When I was young my dad used to do our local newspaper’s cryptic crossword puzzle every morning. This always intrigued me and he slowly started teaching me how to do them, until I frequently asked him to photocopy the crossword every morning so that I could solve it myself without interfering with his own work on it. Thinking about it now, this is probably where my love of interesting words came from.
Now, many years later, I find myself constantly coming up with cryptic clues for words (which proves to be distracting sometimes while I’m writing), so I thought I’d start writing down these clues and putting them into my own cryptic crossword puzzles so they have a home outside of the confines of my mind.
Now that I’ve started doing that, it seems silly to not share the puzzles with anyone, so I thought I’d do that in the most logical place I can think of – my own blog. If I end up doing enough of these I might start putting them on their own site, but for now this is a good enough place as any for them to live.
So, without further ado, here is the first of these puzzles – I’ll update the post with the answers in a week’s time, but for now feel free to download, print, share and solve my first cryptic crossword offering.
Across
6. Coming to a stop on equal terms with the ruler (7)
7. Wheel on 500 – they’re exhausted! (5)
9. To be ill, so to speak, from beer (3)
10. Mistake a bad set as a series of informative tables (9)
12. Warm vegetables make unpleasant issues (3,8)
15. Taking responsibility for putting myself in harm’s way (2,2,3,4)
17. Coming to mind and happening (9)
19. Uselessly internal cunning (3)
21. Oddly cruel profits (5)
22. Growing of account right under all leaders’ heads (7)
Down
1. Rings up and shouts out (5)
2. In risking my life I make sport in snow (3)
3. South American race in Latin calendar (4)
4. Ultimate trial? (5,4)
5. Lad got married and was made fresh (7)
8. Meaningless talk takes Father and the heads of two towns to the emergency room (6)
11. Do a drug by wrong protector (9)
13. Strengths shown by strange row with emphatic initial in addendum (6)
14. Arrogant attitude pushed in from below (5,2)
16. Relieve unending god on the Fourth of July (5)
18. Scratch the boy (4)
20. Vessel made from broken rack losing 100 (3)
Need some help? Here are the solutions.
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