Déjà résolu

[tahnan]

Hey, friendslist puzzlers, especially those who worked for Games Magazine in the '80s.

Tanga, a website I've pointed to in the past for the astonishingly low quality of some of its puzzles, had an interesting pair of puzzles today. Here's the "hard" one; the easy one looks identical but, cleverly, has a different solution. Even the hard one didn't take me long, though.

That's because I'd seen the puzzle before. In fact, it appears in the Games collection The Book of Sense and Nonsense Puzzles (see here; skip to page 9), (c) 1985, so it presumably appeared in Games somewhat earlier.

Question 1: did this guy Arnott ever work for Games? Did he write this crossword? (In the book, it's credited unhelpfully to Margot Seides, which someone clued me in several years ago is an anagram, enumeration "5 7".)

Question 2: anyone, especially anyone with a vested interest in this (e.g. a copyright holder), have thoughts on how to proceed? Because speaking as both a puzzler and an academic, there's pretty much nothing I hate more than plagiarism.

Comments

[saxikath]

Ooh. Yikes.

Finding out who Arnott actually is would be one first step. Another would be to point this out to the powers that be at Tanga, who may have more legal recourse towards finding out who he is than the rest of us.

Plagiarism just pisses me off.

[ericberlin.livejournal.com]

Will wasn't editor at this point, but I think he was on the staff. There is a fair chance this is his puzzle.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

He was? I just asked Mike if he remembered anyone named Arnott ever on staff (I certainly didn't), and he said no.

He also didn't remember this puzzle specifically, but I certainly do. (I remember that a reader later sent in a third solution of POM/PESO/MULLED/LOLL.) He also confirmed my feeling that a "Margot Seides" puzzle could have been anyone on staff -- him, Will, Scott, Curtis, anyone.

Yes, I vote for telling Tanga to check into it. If Arnott did write it for Games, it should be easy for him to prove, though I strongly suspect this is just plagarism.

[ericberlin.livejournal.com]

Pronoun trouble, as Daffy Duck might say. "He" = "Will." I think this is likely Will's puzzle.

[thedan.livejournal.com]

That is seriously anger-inducing. I agree with Sax that contacting Tanga directly is the way to go. The puzzles should be taken down and people should be notified that submitting other people's work is not acceptable.

[thedan.livejournal.com]

You might also post something on the discussion board.

Unfortunately, given my overall impression of Tanga solvers, I have a bad feeling that a lot of the audience may respond, "So?"

[ertchin.livejournal.com]

The link to the hard version now leads to a "not found" page.