The most likely explanation is that they saw looming headlines of the Labour-backs-down-in-face-of-union-anger variety

The most likely explanation is that they saw looming headlines of the "Labour-backs-down-in-face-of-union-anger" variety. As one cynic at the TUC put it: "Excalibur [Labour's computerised rebuttal system] seems much swifter at denying any policy shift to the left, than any one to the right. What the Labour leadership feared, said one source, was "three days of minimum- wage rows at the TUC and, on the government side, a series of initiatives saying that Labour is the strikers' friend".Where things went wrong was in the execution. Mr Blunkett's plans first surfaced in last week's Sunday Times.

Labour would consult on proposals for compulsory arbitration, mainly in public-sector pay disputes, the paper reported Journalists on rival papers put the story to Labour Not true, they were told. The second was to pre-empt any public suspicion that Mr Blair would allow union bosses to resume the powerful role they played under the Labour governments of the 1970s. Hearing that newspapers were about to predict a Labour-trade union divorce, he wondered where the story had come from. "Nobody mentioned it at dinner last night," he said to a colleague. Was this a triumph or a disaster for Labour? Its strategy for the TUC was clear. It had been agreed, several days in advance, when Tony Blair gave Mr Blunkett the go-ahead to float Labour's plans to curb strikes.The first goal was to trump Tory proposals for new anti-union measures, which have already been floated and may well figure in the Queen's Speech in two months' time.

By the end of the TUC's annual conference in Blackpool, the answers were "certainly not, possibly not, and who will ever know for sure?" Perhaps Mr Byers best summed up the confusion. One of his favourites was: "Ca? (4,3)" with the answer "Manx cat" - "cat" with its tail missing.Crosswords: page 31, Real Life page 13, Review page 74. The week was one of almost comical confusion, ending in bitterness and deep division. Did David Blunkett, the leader of Labour's employment team, favour banning strikes in the public sector? Would Labour compel union leaders to ballot their striking members every time employers made a new pay offer? Did Stephen Byers, another employment spokesman, say to four journalists over dinner that Labour might soon break its historic links with the unions? At various stages of the week, the answers seemed to be "yes, yes, and yes". The ideal clue, he says, should "entertain and tickle" the solver as well as puzzle them. But in the last 20 years the skills have changed, moving to maths, physics and computer people."Another prolific compiler, Michael Macdonald-Cooper, agrees that there has been a move from the classics.

While not resenting the changes himself, he has some sympathy with the complaint that trickiness has supplanted erudition. "Sometimes complexity is there for the sake of complexity, not for elegance. Abstruseness for its own sake has seduced the person setting the puzzle."One of his own favourite clues would perhaps now no longer be aceptable: "The wife's mother, (7)" had the answer "Jocasta", but the modern solver might not be expected to know the name of Oedipus's mother even if he had heard of his complex family arrangements.Even clearer evidence of the move away from knowledge-based clues is the abolition of pure quotations. Until last year, the well-read solver of the Times crossword would race out of his blocks by completing the pure quotation clues.Jonathan Crowther, who compiles the hideously difficult Azed puzzles for the Observer, approves of the changes: "I never really liked the sort of crossword that depends on specialist knowledge." While the compilers of a generation ago came from a literary background, "today's are schoolmasterly, communications, computer people".Compilers, says Mr Macdonald-Cooper, can more than make up for the absence of literary and cultural allusions with ingenuity. There were a huge number of allusions to Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan, the classics and the works of Anthony Hope - the solver was expected to know the whole of the Prisoner of Zenda. A quiet revolution is taking place within one of our most venerable institutions of learning and erudition The Great British Crossword is not what it was. Gone are the traditional literary and classical allusions, banished by a new generation of compilers whose sole interest is in wordplay and anagrams.