i Cryptic Crossword 1782 Anax
October 25, 2016
Not really a theme today, but lots of mentions of Holmes et al. I think there’s only one clue (23ac) where it helped if you knew something about the stories (or films and TV series for that matter); the rest was a good, quite difficult, standard cryptic. A bit of Greek and Egyptian mythology and that I struggled with in the SW corner, but the rest fell with perseverance and attention to the cryptic.
COD? 13d – ‘Fan of conjoined performers? (9)’.
Back to April 2012:
batarde
saboteur
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
I found this quite challenging but enjoyable, as is usually the way with Anax. Some impressive clue writing today: 7d was particularly satisfying when the penny eventually dropped. An excellent crossword all told, and very much to my taste.
Delightful in all regards, totally agree about 13d as COD, amongst plenty of other delights.
The long anagrams gave me the start I needed. Wasn’t keen on Sam = book and the siri part of 25a was to me very obscure. Had to give myself a good slap for failing to see where corpse came from but generally thought this an enjoyable challenge.
Late to the party . I solved 5 clues -in any Anax crossword be it in the Indie or ST I have never got more than 10. I just find him impossible
He’s definitely one of the harder, if not hardest of the setters we get in the i. I struggled unsuccessfully with his puzzles for a long time.
No recollection of solving this when it first appeared, so it was all new to me and I liked the pseudo-theme (as Anax called it on 15sq).
Interestingly, though, despite having encountered ‘siri’ in the Indy online only about 10 days ago and being puzzled because my edition of Chambers only gave it as ‘betel’ and not the phone app, ‘siri’ turned up here as ‘betel’ and I didn’t recognise it. No wonder the ORPHEUS/OSIRIS crossers were my last two in, and even then I couldn’t parse ORPHEUS.