In the early days I had no luck plugging my cryptic crosswords, so I turned to writing themed crosswords to try and sell to magazines, believing I was on a sure winner. Trouble is, writing theme crosswords is hard and time-consuming, and editors are generally under the impresssion that a theme crossword should contain 100% theme words. As a relative novice, I thought this sounded reasonable and consequently failed every time. A while back I mentioned the first dedicated crossword PC program I used called Crossword Designer (CD). At the time I considered it a powerful tool as, for the first time, I could fill a grid with words of my choice. I was a young setter and knew this tool gave me a huge advantage and I set about trying to exploit it. CD offered new hope with theme crosswords, with the facility to use my own wordlists and pick my own words. I targetted the gardening magazine sector as there were a few on the market and there are so many plants and garden-related things. Many, many hours followed compiling a wordlist from the indexes of every gardening/plant book I could find, and searching dictionaries and thesauruses. I even went through the entire Encyclopedia Botanica. Every suitable noun got a plural entry and every verb ended up with multiple related entries. At various times during my wordlist build I tried auto-filling some grids just to see if I had enough words to work with. I think about 1000 words gives some hope of a complete fill, 2000 gives multiple options and 5000 gives great choice. I’ve still got that wordlist with 5600 entries, but it has an inherent problem – about 70% of the words aren’t usable as plant names don’t generally have synonyms and plant descriptions aren’t clue-sized and unlikely to identify a specific plant anyway. I didn’t think of that until I filled 15 grids with garden words and found most of the entries were for obscure plants that I couldn’t clue! You live and learn.
| Across | Answers and Clues | Explanations |
| 1 | BOMBARDS | |
| Retreating troop counters, absorbing division’s initial attacks (8) | MOB reversed + [BARS outside (D)IVISION] | |
| 5 | SPACED | |
| Measure in standard deviation is positioned at intervals (6) | PACE inside SD | |
| 10 | CURATES | |
| Copper has a high opinion of clerical workers (7) | CU + RATES | |
| 11 | ADORING | |
| A party band is devoted (7) | A + DO + RING | |
| 12 | See 17-down | |
| 13 | NET PROFIT | |
| Bag for suitable earnings (3,6) | NET + PRO + FIT | |
| 14 | AURA | |
| Distinctive air intake used by restaurant (4) | restAURAnt | |
| 15 | KECAP MANIS | |
| Quarter of milk used in pancake is mixed with sweet sauce (5,5) | (M)ILK inside (anagram of PANCAKE IS) | |
| 18 | EMISSARIES | |
| Agents close to shore fail to notice house (10) | SHOR(E) + MISS + ARIES | |
| 20 | CUTE | |
| Point chasing batsman’s shot is appealing (4) | E(ast) after CUT | |
| 23 | AIR PISTOL | |
| Dispersed patrol is infiltrated by one shooter (3,6) | I inside anagram of PATROL IS | |
| 24 | TACIT | |
| Contract a citizen partially understood (5) | contracT A CITizen | |
| 25 | OPINION | |
| View small cog positioned behind ring (7) | PINION after O | |
| 26 | PALAVER | |
| Friend, a reverend, backed song and dance (7) | PAL + A + (REV reversed) | |
| 27 | TISSUE | |
| Paper tiger’s first problem (6) | (T)IGER + ISSUE | |
| 28 | CENSURED | |
| Clubs solid in design may be condemned (8) | C + (SURE inside END) | |
| Down | Answers and Clues | Explanations |
| 1 | BACKSTAGE | |
| Taxi pulled over with busted gasket away from public view (9) | CAB reversed + anagram of GASKET | |
| 2 | MARINER | |
| Seaman and digger retaining a right (7) | MINER outside (A + R) | |
| 3 | AUTHOR | |
| Heart of Paul, God and Creator? (6) | P(AU)L + THOR | |
| 4 | DISINTEGRATING | |
| Reshaped die isn’t scraping or breaking up (14) | (Anagram of DIE ISNT) + GRATING | |
| 6 | PROGRAMS | |
| Software experts harnessing Google’s first computer component (8) | PROS outside [(G)OOGLE + RAM] | |
| 7 | CHIFFON | |
| Fine material finished up in outstanding feature (7) | (OFF reversed) inside CHIN | |
| 8 | DIGIT | |
| A number understand it (5) | DIG + IT | |
| 9 | PARTIAL ECLIPSE | |
| It applies clear, treated blockout without full effect (7,7) | Anagram of IT APPLIES CLEAR | |
| 16 | SWELTERED | |
| Unfinished well in desert badly suffered in the hot weather? (9) | (WEL)L inside anagram of DESERT | |
| 17 & 12ac |
ESPIRITU SANTO | |
| Sort of superstition spreading across a Pacific island (8,5) | Anagram of SUPERSTITION outside A | |
| 19 | IN RUINS | |
| A rising sun, emitting gas erratically, may be falling apart (2,5) | Anagram of A RISING SUN minus GAS | |
| 21 | UNCOVER | |
| Bunch with no limitations completed show? (7) | B(UNC)H + OVER | |
| 22 | STALLS | |
| One section of a theatre plays for time (6) | Double Definition | |
| 23 | ALOFT | |
| Start of fireworks filmed by many in the sky (5) | (F)IREWORKS inside A LOT |
David you have excelled yourself
next stop is all/any dictionaries to find out just what 15a – keycap manis – really is
would never have got that in a million years, even knowing that ‘pancake’ was involved
keep up the great work
time I got to another ‘subscription’ as well
best wishes – Richard
“kecap manis” is a sweet soy sauce.
From the Macquarie:
noun
a thick, sweet soy sauce, common in Indonesian cooking.
[Bahasa Indonesia kecap soy sauce + manis sweet]
It’s great alternative to normal soy and can be found in most supermarkets. I was using it the other day in a stir-fry and wondered how easy it would be to clue.
Best
David
thanks for your trouble David
did find it – still haven’t ever heard of it
must be some cook-offs at your place!
(very very) good one
Richard
I love all types of Asian food, so I have a bottle of kecap manis in the pantry. That clue was quite easy for me, but I wouldn’t be surprised if plenty of people struggled with it.
I knocked this one off fairly quickly, which of course means that #45 will be diabolical. I liked 10ac, 26ac, 27ac, 3dn & 9dn.
I had to look up the answer to a5-ac as I couldn’t make any words I knew from the fodder, and the dictionary I can pattern search for anagrams (Chambers) doesn’t have it.
I have a problem with 19-dn: A rising sun, emitting gas erratically, may be falling apart (2,5)
You can’t parse it as “[A rising sun, emitting gas] erratically” because “gas” isn’t contained in “A rising sun”, (“asg” is). If you parse it as “[A rising sun], emitting [gas erratically] you can now anagram “asg” to “gas” and remove it, but there’s then no indicator to anagram what remains.
Moving the anagram indicator to produce “A rising sun, erratically emitting gas,” allows you to first anagram the fodder to, say, “INRUINSGAS” and then “emit” GAS from the result, so that fixes it for me.
Am I missing something?
Steve = : ^ )
Thanks for the feedback Steve regarding 19-down. I might save my response to a future solution blurb, as it’s rather technical. It comes down to how you view the fodder, as words or letters, and then whether contiguity and letter order matters within that context. I think in general I aim for [(anagram of fodder) minus letter/letters/word/words] and probably should have in this case.
Okay.
Steve = : ^ )