Testing...

 Test post for the "Crossword and i" blog.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introducing "The Crossword and i"

This is a new blog documenting the crosswords and some of the other word puzzles in the daily i newspaper.  Each day from Monday to Saturday I'll be giving my thoughts on the Five-Clue Cryptic, Concise, Codeword and main Cryptic, along with any other puzzles I think are worth commenting on.  They'll probably appear by mid-afternoon, depending on my other commitments and on how tough the puzzles are that day. On Sundays, when the paper isn't published, I'll be going through some unsolved Cryptic puzzles, either ones I was unable to complete during the week, or older ones from my backlog (accumulated during February and March).  This week only, I'll be attempting Saturday's puzzle on Sunday because of lack of time today; in reserve I also have #3289 from last Monday, when I was away. There's not normally much to say about the Saturday Jumbo General Knowledge Crossword - either you know the answers or you don't - but if I have any comments I'll be incl...
Read more

Tuesday 7 September 2021

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...
Read more

Sunday 5 September 2021

Jumbo General Knowledge Crossword (4 Sept) 1st pass: Across 10, Down 18 2nd pass: Across 6, Down 2 3rd pass (after checking Across answers): Down 2 This wasn't too bad an effort, helped by an astonishingly good run of Down answers on the first pass, although at 6d I was surprised that I'd never come across Botticelli's first name (SANDRO, as it turned out).  The only one I got wrong first time was 18a, which I assumed was TOM DALEY from the enumeration but turned out to be SKY BROWN.  15a had to be ETON something, but DORNEY escaped me.  At 27d I got CINCINNATI from the crossers but BENGALS was a total surprise.   The ones that I really should have known were MATTERHORN (32a) and CASANOVA (56a); the one I was most surprised to get was RICHARD SCARRY (53/48d).  It's amazing what's lurking at the back of one's mind sometimes! Cryptic by Hoskins (#3289, 23 Aug) Link to idothei (blogged by Saboteur) Link to Fifteensquared (May 2017, blogged by Simon Harding) ...
Read more