The crossword and "i"

Jumbo General Knowledge Crossword (11 Sep) First pass: Across 7, Down 17 Second pass: Across 5, Down 3 Third pass (with Across entered): Down 4 Did rather better on the Down clues than the Across today.  Answers I should really have known included TOPEKA, MONTPELLIER, EPSOM SALTS and HONSHU.  Entered WHITE HOUSE (a guess) instead of WHITE NOISE for 8/3d, and managed to put FUCHSIA for 21d even though it didn't fit most of the crossers! Cryptic by Hypnos (#3118, Thu 4 Feb) Link to idothei (February 2021, blogged by jonofwales) Link to fifteensquared (December 2016, blogged by Pierre) First dip into my personal archive for a Sunday.  These are puzzles that accumulated while I was taking a break from cryptic crosswords earlier this year. Idothei wasn't doing star ratings back then, but I echo jonofwales' comments that "any expectations of a quick finish evaporated as a slow trudge through the grid ensued instead".  I started off fairly confidently but ground to a h

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3370) A few quibbles in this one.  What's the meaning of GONE FOR A BURTON (3/5)?  I thought it meant "dead", or maybe "broken beyond repair" - not "lost" or "getting beaten" (one of which is intended as the anagram indicator, but I'm not sure which).  It was quite a good anagram though.   1d needed UB = "benefit"; presumably a reference to unemployment benefit, which was replaced by Jobseeker's Allowance in the 1990s (and the latter has itself largely been superseded by Universal Credit).  And 6d was one of those double homophone clues: "smell" = "reek", "cable" = "wire", and REQUIRE sounds (approximately) like "reek wire".  However "reek wire" doesn't mean "smell cable", so aren't two homophone indicators needed again?  I can't work out the conventions on this. Concise (#3370) FILL + LATTERLY = "philately", which

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3369) Good, in all respects, and just what a Five-Clue should be.  No more to say. Concise (#3369) Pretty good as well, but I had to "back-solve" 5a from the pun ("place mat") because I hadn't heard of MATTE, "a mask used to obscure part of a image in a film and allow another image to be substituted" (COED).  I suppose there's a small quibble over whether 3d and 5d are dictionary phrases, but they were both obvious enough to cause no difficulty. Codeword (#3047) Q, L and U given; normally when you're given the Q you've got the U for free, but no such luck today!  Didn't have much trouble identifying 22 = E and then 25 had to be I, after which the rest mostly followed easily.  I did wonder whether 17 = K for LOCK and KERB, rather than LOCH and HERB, but then ASKEW forced K = 12.   Cryptic by Klingsor (#3305) Link to idothei (blogged by Saboteur) Link to Fifteensquared (June 2017, blogged by bertandjoyce)   Two stars

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3368) "Males do get drunk repetitively; that's nothing new" (4,3,4,3).  Answer: SAME OLD SAME OLD. This would be a worthy winner of Clue of the Day if it were in the main puzzle: but it goes uncommented on at idothei, as they don't concern themselves with the Five-Clue.  Shame really!  The other clues were all pretty good as well, although I didn't know FED = "G-man" and had to fill in 2d partly by guesswork. Concise (#3368) The three-word puns are usually even more painful than the two-word ones.  I had CAT and OLD but couldn't get the middle word for "evade" for some time, thinking it must be SKIVE; CAT-SHIRK-OLD eventually revealed itself as "catch a cold", but it took a certain amount of straining.  Other clues that held me up were 11a, BESIEGE (I had DELIMIT until getting 5d) and 10a, which I didn't know at all; Crossword Solver led me to BOUGAINVILLEA, "any of several South American ornamental wo

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3367) Just right today!  GDANSK was my favourite. Concise (#3367) Also just right.  HOLE + SAILOR for "wholesaler" was the pun.  Codeword (#3045) G, H and V given.  Very little to say about this either, but I enjoyed it. Cryptic by Dutch (#3303) Link to idothei (blogged by Borodin) Link to Fifteensquared (July 2017, blogged by RatjokaRiku)   Apart from one clue, solved in about my average time.  I'd agree with Borodin, the new blogger on idothei, who gave it three stars.  Favourite clue was maybe 13d for the clever way it split up the phrase; other contenders were the anagrams at 15a and 11d, and the hidden at 22d.  Sadly, I had to resort to Crossword Solver for 3d, where I should really have spotted the anagram; also for 8d, where I was misled into thinking that "store" was the definition. I didn't like 9a for two reasons; firstly it can hardly be said to be a dictionary phrase, and secondly it's surely two homophones rather than o

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3366) I struggled with this one quite a bit.  After working out SCATTER for 2d I ground to a halt, and had to look up 6d (ROCKER) to get going again.  I eventually realized that 4d had to be LILAC, even though the wordplay doesn't seem to work properly; it's LLAC (= "ring" up, a Down clue) about I, so the word order seems to be wrong.  1d came next; STAR in MUD for MUSTARD (I'd been sidetracked by Abba!).  That left 3/5, which had to be PUBLIC UTILITY, although since the electricity companies have all been privatised, I'm not sure if the definition quite works.  It also uses "up" as a reversal indicator even though it's an Across clue.  Not one of my favourites.   Concise (#3366) Struggled with this as well!  The pun was quite clever (CREWS + AWAIT for "cruiserweight"), but I was slow getting several of the answers like CUPOLA, MUCUS and LEES.  TRAMMEL for "hinder" wasn't at all obvious, and I only work