Symmetry: None
Size: 169 cells
Theme:
Lights are entered in Greek.
Other information:
Some clues contained Greek; all answers were to be entered in Greek. The preamble started as follows:
“The note printed below will indicate that competitors are asked not to approach this crossword in a spirit of pedantry, remembering that giving a clue to a word does not imply parsing it or adopting the first and commonest meaning to be found in the lexicon.”
Below the grid was to be found:
“[Note.—Accents, breathings, and iotas subscript are ignored. Clues are not given for words of two letters, and while in most clues an indication of the tense, person, or case is given, competitors must be prepared for some looseness on this point. Some of the words are in dialect forms.]”
The solution contained the following:
“After correcting our Greek Crossword
we are left wondering at the ability of our readers.
The Crossword was a difficult one,
difficult enough for a Professor of Greek
to give it up on the ground that
he had not ‘a week to spare for it’,
and yet about twenty competitors sent in
solutions which were substantially correct.
On second thoughts we feel that the clue to 11 Down
(‘A busdriver would not say this to a policeman’—
σαλασσω I overload)
was not an absolutely fair one in view of
three of the letters being blind and the clue negative.
Our object in setting crosswords being to provide
interesting tests of the skill of our competitors
and not merely lotteries,
we feel justified in accepting any reasonable alternative solution
for the word in question …
For similar reasons, where two competitors differed from us
on grounds of scholarship as to the last letter of 52 Across
(the only other word that proved much of a stumbling block)
we have accepted their alternative.”