Are you impressed with Cincinnus? I am more and more mightily impressed with Cincinnus. I find my view of various compilers being deepened and refined by the task of blogging their puzzles. What does it say about a compiler that it is a particular joy to write about his or her clues?
Across
1. BLOCK AND TACKLE
10. AIRER – AIRE + R. The Aire is a river in Yorkshire.
11. BARRICADE – CAD (for “stinker”) in BARRIE (writer James Barrie of Peter Pan fame)
12. SPENSER – S + PENS + ER. Great surface!
13. EXCISED – EXCISE + D
14. NEIGH – homophone
16. RECOUNTED – anagram of CRUDE NOTE
19. SETTLES IN – a settle is a kind of bench
20. TERSE – hidden word
22. OFFERED – OFF + ERE + D
25. EN MASSE – anagram of MAN SEES
27. PLATONIST – anagram of LAST POINT. I found this hard as I got on a wrong track trying to find the name of a particular philosopher.
28. CLOGS – C[obbler] + LOGS. What a beautiful &lit.
29. DUCKS AND DRAKES – DUCK-SAND-[Sir Francis]DRAKE[S]
Down
2. LARCENIST – anagram of IN SCARLET
3. CARES – C + ARES
4. AMBERGRIS – AMBER + GRIS. This was easy enough even though I did not know of the artist Juan Gris.
5. AGINCOURT – anagram of GAIN + COURT
7. KEATS – anagram of TAKES
8. EMENDED – EM + ENDED
9. PARSON – P + ARSON
15. HILARIOUS – anagram of URIAHS OIL. A fairly obvious anagram but still a great clue.
17. CONCEITED – homophone
18. TURNSTONE – TURNS + TO + NE. Newcastle, the English one, being in the north-east. The turnstone is a wading bird that, uh, turns stones.
19. STOPPED – TOP (spinner) inside SPED. This clue stumped me for a good while even though I thought of TOP fairly quickly.
21. EVEN SO – [st]EVENSO[n]. Perhaps a bit unconventional but impressive.
23. FRANC – FRANC[e]
24. DJINN – DJ + IN + N
26. MOCHA – MO (for moment meaning instant) + CHA
Cincinnus, also Orlando in the Guardian, has a web-site at http://www.crossword-crazy.co.uk/index.html where you can try a few dozen each of his Guardian and FT puzzles, plus some others, and read some solving tips.
I’m sure I tried to do this puzzle but as it was about a fortnight ago it has long since been consigned to the bin. I probably could have done with some of these pointers at the time though.
Pete,
Thank you! I had a link to that in my collection of crossword sites but had not realized that it had any connection with Cincinnus/Orlando.
Cheers,
Pete