Crossword roundup: Could your puzzle find a home online on MyCrossword?

I was delighted to read the story of New York Times setter Rob Baker, whose first puzzle was recently published. Thrilled because Rob, a teacher from Illinois, submitted his first puzzle in 2007 and refused to let thirty or so rejections dampen his enthusiasm.

I'd be interested too to see these 30 puzzles. And - it's worth pointing out - there are many reasons for putting up a crossword besides publishing in a newspaper. A tribute to someone, perhaps; to see if you are up to it; or simply for the fun it might bring you and others.

These various reasons are reflected in the 500 puzzles on MyCrossword, a site created by Raider, aka Tom Blackwell, who set for the Independent, whose first puzzle this year.

For a setter, MyCrossword's interface is incredibly user-friendly: you click " Create a Crossword", choose a puzzle and the process is already underway. A year and a half after its debut, I told Raider about the site.

Talk- us of the niche that MyCrossword fills so well. I tried my hand at setup during lockdown and had trouble finding a free resource to both set and post. Some blogs have components to host puzzles, but these require a reasonable level of technical expertise. I wanted to make tuning accessible to everyone with a user-friendly, web-based tool. free.

All puzzles are self-published. Some might see the lack of an editorial process as a flaw, but I think that's the site's greatest strength. Most smugglers learn and they get feedback. Enjoyed seeing everyone learning and improving.

Nowadays the kind of thing you do is tend to a community of beings humans. How do setters and solvers avoid behaving as horribly as many people online? However, MyCrossword users have defied internet convention by being unwaveringly supportive and generous with no moderation required.

Almost every puzzle receives feedback, often through a small committed group of resolvers. It helps that most people play both sides of the game. It's easy to put holes in someone else's work, but if you know you'll be the recipient as well, you think about how you voice the criticism.

It's as if there are as many participants settling in for fun as there are posers hoping to catch the eye of an editor. newspaper or magazine. It's rewarding to see others appreciate something you've done, so acknowledgments and constructive feedback are very important. A few users have posted puzzles in the Independent, so it's also a testing ground for ambitious smugglers.

We all make mistakes. Have you noticed any that often occur in beginners? Some are tempted to use indirect anagrams, which are unfair and never popular.

One ​​thing I've learned to avoid is imprecise single-letter selections. Consider this clue from my first puzzle:

Dodge left and right, head into the forest (12)

It's NOT STEPS - SIDES (left and right) + T (direction) + EPPING (forest). When Tramp was kind enough to take a look, he pointed out that "heading toward" doesn't indicate the letter T precisely. The words that stood out to me are:

The enigmatic once said to me: "Starting the engine" does not mean "what starts the engine", "starting the engine", "starting the engine"… What I learned is this: you have to read 'engine' as '(the word) engine'.

I changed the clue to read "in the direction of the forest" and I've followed that rule ever since.

Very good. You won't blush if I notice that the site is incredibly user-friendly. What a newspaper puzzle...