i Cryptic Crossword 3798 Flitwick
April 10, 2023
Difficulty rating (out of five): ⏳⏳⏳
“Who’s the setter today, then?” asked Madame La Saboteuse on seeing my furrowed brow as I looked at the crossword puzzle. On telling her that it was a unfamiliar setter by the name of Flitwick she responded “perhaps it will be themed on Harry Potter, then”. This exposes the depth, or rather the shallowness of my knowledge of all things Hogwarts. My knowledge extends only so far as Flitwick being somewhere near Milton Keynes.
But she was wrong. There was no theme to this entertaining puzzle for our traditionally wet Bank holiday Monday morning, although it did turn out to be a pangram. Most of it was reasonably accessible, although for me the NW quadrant was a little tougher. This corner included the currency of Malawi, which itself added a third egg-timer to the two I would have awarded on time taken alone. I’m afraid I needed to cheat to get this one, which was my last one in, and refer to a list of currencies. My best guess had been “Twacsa”, no less implausible than the actual entry, I venture, which fitted the crossing letters, and which parsed well enough (never mind that the airline no longer actually exists), but which lacked the merit of being any sort of African capital.
The two other novelties for me were the American Indian hut and the birthplace of Marx. Both now safely stored soon to be forgotten, if past form is anything to go by.
This NW quadrant was also the location of my nomination for Clue of the Day, the delightful homophone of 3d: “Mournful song about flower from occupied land, say (3,2,1,5)”. Coming in a close second was the &littishness of the warring Greek cities.
Here’s the link to Fifteensquared for the answers and explanations: https://www.fifteensquared.net/2019/03/24/independent-on-sunday-1517-flitwick/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
Denzo
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
This would have been just the one egg-timer, with 90% going in with little thought or indeed interest. However, the puzzle went up to two timers, and considerable interest/entertainment purely because of 1, 3, 23 and 24. KWACHA is one of those words one has seen before but can never remember, the song title was clued quite brilliantly (definite CoD), and KOI proved elusive until I finally came upon QUAKER, which is a close second for CoD.
This would have been a single egg-timer here too, if it wasn’t for the first across, which was a bit Azed really, wasn’t it? Never mind, hopefully Flitwick calms down a bit as time goes on, should they continue, as the rest was a thoroughly enjoyable debut.
Surprised that Eimi allowed both 17a to use the past tense – ‘embraced’, and in 19d to have that sort of subtractive anagram, with the substracted 3 letters being jumbled up but without indication that they were. Rules? Who needs ‘em.
A few good clues but also a few I couldn’t do, so a DNF and not one I enjoyed, sorry Flitwick.
Perhaps because we don’t have Cornick’s setting skills, the problem at 19d caused no difficulties at all beyond solving the anagram! The other Nana solved 1a identifying “hawk” as the flyer while I was still trying to do something with “owl” We had more difficulties in the NE quadrant where we invented a couple of spurious trees before deciding to look up “hogan” and sure enough…. Last in correctly was 22a where we had a partially parsed “mucker” for the friend. However as the Q was the only letter missing from the pangram, we took a second look at the clue and voila! We enjoyed the puzzle and managed it in good time 1-2 timers here. Perhaps the wet bank holiday weather made our usual bloggers a bit grumpy!!
Busy days & evening solving might explain it!