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The Guardian - Life & Style • Feb. 2, 2026, 12:30 p.m.
Crossword editor’s desk: when you can’t just Google it
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The perils of online research. Plus: 104 years’ cryptic compiling from just two setters I regret to announce that a handy sense-check tool is now no longer available.
I was recently checking a clue (“Leftmost colour on the French flag”) in our addictive new Mini series. ( There’s a new one every day : tell your cryptic-sceptical friends; it might bring them our way.) I typed “french flag” into Google.
In, say, 2020, it was possible to type “spotted hyena diet” and clock where the Featured Snippet was taken from. I was initially sceptical but if it was from, say, Britannica, one more click would confirm that the luckless gazelles had been clued accurately.
I was recently checking a clue (“Leftmost colour on the French flag”) in our addictive new Mini series. ( There’s a new one every day : tell your cryptic-sceptical friends; it might bring them our way.) I typed “french flag” into Google.
In, say, 2020, it was possible to type “spotted hyena diet” and clock where the Featured Snippet was taken from. I was initially sceptical but if it was from, say, Britannica, one more click would confirm that the luckless gazelles had been clued accurately.
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