The 1,000th Simplex crossword, which appears on page 2 today represents about 400,000 clues which have been pondered over by still more thousands of readers.
The format has changed little since the first Simplex appeared on Monday, May 21st, 1951. Puzzlers still travel the countries of the world eating spaghetti, salami, macaroni, lasagne and omelettes, not to mention onions, rue, mace and garlic. And cos lettuce is always available in Greece.
One wears a hat in Panama and a lei in Hawaii and one carries an assegai in Africa where the Impi dwell. In Iberia and Ibiza, pesetas and escudos are spent while the dinar holds sway in the Arabian nights.
Elands, yaks and gnus continue to wander the earth; ewes too. The moa and dodo are also espied, strangely.
Narcissi, irises, mimosa and oleander bloom among the elders and alders, the willows and the sycamores.
Eddies still swirl on Loughs Ree and Erne and on the Severn, Dee, Oder and Indus. They teem with eels and teals and grebes and grilse (not grills or girls). The gannet, heron and tern swoop overhead and the cheeky robin sticks his beak in too.
For the religious, the vicar, the cleric, the curate and the reverend, together with the nun in her wimpIe, make their presence felt in sees and synods.
SWEET music is played andante, allegro or largo on lute and lyre by octets and septets. Tenor Caruso might sing along as will the bass, the alto and the soprano.
Old Will's Tempest occasionally stirs things up. Henry Miller's Tropics and Eugene O'Neill's Iceman cometh also, and taming the shrew can be much ado about nothing on the twelfth night.
Simplex setters can become otiose when ergs and ells have been measured, tisanes decocted and biremes rowed. But a jig or a reel and a mug of rum (odd drink, that) and they're ready for the next 10,000.