Phi Crosswords

phionline.net.nz

  • About me
  • Types of cryptic crossword
    • Solving crosswords
    • Outlets
  • APEX Crosswords
  • My other puzzles
    • BBC Music Magazine crosswords
    • Beelzebub Crosswords
    • Church Times puzzles
    • Enigmatic Variations
    • The European crossword
    • Independent Inquisitor
    • Independent: newspaper
    • Jumbos
    • Magpie
    • Other puzzles
  • Setter’s blogs
  • Book Reviews
  • Cats

Queen of the North

I happened to be reading about the constellation Cassiopeia (as you do, if you subscribe to Sky at Night magazine) and was, as usual, reminded of its W-ness.  That bridged the gap from image to crossword grid.  Also, the image confirmed that, dimensionally, Cassiopeia is quite compact, and would fit neatly into a rectangular grid with sides of reasonably similar lengths.  I spent a bit of time overlaying pictures of the constellation with squares to ensure the stars were all correctly placed.

And the star names were quite compact too – nothing like Zubenelgenubi (so I won’t be offering anything on Libra, you can be sure – though I’m impressed to see that my spellchecker actually has Zubenelgenubi in it).  There too was the Pacman nebula, nestling comfortably below the W (you mean you didn’t spot it without help from the solution note?).

After that, it really didn’t take very long – this is one of those puzzles where the structure means that creating it is pretty direct.  I did wonder how many answers I would get that were capable of being anagrammed + W to another word (e.g. DRONE, SNARES, LOUD, REE, ROD just using the current sentence).  There weren’t (ENTER – no, must stop…) too many, so there was some rejigging of corners to up that quota.

And, well, there you are: there are some puzzles that are just well-behaved!

Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Share
Tweet
Pin

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Phi RSS feed

  • RSS - Posts

About me

This is the website of Paul Henderson, who sets crosswords for The Independent (London) under the pseudonyms Phi, for the Daily Telegraph (London) under the pseudonym Kcit, and anonymously for The Times (London) amongst many other outlets. For a more detailed biography see the About Me page.

Blogroll

  • Alberich Crosswords
  • Alchemi's puzzles
  • Anax Crosswords
  • Azed slip
  • Big Dave's Crossword Blog
  • Boatman Cryptics
  • Crossword centenary
  • Crossword Centre
  • Crossword Club
  • Crossword Unclued
  • CrosswordMan: Crossword construction software
  • Crosswords by Hasslethymi
  • Fifteensquared
  • George vs The Listener crossword
  • Guardian Crosswords
  • Hoskins Crossword
  • idothei
  • Independent Crosswords
  • Listen with Others
  • Listener Crossword
  • Magpie Crossword Magazine
  • One Across
  • Peter's Cryptic Crossword Corner
  • Telegraph Crosswords
  • The Stickler Weekly
  • Times Crossword Club
  • Times for the Times

Comments

  • Erin on And Happy New Year
  • Brock on Enigmatic Variations – the next stage
  • Erin on 10/10/2020
  • Erin on Rebranding
  • Erin on Enigmatic Variations – the next stage

Copyright © 2021 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in