Too hard or too soft?

Solvers were unable for the last few days of April to submit entries for Genius No 130 and the same applied to the May Genius No 131 between Monday 5 May and Tuesday 6 May. We thought, at first, that it was a problem caused by the latest version of Java but it became clear that it was more serious than that. Over the long bank holiday weekend we were unable to identify what was causing it. This was obviously infuriating to Genius fans. (I have had so many emails on the point that, I fear, I cannot reply to each one individually.) A fix is now in place and Genius grids are working once again. I encourage you to enter the May puzzle Genius No 131.
_____

In the last month we have had a volume of complaints that the Quick puzzle has overnight become much too difficult. The complainants usually assumed that we must have taken on a new setter, demanding that we get rid of her/him as soon as possible. In fact the setting arrangements have not changed for a long time, nor has there been any change of policy about them. I inherited in 1997 from my predecessor John Perkin an administratively simple procedure: all the Quicks are set it batches of 18 (three weeks) by three people in turn. Then they were Araucaria, Mercury and Rufus. Over the years the cast list has changed and today it is Paul, Chifonie and Orlando.

The complaints that the Quicks have become too hard are matched by comments, particularly online, that they are now much too easy. A pub quizzer once explained to me that the difference between a hard quiz and an easy one depended mainly on whether or not one knew the answers to the questions asked. I also recall a remark by a senior Conservative politician, John Boyd-Carpenter, long since dead, who was known affectionately as Spring-heel Jack for his idiosyncratic way of bouncing along as he walked. He once said that, as a politician, if the angry noise in his left ear and the angry noise in his right ear were of approximately the same volume, he tended to conclude that he must be facing in roughly the right direction. Am I safe in taking comfort from Spring-heel Jack's words in relation to the current too hard/too easy debate about the Quicks, or do you detect of late a change that has slipped past me unwittingly?
_____

The Easter jumbo puzzle was themed on Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. Nine of the solutions were characters in the play, one being A. Rees. There seems to be some dispute as to the correct spelling of Rees's first name. We wanted Attila but it seems that some editions, including the one published by the Folio Society, has him as Atilla. Certainly my J.M. Dent and Sons edition (1954), which seems to have been the first in book form, has him as Attila. But this was prepared for publication after Dylan died, so he never had a chance to check the proofs, which were based on the script for the original radio broadcast. By then, in any case, he was almost certainly in no state at all to correct proofs carefully. So we can never know what the great man originally intended.
_____

For legal reasons a winner for the April prize has been selected from the entrants that solved the puzzle before the technical problems emerged. The winner has been notified and will be announced shortly.
_____

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 .