Fifteensquared

There is much in last Sunday’s blog quoting Alan Connor’s attitude to the difficulty of the Everyman crossword (see, in particular, Shanne@42). It looks as if AC is unaware of the fact that the Everyman has moved far from the entry-level crossword that it used to be. Some of the clues in this puzzle, although perfectly sound, are really quite tricky. Of course there are some which are pretty straightforward, as there should be in any broadsheet crossword, but by no means all of them. The long complete anagrams were often hard to see.  By me, anyway.

There are seven complete anagrams here, so far as I can see, which is a quarter of the clues: quite an achievement. There are also the rhyming answers at 11ac and 20ac (although I can’t see any others). The ‘primarily’ clue, which had always apparently been there, has disappeared: difficulty of setting or a further disregard for the novice solver?

In a blog about a year ago I mentioned that there always seemed to be 28 clues (no criticism at all), and pointed out that the setter saved himself work that way. Someone posted and said that it was sometimes more than 28. I’ve never seen such an Everyman crossword.

Definitions underlined, in crimson. Indicators (homophone, hidden, anagram, juxtaposition, etc) in italics. Anagrams *(like this) or (like this)*. Link-words in green.

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