Financial Times 17624 Aardvark

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Thank you to Aardvark. Definitions are underlined in the clues. Across 1. This writer’s work, wicked, brought about complaint (6) MYOPIA : MY(first-person possessive pronoun, as used self-referentially by this writer) + OP(abbrev. … Read more >>

Azed No. 2,688: ‘A Cool Yomp’ – Christmas Competition Puzzle

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NOTE:  This blog was previously posted on December 31, 2023, and was temporarily withdrawn in light of the announcement of a corrected closing date for the competition.

I viewed with some dread the fact that I had drawn the Christmas Eve Azed slot, having failed in years past to complete the special holiday puzzles (the one about “presents around the tree” being an especially unpleasant memory.) And as one who finds Spoonerisms nearly always overwrought and almost never even remotely witty, the prospect of an entire puzzle constructed with Spoonerisms put a wet blanket on my Christmas cheer. And as one who frequently struggles with purported “homophones” based upon Received Pronunciation, I knew that I was in for a mindbender, at best, and outright failure, at worst. Setting those grinchy cavils aside, I must say, I think that I have actually completed this crossword correctly. It took me several sittings, but ultimately, I found the challenge enjoyable. Saying the words and their possible phonemic inversions out loud definitely helped with solving.

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Everyman 4,028

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The standard of these clues seems to me to be pretty high nowadays. Where I take issue with Everyman is in his use of question marks: he doesn’t always use them when he should, and he sometimes uses them pointlessly. There are several clues where the answer is a complete anagram of words in the clue. Very clever, but is the device overused? 3dn and 12dn are I think the pair, in that one begins with ‘Old’ and the other with ‘New’. 1dn is the self-referential clue and 22dn is the first letters clue.

Definitions underlined in crimson. Indicators (hidden, homophone, anagram, reversal etc.) in italics. Anagrams shown (like this)* or *(like this) [yes you’re right of course, Tony Collman@27]. Link-words in green.

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