The latest edition of my county council newspaper has dropped through my letter box and the first thing I checked was the Sudoku on the back page.

I'm not a quiz fan but the last edition carried an error (not the council's fault) which made the Sudoku impossible to complete.

The magazine is pretty good - I write some of the articles for it, but it has won an award from CIPR so it's not just my opinion.

However, the torrent of abuse from residents this error sparked was astonishing.

Each time an edition goes out there are usually a dozen or so letters from people outraged that councils would even think about wanting to keep them informed about the services their council tax has paid for.

But these Sudoku complaints were of another order of magnitude.

Any newspaper editor knows that you can libel the much-loved mayor on your front page or print a picture upside down with little comment - but mess wih the crossword and you'd better move house.

I am sure staff at other councils have their own stories of how residents have reacted strongly to seemingly innocuous human errors.

According to PRWeek we're going to see a lot more council newspapers.

Some of them are Pravda-lite but many fill the gaps which local newspapers have left by reducing local government coverage.

If council PR departments are going to invest in bigger and more frequent publications then I suggest they don't skimp on the Sudoku checkers.