An interesting and enjoyable change from the usual Gozo fare. I started off slowly and then picked up steam towards the end. Sorry for the late blog but I’m on holiday this week and had a very late start. Thank you Gozo.
| Across | ||
| 1 | See 5 | |
| 5, 1 | ALFRED MARGARET | Large farm trade (6,8) |
| 9, 10 | CUTHBERT DENISE | Thirteen’s cubed (8,6) |
| 12 | See 13 | |
| 13, 12 | CORNELIUS OLIVE | Lovelier cousin (9,5) |
| 14 | See 3 | |
| 16, 19 | SOLOMON LORETTA | Montreal to Oslo (7,7) |
| 21, 29 | ARNOLD PAULETTE | Neutral tadpole (6,8) |
| 23 | See 6 | |
| 25 | See 15 | |
| 26, 27 | DENNIS KATHLEEN | Lent Ned hankies (6,8) |
| 28, 25 down | GERALD ETHEL | Taller hedge (6,5) |
| 29 | See 21 | |
| Down | ||
| 1 | MACRON | French president’s two little boys (6) |
| MAC and RON (two little boys) | ||
| 2 | RETRIEVER | Gun-dog and terrier wandering round the outskirts of Venice (9) |
| anagram (wandering) of TERRIER containing VenicE (outskirts of) | ||
| 3, 14 | ALBIE YVONNE | Alone by vine (5,6) |
| 4 | EARACHE | Some fear a chest infection (7) |
| found inside (some) fEAR A CHEst | ||
| 6, 23 | LLEWELLYN CASSANDRA | L-Lawrence and S-Sally (9,9) |
| 7 | REIKI | Suggests that fish’s essential for massage (5) |
| sounds like (suggests that) “ray key” (fish essential) | ||
| 8 | DRESSING | Early morning activity with mayonnaise (8) |
| double definition | ||
| 11 | URNS | The States adopts our navy’s vessels (4) |
| US (The States) contains (adopts) RN (Royal Navy, the UK’s navy) | ||
| 15, 25 across | NATHANIEL ERICA | Charlie ate Nina (9,5) |
| 17 | See 20 | |
| 18 | BLACK DOG | Could be 2’s or Labrador’s depression (5,3) |
| cryptic/double definition | ||
| 20, 17 | ANDY MILLICENT | Indemnity call (4,9) |
| 21 | ALABAMA | Morning on a Welsh lake, up- state (7) |
| AM (morning) on A BALA (Lake Bala, Welsh lake) all reversed (up) | ||
| 22 | SARNIE | Scouser’s snack that’s small, given to little 21 across (6) |
| S (small) with ARNIE (little ARNOLD) – I wrote RONALD in first time which caused me problems later | ||
| 24 | SONAR | Of use to, initially, sailors operating new Arctic routes (5) |
| initial letters of Sailors Operating New Arctic Routes – definition is of use to… (sailors) | ||
| 25 | See 28 | |
definitions are underlined
I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords. If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.
Never in all my very long years of crossword solving has one piece of paper been covered in so many scribbled letter combinations. I did enjoy myself and also found time to wonder whether any of those combinations of couples were actually solvers of the FT crossword
Thanks to Gozo for the crossword and PeeDee for the explanations
I forgot to mention how much I liked the anagram fodder, some of them were really good
PeeDee @2 – some of them were splendid – you wonder what sort of activity a neutral tadpole wouldn’t take part in, how bad was Ned’s cold and how hungry was he that Charlie had to eat Nina 😀
Thanks Gozo and PeeDee.
A really enjoyable crossword. Finished it in reasonable time. The jotter pad space below the grid might be a bit small today.
This was great fun with all these loving couples on a day like today’s.
Also much less time-consuming than a ‘normal’ Gozo crossword.
Actually, I found this rather easy but if you like anagrams this was the place to be!
Many thanks to setter & blogger.
Thanks Gozo and PeeDee – I enjoyed this more than I expected to when I first saw it. One question; I’ve never thought of ‘sarnie’ as having a specifically Liverpudlian origin as a colloquial version of ‘sandwich’. Can anyone point me to a source for that? Thanks.
Thanks to Gozo and PeeDee. Yes, lots of fun though I too started with Ronald, not ARNOLD, so had a big delay in getting ALABAMA. Still, REIKI and SARNIE defeated me. Maybe I was too tuned in to anagrams?
It was fun. Like others I started with Ronald at 5 ac and then went for Roland. Double hold-up!
Thanks Gozo and PeeDee.
OOPS! I meant at 21 ac. Too many scratchings and overwriting on mine. I also tried Gerald at 5 ac. and could not get anywhere with the left overs until I started again and got Margaret for 1 ac.
Thanks Gozo and PeeDee
Interesting puzzle – had thought that they were going to be famous linked pairs at the beginning, but CUTHBERT and DENISE didn’t ring any bells as my first pair in.
No real problems other than having to look up how to spell LLEWELLYN and hadn’t heard of BALÂ Lake before.
GERALD and ETHEL were my last two in.
A fun puzzle, but I didn’t recognise the British pronunciation of the three syllable Japanese word Re-I-Ki!
Thanks for the blog, Peedee.
I had to smile at your preamble, as it proves that Gozo’s definition in 8dn does not always hold true!!
A pleasantly different challenge from Gozo. Thank you.