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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...
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Monday 6 September 2021

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3365) Most of this was straightforward, although 1d required knowledge of ENS, a term from metaphysics meaning "being or existence in the most general abstract sense" (Collins online).  It's not in the Concise Oxford, and although I've come across it in the wordplay in a couple of full-size cryptics, it seems rather obscure for the Five-Clue.  I thought 4d had the best surface, and I liked the anagram at 3/5.   Concise (#3365) I momentarily thought of BASIL for 1a before realizing that THYME was more likely for the pun, and indeed it proved so, combining with STABLE for "times table".  8a looked as though it might be A LOT, but the crosser from 6d revealed it to be A FEW; which is the better synonym for "several"?  I got stuck for a while in the SE corner because I could see that 11d started OVER- but couldn't get the rest, and I didn't know that PECAN could be a tree as well as a nut.  Once I'd sorted those out the ...
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