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3 hours ago
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Sometimes our puzzles have themes; sometimes they don’t. A solver might notice some of the themes while others may pass them by: it doesn’t usually matter, but there’s an extra gratification when we get feedback such as this letter:
Thanks to Soup for the splendid birthday compliment to Graeme Garden (Cryptic crossword, 18 February). It brought back joyous memories of The Goodies, and reminded me of how many years I’ve been hooting with laughter at I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. Many happy returns, Graeme – and all power to your setting, Soup.
Julie Mottershead
Deal, Kent
And we appreciate the vigilance of the solver who reacted to this clue from Harpo …
4d Tense aquatic bird crushed by snake somewhere in South Africa (8)
[ wordplay: T (‘tense’) + SWAN (‘aquatic bird’), both inside BOA (‘snake’)
[ definition: somewhere in South Africa ]
… with the perfectly accurate observation that BOTSWANA is not in the country of South Africa. Elsewhere in the paper, indeed, we would write something like “southern Africa”, but crossword setters are wont to reinterpret rules. Here, “South Africa” should be read in much the same sense as “south Devon”.
Qaos’s February Genius puzzle took me right back to the classroom with a turtle of the programmable kind.
The endgame invites us to trace a path, turning anticlockwise at Ls and clockwise at Rs, neatly tracing a lovely letter E. Turnstone’s Genius awaits your attention in March (unless you’ve already solved it, in which case apologies for the delayed update).
Thanks for your cluing conference contributions for SLOP: the audacity award is WellyWearer’s for a poem you can find here;
The runners-up are Patjberry’s Philistinesque “Refuse to take shortcut” and Montano’s arch “Extremely superficial ‘work’ generated by AI?”. The winner is the neat “Food for the mouths of sows and litters of piglets”. Kludos to Dunnart.
Please leave entries for GREENE below, along with any favourite clues or puzzles you have spotted.
