ms. Reichl’s post was there any acknowledgment of Teena’s years of effort in cooking over 1,000 recipes — and generating some sales of the book. (Hey, I bought mine because of Teena’s blog!) I think Reichl would have served herself (and her chef-friend) better by thinking before she posted.

In the romance universe, there is less altitude between the average commenter and the great & famous. Heck, I’ve commented on a post where Linda Howard had previously commented — how cool is that? Some bloggers are more famous than a lot of authors, and anyone anonymous today could be published, award-winning, and well-known tomorrow. I wonder if that fact doesn’t confuse us sometimes.

If a review of an author’s book pops up on a blog she frequents, then she needs to think of herself as the author of the book, not as a regular commenter. A gracious comment, acknowledging the review itself and any substantive bits that merit it, is probably okay. The idea that one waits 48 hours is a good one — that reduces any possibility of an unintended dampening of other commenters’ enthusiasm and freely expressed opinions.

But I’d like to turn this around and remind all commenters to have some empathy for the author, just on this point. The review has to be of the book itself; the reviewer can’t worry about hurting the author’s feelings. But if an author pipes up in a graceless or hasty way, let’s have some compassion for that person. Because just as fame & fortune could be around the corner for any of us, so could the brickbats of literary criticism… And PR and marketing is increasingly falling on the authors’ shoulders — and the pay for that is even crappier than their royalties!

@Meljean I was thrilled to receive your comment the other day! I think the stifling discussion element is more relevant in the case of a negative review whereby commenters might feel reluctant to continue criticizing a book once it’s clear to them that the author is following the thread.

I agree with your point that it would seem unnatural for you not to comment on a review of one of your books on a blog where you are a regular participant in discussions. I think it’s really up to the author to do whatever she feels comfortable with. I’d hate to think authors felt obliged to thank a reviewer out of a sense of etiquette if they really didn’t want to do so.

@Janet W I think author comments can inhibit discussion among readers, but it depends very much on how it’s done. I’d say it’s more likely to do so in the case of a non-glowing review. I also take notice when an author regularly engages in general discussions or only pops up when one of her books is the focus of the conversation. Obviously, authors are under time constraints and may not have the time or the inclination to blog hop. I still find their input interesting in general discussions as they look at things from another perspective.

heidenkind :

I guess it depends on the blog and the review.

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Yes, and the author.