i Cryptic Crossword 3524 by Dac

Difficulty rating (out of 5): 🌟🌟

There can’t be many more Dac puzzles left in the archive so I feel privileged to be blogging another of them. This one, as always, was a joy to solve; a few moments thought required in places though, so maybe rating two stars rather than one.

Among the nice touches were the extra layer of meaning in 10ac – ‘tarps’ in themselves being waterproof – and ‘sty’ as the farm building rather than the more readily thought of ‘barn’. I had a little trouble with 16ac, trying to put ‘ants’ (= soldiers) into an anagram of ‘Iran’; that was my fault for not realising that, given Dac’s attention to detail, the initial A in the clue was part of the wordplay and not just padding.

Editorially, maybe there was an opportunity missed to update a clue – residents of 19ac might be a bit miffed to see their city described as a town; I think in fact it had already acquired city status when the puzzle first appeared in 2018.

It’s always difficult to pick a CoD in a Dac puzzle. I liked 2dn for its simplicity, 20dn and 21dn for their surfaces but, for the penny-drop moment when I got it, I’ll go for 25ac: ‘Close to range in centre of Finisterre (7)’.

All in all a 27ac puzzle to put one in a good 1ac for the day.

For the original blog and comments go to http://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/04/25/independent-9838-dac/