The Stickler Weekly 63 Solution

I was alerted by the rec.puzzles.crosswords newsgroup to an editing mistake in a recent Times crossword, and thought I’d talk about it briefly as I think it highlights a couple of interesting things. Here’s the faulty clue: Disturbance in field scattered old fragments in two minutes (8,5)*. The mistake is that “scattered” should be “scattering”, possibly not a problem if it was an anagram indicator, but as “scattering” was actually part of the anagram fodder, the change made the clue incorrect from a wordplay perspective.
I’ve always believed the UK Times puzzles were test-solved, and if they are, then it’s clear that the editing process happens after the test-solving, as there’s no way such an error would get through. If there’s no test-solving, then maybe there should be, and if there is then maybe it should happen after the editor has done an initial rounds of changes, which leads me to the second point: the editor obviously doesn’t “cold-solve” the submitted crosswords, that is, solve them as if they were an actual solver – it’s more likely that they go through it with the answers at hand, which is a dangerous practice. Cold-solving takes more time but will force the editor to understand the workings of clues which will help them better realise the impact of making editorial changes. (BTW, the UK puzzles I’ve written have included explanations at the request of the editor – do they look at them, or only look at them when they are stumped?) Lastly, it’s clear the editor doesn’t feed back the changes to the original setter, if it had happened in this case the setter would have realised the editor’s mistake. I know from my dealings with editors they reserve the power to make changes without consultation or approval – which is their right – but a courtesy email listing changes would have been beneficial in this case.
So how did the mistake happen? It’s not a simple case of an “improvement” gone wrong, although the editor no doubt believed that’s what they were doing. There’s been an increased use over the years of descriptive language in clues that isn’t common in everyday speech. “AA boxes B” becomes “ABA” and “ABC changes in DD” becomes “DBACD” etc. No-one I know describes or defines things this way and I believe it only works if the same sort of language continues throughout the whole clue. “ABA” (definition) = “AA boxes B” (wordplay) just doesn’t work for me. However, many setters use this style of clue and that’s what’s happening in the faulty clue: “fragments” is used as an anagram indicator and should act on “scattering” (plus “o” for “old”), however, the editor missed “fragments” and saw “scattering” as the anagram indicator and decided to improve it by changing its form to “scattered”.
It’s rare that a puzzle like the Times contains such a mistake as it uses the best setters and the best people in the puzzle production process, but this mistake perhaps highlights a deficiency in the process that could possibly be eliminated with a tweak or two.

[*Disturbance in field scattered old fragments in two minutes (8,5) should be Disturbance in field scattering old fragments in two minutes (8,5) – MAGNETIC STORM = anagram of SCATTERING + O(ld) inside MM]