The Stickler Weekly Insights 220

As a cryptic crossword professional it’s important that I make sure I’m up with what’s going on across the world. This means hunting out articles on crosswords, solving offerings from the UK, Australia, NZ and the US, and reading blogs. Solving blogs appear every day, and while they largely deal with current crosswords and clues, they sometimes spark discussion about various cryptic crossword topics. The non-solving blogs, though, have become irregular with their posts, I guess because most topics have been exhausted. I used to look forward to new posts on Crossword Unclued, but the author has mostly switched to Twitter and rarely writes the in-depth articles that were unique in the crossword sphere. There is one blog, however, that I have referred to a number of times, Alan Connor’s Guardian crossword blog, that can be completely relied upon to deliver on a weekly basis. Late last year I emailed Alan directly about something in his blog, and the result eventually was a Meet The Setter interview that appeared on Monday. There’s not much in the interview that regulars here don’t know, but hopefully it’s still worth a read.

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