One way to ensure a novel gets my attention is a foreword that mentions crosswords, specifically the Guardian’s. I admit that this does not happen often, but it has just happened. Tony White’s Phantom at the Feast opens with this claim:

double quotation markWords emboldened in the text of this novel are the solutions to successive Guardian ‘Quick Crosswords’ that appeared through sixty days in 1985 from 3 April to 1 June

You can read more about it at Prospect magazine. Thanks for your responses to last month’s assurance that all of our crosswords are created by human beings, best summarised by Kazoom:

double quotation markAm glad you’ve posted this. The ‘created by AI’ comments, often supported by zero evidence, have become quite tedious to read. It’s OK to fail, or just not get into the groove on a particular day, but just accept that’s a you problem.

And if you want more on artificial intelligence and puzzles, Gizmodo has given large language models some cryptics.

Once solvers had got somewhere with Glyph’s Genius for August, it became evident that the preamble was demanding a SOAP OPERA THEME. Theme in more ways than one:

The grid was also secretly a piece of sheet music! This month’s Genius is by Turnstone and awaits your attention. If you haven’t tried a Genius before, this could be your way in.

And many thanks for your clues for EERIE. The audacity award is of course Wellywearer2’s for the brazen “Becoming cheerier, then sneerier, then leerier, when getting beerier? It’s time to find the weird commonality within!”

The runners-up are Mr_Rob_T’s intriguing “Weird European TV show Naked” and 10FootClaudicant’s evocative “Sinister eyes raised oddly”. And the winner is the refreshing “Headless beer that is chilling”.

Kludos to Batteredmullet; please leave clues for THEME below, along with any favourite clues or puzzles you have spotted.