Have at it:
Click on the image to solve the puzzle. You’ll see a “save” button in the upper left in case you want to save your work and return to it later, and a “Submit” button if you want to submit your solution for judging. The three closest-to-perfect solutions will be acknowledged in this space and will receive appropriate rewards after the passage of a decent time interval (the length of which will be determined partly by the speed at which solutions arrive, but ought to be about a week).
Please try to keep spoilers out of the comments.
The rules are basically London Times rules:
- In most cases, there are two clues next to each other, one a straightforward definition and the other involving some wordplay. Part of your job is to figure out where one clue ends and the other begins. Example: “You could worship this mad dog” is a clue for GOD — “You could worship this” being the straight definition and “mad dog” being the wordplay. (Either could come first).
- Unlike in many American cryptics, there is sometimes a small connecting word that is not properly part of either clue.
- Internal punctuation means nothing. A question mark at the end of a clue is usually an acknowledgement that the clue is pretty lame. An exclamation point at the end usually means that the two clues overlap each other.
- Unlike in many American cryptics, not all clues are required to follow the above rules. There might be a few that deviate substantially, but in every case, once you know the solution, you ought to be able to say “Aha! I see how that’s a clue for that!”.
Thanks. 2d and 8d made me grin.
Not got enough yet to be worth submitting it. If nothing else, it’s teaching me some American history: there’s some I half-guessed from the letters or wordplay then searched the web for and discovered they were indeed a culturally significant term/phrase in the USA.
Unless it’s a deliberate gag, there’s a typo in the clue for 1 across.
I think I’ve got all of them, but there’s a few where I haven’t quite got to “Aha”, so holding off on submitting for a day or so.
John Faben: Typo fixed. Thanks.
WHAT???
I based my entire sequence of answers on the idea that this apparent typo revealed a clever clue! Now I have to start over completely!
Thanks a lot, Faben….
Steve, I got an error last night trying to submit,
“Error submitting: must have internet connection and be submitting to the same website as the puzzle page”
I got the same error on Safari and Chrome on a Mac, and Chrome on both Android and Windows, all different devices (I’m persistent). I’ve sent you a solution by email.
Well, that’s annoying. It was definitely working a few days ago and is definitely not working now. (I just got the same error myself.) Will investigate.
Aha! John Faben: I accidentally screwed up the submission code while I was fixing the typo you’d pointed out! Will take another five minutes or so to get this working again….
John Faben (once more!): It should be fixed now. I’ll be grateful if you try again.
Steve: success at last (pending confirmation on a few of the solutions, that is..)