Buenchico's Harder Crossword

[Buenchico]

JimF posted to say that he'd found my last crossword easy, having completed it in around 10 minutes. So I've tried to come up with a tougher one, just to slow him down a bit ;-)

So, for Jim (and for anyone else who fancies a bit of a challenge), here's my latest offering:
http://dl.free.fr/h6XQH7y3e
(Click the grey 'Valider et . . . ' button to download it to your PC. Then open it with your PDF reader and print it from there).

Solution available upon request.

Jim will probably do this one in only 5 minutes though, instead of 10! C'est la vie ;-)

[marval]

Thank you Buenchico.

[Mamyalynne]

Ta Buen x

[Lie-in King]

Merci buen

[elliemay1]

Merci aussi

[JimF]

I had all but one word done in about 30 minutes, but have finally had to admit defeat with 5d.

I have O?R?F?ED - where have I gone wrong?

[Sam1960]

rarefied ?

[Mamyalynne]

That works with 4a Sam, looks good.

[JimF]

***! Had "bloody-mindedness for 4a.

Thanks for the hint. All done now.

[Buenchico]

Well at least I managed to slow you down a bit, Jim ;-)

[Sam is correct]

[Buenchico]

Well done, BTW, Jim!

I've got a feeling that one or two people might struggle with that one ;-)

[JimF]

I wouldn't know. I rarely do non-cryptic crosswords, so yours make a welcome change. Many, many years ago one of my teachers gave me a technique for general knowledge crosswords which has very rarely failed over the years:

1) Start with the border clues
2) Then the clues with multi-word answers
3) Then the clues whose answers are three letters
4) Then the rest

[Buenchico]

That seems roughly similar to the way that (under 'normal' circumstances) our little group of three work together on the (Saturday) Times 2 Jumbo crossword in the pub. One of the guys can usually get the multi-word answers in a flash, so we let him work on those while the other two of us work our way around the edges.

Of course a good compiler knows that many (most?) people start in the top left-hand corner, so he/she will try to ensure that some of the harder clues go there ;-)

[Caran]

Thank you Chris. I will save this for tomorrow.

[Caran]

This certainly was a lot harder than previous ones.
Took me all day!

[Buenchico]

It seems I achieved my aim, Caran ;-)

I'm glad you got there in the end though!