The Stickler Weekly 109 Solution

Solvers of my puzzles will know that I rarely do theme crosswords, however they are almost mandatory for the Christmas and New Year period running up to Australia Day. The Australian Financial Review (AFR) publishes bumper editions where I write large themed cryptics with more than 70 clues. Since my debut in the AFR I’ve written 26 Christmas or New Year themed puzzles, all containing different ideas. As the holiday period approaches, I rack my brains trying to find something new, but some topics have limited scope. After the days of Christmas and the reindeer, there’s really not a lot left for Christmas. Even though it’s a religious festival, a religious theme these days has the tendency to offend people, so I stay away. New Year is even worse – apart from the date change, what else is there? Fireworks? Done. Thankfully the cryptic element of crosswords allows for other possibilities like “New Year” in a clue meaning an anagram of “year”. A few years ago I wrapped a Christmas cake recipe into the crossword that was great fun and very tasty. This year I’ve done the same in the AFR but with a twist. One thing that always surprises me is that something always seems to pop out, even when there appears to be no more ideas to be had. If nothing spectacular comes to mind, there’s always my default gimmick which is to incorporate an appropriate message somewhere in the grid to acknowledge the time of year and my appreciation of solvers.
I find the larger grids offer much more room to incorporate a theme and allow everything to stay normal from a grid design, grid-fill and cluing sense. A standard 15×15 is a tight space to work in and compromise is often needed to squeeze in that extra theme word or make a gimmick work. Nothing worse than leaving yourself a really obscure word or two to clue that obviously don’t fit with the style of rest of the puzzle. These misfits can stand out so much that they push the theme into to background and spoil a lot of hard work.