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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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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) ...
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Saturday 4 September 2021

Five-Clue Cryptic (#3364) Some really elegant clues today.  The one I particularly liked was 3a, PALAVER (PAL + AVER), for which one needs to know the well-used rhyming slang reference "China (plate)" = "mate".  Also nicely done was 5a, which had TREND in HEARING to give HEART-RENDING; as an aside, I'm slightly annoyed by the modern habit of saying "heart-wrenching" instead, presumably by confusion with "gut-wrenching".  I doubt whether anything much can be done about it though. 2d had (E + ST) in WEND to give WEST END.  I suppose non-London readers might have reason to complain that in other cities the West End isn't usually the theatre district, but London's West End is so well known that I think this slight metropolitan bias can be forgiven.  AWARD (A + WARD) for 4d was straightforward, but 1d was slightly more convoluted: (A + PH) in a reversal of LEAR to give RAPHAEL.  For this I needed to remember the Ordnance Survey abbreviati...
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