There have been highs and lows in the first hundred years. But, from the vantage of the archive, crosswords are transparently much more than a pastime. They are like dictionaries of human awareness. Every clue is a truth about the world on which the constructor and solver must shake hands....
Maybe this is a big rebound moment – having failed miserably last week, did I crack the code on the very first clue? A few more clues later and that seems to be the case! Armed with this knowledge I got a long way through the clues on the first try – including SNOWBOARDER and AMB...