Archive for the Category "Crosswords"
Inspired by the success of Doctor Who, the BBC are launching an adventure series featuring his sidekick, the Boy Wonder: Robin Who.
In other news, if someone who creates a crossword is a setter, is the crossword itself a settee?
Yesterday, for the first time in months, I completed the daily Guardian cryptic crossword – all on my own, without a dictionary or Google, and before I’d even reached the station for the train journey home. I was suitably flushed. Even better, it was set by the crème de la crème of setters, Araucaria, and featured a signature Very Long Answer. This anagram – 8 words comprising 33 letters – once solved provided a useful hoard of checked letters, which enabled me to solve my favourite clue from the puzzle:
Mary’s third keeps dog in order — good news about her and another James? (4,5,4)
And the answer is…
BOTH DOING WELL
The explanation: Mary Queen of Scots’ third husband was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell; “dog in” order = doing; and “good news about her and another James?” refers to Mary and her son, James VI, and therefore an expression for mother and child.
Following last week’s Observer crossword problem, it was this Saturday’s Guardian that was afflicted.
First I noticed that some of the word lengths in the clues didn’t match the spaces in the grid; then that the grid wasn’t symmetrical; and finally that some clue numbers didn’t appear in the grid at all. The problem: the right-hand column and the bottom row had been omitted from the puzzle.
Fortunately, there is a symmetry in Guardian grids so it was possibly to draw in the missing squares and have a proper go at Araucaria’s puzzle.
A success of sorts in Sandy Balfour‘s G2 competition. For the second time, I’ve made it into the Top Ten entries on Sandy’s website, this time for my clue for “Gambit”:
Morning in Britain and half-wits make first move (6)
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