Tag Archives: crossword

I think cryptic crosswords are fun. If you’re not familiar with them, the way it goes is that each word is described two ways – once by meaning and once by some aspect of its form (usually spelling or sound) – but it’s done in a clever and coy way. An example would be “Booze works heartlessly in writer’s oeuvre (5)” as a clue for BOOKS: if you take BOOZE WORKS and remove the middle of it (ZE WOR) – in other words, if you have it heartlessly – you get BOOKS, and that’s also described as a writer’s oeuvre.

Anyway, here’s a small one. I made it available for my Patreon patrons early yesterday as a bonus for their paying something ($1, $2, or $5 a month) for all my articles that the rest of you get for free. I’ll make the solution available tomorrow on Patreon… but it won’t be visible to non-patrons until a bit later.

ACROSS

A1 Eclipses? Take them to the beach! (9)

A3 Wise raptor or incomplete fowl? (3)

E3 Strum weirdly… and “drang!” (5)

A5 Steals eel unexpectedly, dies (9)

A7 Alive, busy, jumping—a nasty way to do things (9)

A9 Allows to buy preparation for physical with Olivia (4,3)

DOWN

A1 Winter comes too soon, brings deficit (9)

C1 Nothing, just French flax the back way (3)

C5 Almost erupts badly in gush (5)

E1 Draining last of fuels, engines out of order (9)

G1 Eliot’s April in a wild Celt’s rule (9)

I1 Sounds all at once torpid (7)

Want to get things like this crossword and its solutions sooner, or just feel good about paying a bit for what you get on Sesquiotica? Go to https://www.patreon.com/sesquiotic. That’s also where you’ll get the answers to this crossword… in a couple of days.

And let me know if you’d like to see more of these!