January 26 2011
Sticking It To Ya
Keeping with our Aussie theme, here’s a pugnacious crossword with a local twist. Built like a jigsaw, where the 28 answers need to be slotted into the pattern, the puzzle is the brain-child of Sydney compiler, David Stickley. Not the DS of Fairfax repute, but Mr Styx in London’s Financial Times, as well as our own Daily Tele’s turbine, where David has created more than 4000 Sticklers – six days a week.
By my fallible calculations, that runs close to 13 years of solid composing. A mighty effort, and argument enough for David to take what holidays he can grab – Australia Day included. Enjoy the challenge, and thanks to the Sticky one for letting me know about the puzzle.
Comments
SK — 27 January at 08:06PM
This was cleverly put together. My only beef (or should that be lamb?) being that knowing the configuration of the 28 letters of the "Constitutional fact", and knowing that the clues were in alphabetical order, made it quite easy to solve. Had the clues been more randomly ordered it would have been more challenging. But still good fun and very timely!
SK — 27 January at 08:07PM
Sorry, make that "commemorative fact"....
DA — 27 January at 10:16PM
Quite the compiling feat, needing to recruit every initial to spell a message. Not that I found the clues too hard - a simpatico level reminiscent of Cox + Rathvon in the US. (Look for their stuff in the WSJ.)
Liked JOY RIDE, and thought UNMUFFLE the only stretch as an answer, which is impressive. Thanks to the Stickler for letting us know about it.
Mr X — 28 January at 09:37AM
Reminded me a bit of a toned down version of Aracauria's alphabetic ones