San Seriffe under Lockdown?

From the Guardian Letters on May 4th:

And today:

Guardian letter column

So.

The Guardian is having a silly discussion in its letters column about whether the Quick Crossword, or, indeed, Arucaria, is becoming easier. We've had a sensible note about how the Monday cryptic is always a little easier, and altogether, not a lot of sense from the other correspondents.

I started to write to the paper about how I used to do the Quick on the P12 between Nunhead and Peckham Rye, but nowadays I can't always finish it before bedtime. Is this just age? And then I thought about how I am doing more of each Cryptic, whatever day it is.

Which means it isn't (necessarily) that I'm getting more senile.

And when I started the letter I had 2 clues unsolved in the Quick (2 out of 24 or 1/12) and one in the Cryptic (1/29), and as a result I was going to have a rant about the statistics.

But by the time I had finished drafting the letter I'd solved them all - so it all just made me seem smug. So I deleted it.

And anyway, none of the letters, written or considered, really touched on the puns, poetry or sheer joy of Arucaria's crosswords. The pleasure of solving.

So I had another reason not to send it in.

Finally, and for the record, I should just register that yesterday's absolutely lovely cryptic was as much fun as Arucaria's 50th celebration crossword last year.

Today's Crossword

First of April, April Fool's day. So the Guardian Crossword included clues to San Serriffe, Spaghetti Tree, Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse, Panorama, General Pica, and so forth.

Marvellous, of course, but it relied heavily on a certain cultural background and knowledge going back nearly fifty years. I suspect that a lot of cryptic crosswords do, to some extent or another. Today's was just very noticeable.