Thumbs up for themes

Last month I asked for your views as to whether the style and general level of difficulty of the Guardian crosswords were pitched about right and, in particular, whether there were now too many 'themed' puzzles being published. Your responses by way of comments online under my April column and as emails directly to crossword.editor@guardian.co.uk were very helpful, so thank you for them. The process produced some delightful vignettes of the part that crosswords can play in people's lives. For an example of networking, one solver in Vancouver, Canada regularly does a weekly Guardian puzzle jointly with her friend in Sydney, Australia and is particularly pleased when it is an Araucaria offering. Another reported that 'if it wasn't for the blessed Rufus crossword on a Monday' he would never have got to solve a single Guardian crossword clue in the first place and 'I am far less likely to buy a printed copy of the paper on a Thursday or Friday, whereas Monday's shopping trips often find me with a Guardian in the basket.'

To summarise the views you expressed it would seem that:

1. With the Quicks: you are fairly happy with their consistency and appreciate the fact that some of the definitions are a degree or two more quirky than those found in quick puzzles in other papers. Cited with approval, for example, were two adjacent clues in the Quick for 27 March (No 13,379), both of which read simply: 'XX (6)'. At the time several people thought that they were being kind in pointing out to me that there had been another Grauniad cock-up and asking whether I could give them the missing clues ASAP. In fact the solutions to these two clues were, respectively, TWENTY and KISSES.

2. With the Cryptics: a) the fact that there is a deliberate range of 'difficulty' in the course of a given week is seen as very much a 'good thing' and there were heart-felt pleas that the average level of difficulty should not be raised; good clues and the element of fun in solving them are clearly, if unsurprisingly, what makes a puzzle enjoyable for most people; b) the 'themed' puzzles got a definitely positive vote, provided that the theme is not so obscure that it can only be cracked for those unfamiliar with it by searching through lists of names, titles, places etc on Google; in passing it is gratifying and, perhaps, a bit surprising to discover how many foreign online solvers, for many of whom English is not their first language, seem to enjoy the challenge of these usually Brit-centred themed puzzles; c) but there was a clear preference for 'light' rather than 'heavy' themed puzzles, ie ones where there is not too much cross-referencing of clues and where the clues make possible at least some progress with the puzzle even without knowledge of an esoteric theme; most popular of all were puzzles with a 'ghost' theme, ie one that is not explicitly announced either in an italic standfirst or by way of cross-referencing in the clues, but where it gradually emerges from the mist as more and more of the clues are solved, making the solver specially pleased for having spotted what is going on.
____

I regularly get complaints, claiming that the current month's Genius puzzle is (still) not available and asking when, if ever, it is going to appear. There are also demands to know why the interactive version of the Cryptics or Quicks is suddenly no longer working. It would be foolish of me (and counter-factual) to claim that the site has not had its technical stumbles, but the problem in these particular cases is much more likely to be at your end than at ours.

To make the interactive versions of our puzzles work on your machine you need to have installed an up-to-date version of JavaScript. In addition, to get either the Guardian Genius or the Observer Azed puzzles on to you screens, you also need to have Java uploaded. Quite often, when you install some new piece of software on your hard drive (or when you update of an existing program with the latest version), JavaScript or Java become temporarily disabled, or even sometimes deleted.

So your first act of trouble shooting in these cases should be to check that JavaScript and/or Java are still installed and in their 'enabled' mode; or, if for some reason they have disappeared, to install them again. Your second course of action, if this has not done the trick, is to ask for advice from userhelp@guardian.co.uk, where there are people to help you who, unlike me, know how the system works.
_____

I know if sounds incompetent, but my search for the date and place of the original publication of what is, perhaps, Araucaria's most celebrated anagram has still not come up with the answer. It must have appeared around Christmas; it was some time ago and it may not have been in the Guardian. It is the one where the anagram of 'O hark the herald angels sing the boy's descent which lifted up the world' produced the solution WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS BY NIGHT ALL SEATED ON THE GROUND. Araucaria remembers the clue well enough, but not where and when it appeared. I should be most grateful if anyone could give me a clue.
_____

April's Genius puzzle (No 118 by Araucaria) produced 341 entries by the deadline. The first in was Barry J and the first from abroad was Pau... from Switzerland.

Congratulations to Kathryn Knight, who is the April winner.
_____

We hope you enjoy our crossword service. If you have any technical problems with it, please email userhelp@guardian.co.uk . If you have any comments or queries about the crosswords, please email crossword.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk . For Observer crosswords please crossword.editor@observer.co.uk .