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Spectator: Jac puzzles
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When I first subscribed to the Spectator their best and longest-serving setter was called Jac - J. A. Caesar, I think. After he retired I went to Yale's Sterling library and xeroxed a bunch of Jac puzzles from his early days - he was the sole setter in his first years - and I had the hubris or stupidity not to make a point of getting answers to all the puzzles.
Now, twenty-odd years later I came across some of my old Jac's puzzles and find them just as hard now as I did then. This is pretty discouraging in itself - you'd think the decades would have brought me enough improvement to handle them - and I'm wondering if anyone knows of a source of answers to early Spectator puzzles and answers. Can anyone help?
For what it's worth, the puzzles I'm looking at now are Jacs 496, 512 and 725.
Now, twenty-odd years later I came across some of my old Jac's puzzles and find them just as hard now as I did then. This is pretty discouraging in itself - you'd think the decades would have brought me enough improvement to handle them - and I'm wondering if anyone knows of a source of answers to early Spectator puzzles and answers. Can anyone help?
For what it's worth, the puzzles I'm looking at now are Jacs 496, 512 and 725.
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It is possible that some of these puzzles feature in one of the Spectator Crossword books that have been published (of which I have some) - and while these aren't numbered in the books, it should be possibly to discern the puzzle from the title and preambles? If you want to give it a punt - email me at [email protected]
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