i Cryptic Crossword 2814 Klingsor

I felt panic rising when I had read through all of the across clues and most of the downs without seeing an easy-ish point-of-entry into this crossword. So it was back to the beginning to work batarde-fashion systematically through the clues, starting with the anagram at 1ac. To my surprise, it yielded fairly readily, after a false start involving “shivers” rather than “jitters”. A little while later, having noted a V and a J in 1ac, and the X in 4d, I was excitedly expecting a pangram.

In that, I was disappointed – but not in the crossword as a whole, which was both a challenge and a pleasure to solve. Yes, it was difficult (at least for me) and I had to work hard on some parsings, even after I had got the answers from definitions and crossing letters, particularly PRAGUE, CALCITE and ENTREPRENEUR. But by the end I had absolutely no queries left, with everything being neatly and often impressively clued. It resulted in a rewarding and pleasurable solve.

In particular, the surface readings of the clues was a delight. Cornick noted yesterday that that day’s early Hoskins suffered from a lack of the patina that only develops with time and repeated use. Today, Klingsor made such polish seem effortless, and this added so much to the joy of solving.

Clue of the day, not least for it’s nice surface reading, has to be 1A: “Flying jet that’s extremely huge – I’ve right to be nervous (4,3,7)”.

A Saturday prize puzzle from November 2015: http://www.fifteensquared.net/2015/11/28/independent-9081-by-klingsor/