Crossword Help Forum
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I have not seen any of Royston's quick (sometimes very quick) responses recently. Does anyone know if he is OK, or perhaps just on holiday
Philip

Maybe he is just tired of people wanting pub quiz answers?

This may help:

http://www.crosswordsolver.org/forum/4340/arnold-s

Many thanks, but that was a couple of weeks ago, and I cant remember seeing anything recently.

I agree with you that we are in danger of becoming a pub quiz forum. Could we please stick to cryptic clues. There are enough quiz forums about. Does everyone agree that we should stop answering quiz questions?
Philip

In response to Phillip.
I would rather everyone agreed to spell out the clue,number of letters,etc. Instead of just saying DT something or other 15a.
People who do this persistantly are obviously doing it as a deliberate policy. I suppose they think they are part of some inner circle of special people. To me it is just bad manners.

I agree that it would be good that this forum should retain focus on crossword clues, although I do confess to enjoying the occasional diversion of a non-crossword puzzle such as Kate's recent "fruit & veg" (as do others it seems, from the enthusiastic answers therin).

I think that it's good and healthy to have a diversity of people from different backgrounds visit this forum.

As a very quick, probably statistically-flawed test of the perception that this forum is being diluted I went back over the last 100 threads and categorised them into three groups (based on their title &/or starting post):

1) Crossword help requested
2) Non-Crossword puzzle help requested (e.g. cryptic clues for Yorkshire Place names)
3) Other (e.g. this thread).

I found:

88 x 'Crossword help requested'
6 x 'Non-Crossword puzzle help requested'
6 x 'Other'.

I was quite harsh in marking "away" from the category 'Crossword help requested' although I did not read every post to see if the title was misleading or the original post had been hijacked.

Best wishes ... JimC

I haven't been here very long, but I totally agree with Terry. A thread title should contain the name of the publication and the puzzle number. The message body should contain the clue number, the clue itself, the number of letters and any known letters. Then we all have all the information we need and the OP has a much better chance of getting a quick answer. It would help new posters if there could be a "Posting Hints" button at the top of the forum page.

I agree with John (from Arran) completely here! posting just a random clue number is next to useless, as those people are making the assumption that everyone is reading that particular publication. posting the clue and the answer pattern, however, enables everyone to have a bash at it, and hopefully decreases the time it takes to get the right answer. perhaps a "posting guide" or something similar would be useful...

I am only a recent and occasional poster here but I too like the Crossword in question to be fully identified in the Thread title and the position and full clue wording along with any known letters as past of the post body

I agree with most of what has been said. Personally I'm quite happy to have a go at the odd general knowledge or quiz question. How about if I post a new post with the Subject 'Newbies, please read this before you post' and the message to read along the lines of: 'There are lots of people keeping an eye on this forum - all keen to help answer your queries as quickly as possible. In order to get a rapid response it would be really helpful if you could:-

1) Include publication name, crossword number and clue number in the subject field.
2) Include the full clue, number of letters and position of known letters in your message.
3) Although the forum is primarily for cryptic crosswords, some of us also enjoy trying to help with general knowledge or quiz questions.'

It would need people to keep posting to it to keep it fairly high up the list of posts. Comments please.

Mike