Something a bit different today - Ive written a crossword. If youre in Britain, its published in todays Times, on page 54 of the Saturday Review section. Its also available online here, although it may be behind the Times paywall. And heres a picture of it.
As you can see from the extra instructions at the top, The Listener is a bit more complicated than most crosswords, with extra rules to follow, messages to find, and an overall theme to discover. Personally, I think that makes them far more rewarding, but they do take a bit of getting the hang of, so if you havent tried cryptic crosswords at all before, this probably isnt a good one to learn on. If you do give it a try, bear in mind another thing that makes The Listener tricky is that the setter has license to use any word or abbreviation found in The Chambers Dictionary, however obscure; which makes the puzzle difficult, if not impossible, to solve without using that dictionary as well. On the plus side, if you use this site, then you can search for words using ?s as wildcards, so for instance typing ?R?S?W?R? will return crossword (and indeed brushwork). Some purists might call this cheating, but not me. I think its fine.
If you do tackle it, let me know how you get on...
