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Someone recommended a show to me called "Inside No. 9", written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, the guys responsible for The League of Gentleman and, while that was never really my thing, I thought I'd give this a try so watched an episode called The Riddle of the Sphinx .

IMDB summarised the plot as "A professor at the University of Cambridge attempts to teach a student how to solve a cryptic crossword" and rated it as the 3rd best episode which, given the show has run for 9 seasons, seems high praise indeed.

To say there's more too it would be a gross understatement.

Has anyone here seen it?

I watched some of those programmes and really hated them (as I did The league of gentlemen), but I did watch the crossword one. It was nearly as bad. I think that the crossword was in fact written by an amateur compiler who has had a couple published in the Guardian, but I can't remember who.

Brendan, yes, “Sphinx” is Steve Pemberton, who has had two crosswords published in the Guardian. The first was timed to coincide precisely with the tv episode you are referring to.

If you look carefully at the credits of that show you will notice that the crossword advisor was Alan Connor… the current “Everyman” and the new Guardian crossword editor following the recent sad departure of Hugh.

I found this..

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2017/feb/28/riddle-of-the-sphinx-guardian-cryptic-crossword-inside-no-9

Brendan, I’ve add an @ in the heading to indicate that this is more of a chat thread than one seeking help on an actual crossword. I don’t want to build anyone’s hopes up that this is a crossword on the ancient Sphinxes😂

I also found this from 2017.
I did watch it !

https://www.crosswordsolver.org/forum/612779/inside-no-9-the-riddle-of-the-sphinx/

I’m going to have to watch it now. Found it on iPlayer… Series 3 episode 3.

…she’s called Nina! 😂

Yikes 😳 I had seen it before but forgotten quite how dark it turns...

I watched it ages ago, and enjoyed it very much. Many of these have wonderful twists and its well worth spending time on the series: although obviously the quality varies over so many episodes, there are enough great ones to justify a few below par