It was late afternoon before I managed to buy an Independent, so am way behind with this one. I'm getting there but have a couple that I am slightly stuck with - and am wondering if I have gone wrong.
9 D. Male characteristic leads to exaggerated swaggering through old training ground (4) xs??
(The 's' is iffy!)
45 A. Poorly paid worker of yesteryear died in open space in town (4) d?ng
The wordplay in each clue leads to the answer plus an extra letter.
Thanks for any advice.
Hi Never,
9D starts with XY (as in male chromosome).
The definition is 'old training ground'.
45A is D for died followed by a word that is used to describe a green open space as the 'XXXX' of a dense city area - but with the first letter missing.
I have finished the grid but am struggling to make sense of the phrase giving directions.
Thanks, boreas - I've fixed 9 Down and have got 45 A (I don't know how I missed that). I've still got a few to go, so am nowhere near ready to drawlines! Hope you get yours finished off soon.
I have almost all of the grid filled now. I am having trouble with 8D and 17 A - I have (semi-plausible) answers for each, but I can't have both as letters will clash. Can you tell me if the intersecting letter (last in 8 D, third in 17 A) is an 'a'?
I have quite a collection of extra letters now. The most meaningful bit I can see is a word starting at 37 A - though I have no idea what to do with it!
Inevitably, as soon as I posted, I worked 8 and 17 out! I will now look, properly, at extra letters - the ones I have, and I'll see if I can track down some others.
As I am not always good at explaining things...the word I have starts with the extra letter at 37. It's 9 letters long - but could be longer, as I don't have the extra letters from 1 and 2 Down.
I meant a word made up from the extra letters. I have a word at the very beginning ( 1A, 5A, 10A and 11A), followed by some random looking letters.Then at 37A, I have another word - after that it's back to random letters.
In the grid I have so far only seen a possible word at the bottom, left-hand side (starting just below 37).
My problem is finding the fourth of the entities requiring 30 letters in total (the 7-letter one, which ought to be squinter than the others). I can find some of its letters but the others seem to make no pattern. Also the 6 lines are giving me difficulty. Anyone else got this far - or beyond?