My submission for this year's Secret 7's exhibition. I pulled another hat trick and didn't get in again, three years in a row, previous record was two. Yay. I don't know, if this isn't good enough then nothing I do will be good enough.

This was to be for the track No Kind Words by Maccabees, so as you can see it's a Crossword. It is a real cryptic crossword that I made, based on the theme "No Kind Words", which you can do if you want. Scroll through the images I uploaded and screen grab them and print them off and do the crossword if you want. I'd love to hear any feedback about it, because I've not had a lot from people. Most of the ones I've made haven't been done by anyone other than one other person, a woman in America or Canada who volunteered to test the 18 grids I made up in good faith for iScot Magazine 10 years ago before our working relationship became difficult to maintain and they decided to pay slightly more (than they had paid me for 5 months on average per grid + extra illustration work) for computer generated stock crosswords, for their "grassroots" publication. You can read all about that here if you like, on my thus far only had one hit on one page website I tried to put together CRYPTIC CROSSWORDS https://www.stuseaton.art/cryptic-crosswords/

2 / This is actually the fourth time I've had Cryptic Crossword(s) I compiled rejected in the last 12 years. Just as well I do it for the love, for the love of making up cryptic crosswords. This one here took me about 6 weeks, from creating the grid with the words in it to then writing the clues, while maintaining the theme: No Kind Words. The hardest part is often fitting the words in and keeping a symmetric grid as the spaces for letters become filled you become more and more restricted by what words you can use, so designing a crossword with further restrictions placed on the pool of words you can use can be more of a challenge. No Kind Words is quite a broad, general theme though so the grid of words(solutions) that I came up with actually fell into place quite quickly, within the first two days. And if it hadn't been for that I might not have gone further with the project, which then took me a further six weeks to complete. 

Overall I think in the end the clues lean more heavily towards the theme than much of the solutions, which is ultimately what I wanted anyway for the sleeve design I had imagined, since I wouldn't want to have the solutions on the front. I was pleased with how well the overall theme of the crossword came together, while also throwing in references to some current themes and a bit of humour, so I'd say it's about 85-90% within the proposed theme, in many different ways.

Do I also have to upload them in reverse order so they show up in the order that you have to read them?

3/ The idea that started this off was to have a sleeve design based on hangman, with the answer to the phrase in the game being _____ , _____ , __ , __ , _,_,_ in other words, without unintentionally criminalising myself, it's the Bob Vylan chant from his Glastonbury set in 2025. This idea quickly evolved into an idea for lots of things, but most notably to compile a full blown cryptic crossword and put it on the sleeve. And so that is what I rolled with, and that is where all the energy I could find was placed. 

You'll note Clue 1a. is kind of vague, and not really a clue. The answer to that, the starting point for the grid was the Bob Vylan chant. So there you have a head start in doing the crossword if you feel like it. I try to write interesting and challenging clues so if anyone has a go, I hope you enjoy it and don't find it too difficult or too easy. 

In the end, because I thought that perhaps they might not want this chant being a part of the exhibition (even in some kind of insinuated form) and to prevent myself from potentially being arrested and charged under fascist laws, I decided that I would completely redact this clue from the crossword altogether. I have removed all but any trace of clue from the clue; Most of the letters from the solution on the back (other than the letters which appear in other solutions) have been removed; I have also altered the grid slightly in such a way that one of the letters in the solution is actually a black square (this was also a decision I made because I was running out of theme solutions on the top symmetrical end); and one of the letters is wrong on the solutions grid, for both solutions in fact, which also in turn resolves any potential issues around the use of what normalised society considers to be "foul language" in said other solution. Otherwise, it is 98% deliberate error free and well checked and quadruple checked. 

4/ I have completely erased 1. across from the crossword and turned this sort of into a piece of performance art, since I am self-censoring. I am self-censoring in protest of censorship and insane, societal language decorums - and to highlight the ridiculous so called anti-torrer laws being used to silence journalists and oppress innocent people for speaking out against G£NOCID£.

Other than 1a. it's a real cryptic crossword with some good clues (I think) which I always spend time thinking really carefully about so if you are into a good cryptic crossword then I would recommend. Anyone who wants a better A4 PDF copy or whatever, just send me an email: stuart@whiteadder.rocks including and especially prospective publishers. 

Once I had the crossword clues themselves finished, which is always a long process and some clues take longer to think up than others, I had the wonderful task of arranging the clues into concentric squares going out from the centre and round the grid in the middle. I don't know if you have ever tried this, I wouldn't recommend it, it takes f cking ages and is incredibly laborious. And the thing about this design was that I couldn't really start that bit of the design process until I had all the clue written, so I could then see how long they all were and how much space to work out for the square spirals.

Then, on the Saturday before the deadline I realised (after finishing all the arrangement of the clues) that I had mispelt one of the solutions #facepalm So with about 48 hours to go I had to replace not one but two solutions in order to get it right, and then I also had to rewrite the clues which then meant I had to slightly re-arrange the placement of the clues on the design. It very nearly didn't come together. And then, within hours of my uploading my final entry on Sunday entry (because they told us not to wait until the last minute and that they wouldn't accept any late submission) they then extended the deadline by a further week. So I would have liked more time to finish it, mainly maybe more thought and time adding some little illustrations here and there, but otherwise I think it was complete enough.

5/ I will upload the solutions later, in case anyone might want to have a go at the crossword? It should be solvable and challenging at the same time. 

When I upload the solutions I will also reveal which of one of my favourite all time albums gets a nod. There's a bit of an Easter Egg in there, which is more apparent from reverse than the front, and you will only know it if you are a fan - it's quite an obscure album from 1990. Just the way things rolled in the end. I had other ideas for what effects to add or whatever to make it more like an art work as well as a real crossword.