Crossword Fiend Forum

Here's another Daily Kos puzzle. Standard crossword grid (in order to be able to use Across Lite) but cryptic clues.

I see that there's some interesting feedback from jhaber3 on several of my previous puzzles. (No time to reply to that at the moment, but will return later.) A number of good criticisms there, which people trying this puzzle might enjoy reading.

One thing I've been intending to do, but haven't (because I tend to be very slow in getting things done) is to return a week after posting a puzzle to provide the solution and explanations for some of the more difficult clues. (At Daily Kos I routinely post notes with background information on some of the answers after the clues have been solved.) I will try to start doing that on a regular basis here as well when I post puzzles. (I have been locking the solutions when I post these, so as not to spoil the fun for solvers over at Daily Kos, but that makes it hard for people who only see the puzzles here to understand what some of the answers are.)

Good for you. Obviously you do most of the same things we'll call "not Hexian," after the idols of the cryptic forum, Henry and Emily, who used to write the Atlantic puzzle and have used the nickname Hex. Say, there are odd references (Criss), definitions not in MW11 (universal), wrong parts of speech, indirect anagrams (with the one on SENT/TENS facing an additional problem that the clue doesn't narrow down which to enter in the grid, although some think that's fine as long as the puzzle taken as a whole is not ambiguous), and with 1A something else: it's not ordinarily ok to have a hidden clue that isn't fully hidden rather than ending with the words given. (It could have been "ad source" instead of "ads," say.)

But I don't mean to pick on you. I would urge you to work more toward the givens if you weren't so talented at this.

John