Apologies to those of you who find crosswords about as interesting as watching paint dry for allowing them to pop up again this week but, as we rediscover to our cost every time we tinker with their layout and position, for many, many readers the Times crosswords are the very acme of their daily newspaper enjoyment.

David Wade e-mails: “A friend and I have been doing your crosswords for years and we aren’t often defeated. Of late, however, and increasingly, we have noticed that the connection between clue and solution appears a) non-existent; b) perverse; c) to demonstrate a total misunderstanding of English. It may be that we’re getting rather old, but we don’t think that’s the only explanation.”

As ever the Crossword Editor, Richard Browne, is happy to respond: “I am sorry if you are finding the crosswords more difficult nowadays, but I can assure you that I solve every puzzle cold as I receive it, check that all the clues have accurate definitions, that the wordplay is grammatically accurate and leads to the answer, and that the answer itself is a reasonable word or phrase. Of course, I encourage all the setters to provide clues that do this in a subtle way that does not yield too easily, but I do believe from the feedback I get that the balance is about right.”

Andrew Mason is, he writes, “simply appalled. How can you permit The Times to display such grammatical howlers as ‘One in 10 children are obese by the age of five’? Please employ some editors who have a minimum level of English. Yours, a long-term but maybe not for much longer Times reader.”

This is an example of what Fowler calls “a verb forced out of agreement by the proximity of an intervening element in a different number from the true subject”, not that that excuses it, of course. The Times style guide objects to it, and in fact in the paper it conformed to style — “One in 10 children is obese”.

However, Leonard Scott, of Cumbria defends the plural verb: “With the greatest respect, I would suggest that your style guide is misled on this point. It is manifestly absurd to think that ‘one in ten children’ is a singular concept. I am sure that you pluralise the verb following ‘a number/group/series of whatever’ on the wholly reasonable ground that the concept is plural despite the ineluctible fact that the nouns are singular. Why should ‘one in ten’ differ? The clear sense is of many people, requiring a plural verb.”

Seconds out; round two, anyone?

Twice shy

Christopher Bell writes from Sevenoaks: “Has the word ‘twice’ been removed from the English language while my attention was elsewhere? On several recent occasions I have noticed it replaced in the press by ‘two times’, and in today’s paper (June 28) one of your own journalists refers to a tennis player as ‘two times a Grand Slam winner’. It’s so ugly — and unnecessary. What’s going on?”

Alan Pardoe, of Malvern, wonders if “bell-weather” (Business, June 21) was a description of the particularly strong winds that day that could rock church steeples. Suzanne McClenahan, of St Albans, ticks David Sinclair off for referring to Dolly Parton’s “astonishing embonpoint” (First Night, July 2) when presumably it was her poitrine, rather than any of her other outstanding assets, that had him transfixed.

Brenda Taggart, of Brighton, and Richard Allison, of Edinburgh, both tutted over Matthew Parris’s repeated use of “and nor” (Opinion, June 21); the latter quotes Fowler’s deprecation of “the insertion of a clumsy ‘and’ when ‘nor’ should stand by itself”.

Picture imperfect

Following last Saturday’s backstage peek at the production of the Times letters page, Maggie Donnelly, of Ripon, e-mails: “I really do not feel that the illustrations chosen for the letters page add anything, and indeed take up valuable letter space.” Newspapers these days are picture-led, and visual appeal is paramount; few pages escape this stricture, letters included.

And Barrie Yelland, of Cornwall, wonders if we could publish a page or two of “surplus” letters once a week: “There must be a wealth of humour, info and points of view just thrown away. Such a waste!”

No room, Mr Yelland; we must console ourselves with the thought that, Times readers being what they are, humour, info and points of view are an infinitely renewable resource.