The New York Times Will Shortz's Wittiest, Wackiest Crosswords: 225 Puzzles from the Will Shortz Crossword Collection

Product Information

This is designed for blind or partially-sighted users. It is a stripped down text version, which should be easily read by a screen reader. Which crosswords have competitions? I can’t believe I filled in this whole puzzle when I only got 4 and 6 down at the start. The first of those gave me THE in 13a and which with the word count gave me A _ _ _ _ _ (in?) THE _ _ _. which the wordplay helped with, and I inched on from there. LEA/LEY: Chambers and the OED list three words with these (and other) spellings. The first is the meadow that you mention, and the second is arable land; the quote “The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea” more likely uses the first. Chambers gives different etymology for the two, but in view of the similarity of meaning, I would suspect that confusion is responsible for the convergence on the same group of spellings. This was short but very sweet. With Qaos there is of course always a theme, and searching for it adds to the fun. The only answer it helped me with was DARLINGS though, because with all the crossers in place it did jump out of the grid before I had looked at the clue. Darjeeling being my tea of choice, I’m sure I would have solved it soon enough without theme-related help.

eccentricity: in a conic section, the constant ratio of the distance of a point on the curve from the focus to its distance from the directrix (usually represented by e; (geom)’ There was some great clueing in this and, after yesterday’s DYNASTY, we have HAN used as a partial, today. I thought 1d ( ANGEL CAKE ) was an extremely clever clue. However, I have three downers ! The PDF option will still show if it was available on the old crosswords before they were moved over to our new platform. How do I print a crossword? True, Janis was a different kettle of fish, although her biggest (posthumous) hit was penned by Kris Kristofferson – there’s a nice version by him and Rita Coolidge.DE (inDEed at heart, which took a minute or two to work out – nice misdirection) + PRESS) (iron) + I[r]ON) minus r (right) That said, I do have sympathy with those discombobulated by the sore/saw merger. It’s not just the presence or absence of an /r/, it’s the fact that the preceding vowel can sound completely different to many rhotic speakers. (Especially in those accents affected by the cot-caught merger, which includes much of Scotland, Ireland, Canada, the US and India. For many American English speakers, ‘saw’ rhymes (more or less) with ‘Shah’, while the vowel in ‘sore’ certainly doesn’t.)

LEI[sure] (holiday) minus ‘sure’ (certain): a garland given as a gift to visitors to Hawaii – see here We know people are experiencing issues with printing so we have outlined some details here that should help. Cryptic definition, a boater being a kind of hat, the question mark indicating definition by example

GROSS OUT: that is why I underlined just ‘disgust (verb) as definition, leaving ‘show’ as a link word. I thought of trying DOER where SHER is, since a doe is a female of various species, and a doer is an actor. But then “old” in the clue wouldn’t have been doing anything–doer is a rare word, but not a particularly archaic one. The cryptic grammar (I follow) doesn’t quite work here – a pity, since the setter dealt with I effectively in the previous clue and in 8dn Edit – thanks to KVa and Alan C: a reversal (up, in a down clue) of LEG (pin) + C in A lot of NAKE[d] (raw) I looked it up. There are 22 places called Salem in the US, the most famous being the one with the witch trials. It’s also the capital of Oregon and a small town in my own state (Connecticut) I didn’t even know how to find on a map.

There are a number of neat anagrams and some witty definitions and deft misdirection, with great surfaces all round. muffin @53 – I would see ‘apply’ (with qm) as one of Paul’s whimsical adjectival constructs, like ‘jetty’ = ‘a bit like a jet’. Fwiw Wiktionary has apply as an alternative spelling of appley. And come to think of it, if stubble can be stubbly, and a bobble can be bobbly, why can’t an apple be apply? Third downer is, while both are involved in corporal punishment, birch and cane are not really synonymous. ShropshireLass @55: who imagined that the proximity of the L to the colon on the keyboard could produce such striking results? 🙂 ]Competition entries for the latest Prize crossword must be received by the first post on the Friday after the puzzle appears. The first five correct entries drawn will win a copy of Guardian Style and Secrets of the Setters. Completed Prize crosswords should be printed out and sent to: The Guardian Crossword, PO Box 6603, Birmingham, B26 3PR or fax to 0121 742 1313. How do I enter the Azed crossword competition?