Crossword editor’s desk: The joy of The Goodies and a setter’s deviation

Sometimes our puzzles have themes; sometimes they don’t. One reader thanked Soup for a birthday compliment to Graeme Garden, saying it brought back joyous memories of The Goodies and of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Julie Mottershead, Deal, Kent. Another solver flagged a Harpo clue: "4d Tense aquatic bird crushed by snake somewhere in South Africa (8)".

The wordplay gives T + SWAN inside BOA, but the correspondent pointed out that BOTSWANA is not in the country of South Africa. Elsewhere in the paper we would write "southern Africa", yet crossword setters sometimes reinterpret such labels; here "South Africa" should be read in much the same sense as "south Devon".

Qaos’s February Genius recalled a programmable turtle (Guardian Genius 272). The endgame asks solvers to trace a path, turning anticlockwise at Ls and clockwise at Rs, which neatly traces a letter E. Turnstone’s Genius awaits attention in March, unless you have already solved it, in which case apologies for the delayed update.

crossword, the goodies, graeme garden, im sorry, harpo, botswana, south africa, southern africa, guardian genius, turnstone