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I was finding a recent puzzle a challenge, and wrote as much by the setter’s pseudonym: HARD. A few clues further in, it felt not just hard, but also ..

. familiar. How could this be? I had a look through my clipboards, and there it was.



Due to a filing error, this was a puzzle I had solved a month earlier. Written by the setter’s pseudonym: EASY. The phenomenon is sometimes easily explained, like those moments in 2021 and 2022 where I said to myself: well, well, the quick is getting harder and harder, not like the old days – before remembering that I was in bed having tested positive for Covid-19.

Other times, less prosaically, it’s to do with my expectations. Often, when I’ve been struggling with a clue in one of the weekend puzzles with no black squares and added endgame shenanigans , I realise that it’s nowhere near as demanding as I’d thought. The “cross” in the clue is not a ZHO somewhere in the answer or even a ZO (a Himalayan hybrid cattle; Chambers also gives DSO, DZO and incredibly DZHO), but an actual cross.

An X. A clue that could have appeared in a reasonable puzzle. When you think something’s hard, it then is.

I mention this because there have been enough remarks recently suggesting that the Observer’s entry-level Everyman puzzle ( of which I am the sixth incumbent ) is “getting harder than it used to be” to make me worried that some solvers might be tempted to believe it. Everyman is not supposed to be a taxing exercise. Looking at the .

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