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Special Puzzle – January 2006  "Hat Trick " by Arthur Schless

Instructions: Guess the words defined by the cryptic clues (words, ten of them proper names, vary in length from three to ten letters, and include one variant spelling), then enter them in the grid one after another in the same order as their clues, starting in the upper left corner. Across words that don't end at the right continue on the next line; down words that don't end at the bottom continue in the next column. Six across words and five down words won't fit in the grid unless one of their letters is removed. Use those eleven letters with 1-across to make 12-down appear.

(If you are having trouble printing these puzzles, you can download an Adobe Acrobat version of the puzzle and grid).

Across

  1. Mystery entry
  2. Dine around in southwestern city
  3. Excrement in college stable
  4. Caps infested by a mite in certain environments
  5. Pronged tropical plant with ragged end
  6. Get up with thank-you for awns
  7. Ridicule astronaut
  8. Adolescent among late entries
  9. UN secretary is a Norse woman
  10. Dutch city has electromagnetic pieces
  11. Seventh in metaphysics
  12. Novelist, part of cadre, is errant
  13. Woodsman hammered anvils
  14. Splashes gaiters
  15. Being a significant language unit is partly academic
  16. Touch overturned instrument
  17. Groom embraces Winnie's friend
  18. Car maker originally South American, around Bolivia
  19. Smallest animal, in among thousands, making hog-like sounds
  20. I managed a foreign country
  21. Elevator part is half carbon
  22. Paintings found, oddly, in a crate
  23. Civil officer with new yoga practice

Down

  1. Cause to withdraw from you and me and Anglo-Norman
  2. Competed in dive open
  3. Inadequacy of male’s intensity
  4. Show excessive affection with a first grandchild in senility
  5. Democrat in uproar
  6. Business ware at informal site
  7. Man backs into one flower
  8. Female in professional association
  9. He is in a central place in reference book
  10. General direction is final after Roosevelt
  11. Pick-me-up through spirited rag
  12. Mystery entry
  13. Lower a foundation
  14. List of some numbers
  15. Rock of endless grand Italian earth
  16. Haze of phlegm is tussive
  17. Moved quickly on initial demand for foreign coin
  18. God of fertility is extraordinarily neat
  19. Launched special crosspiece
  20. Song, soft and initially spare, but not long
  21. Collar tone is wrong
  22. President's family members are haulers
  23. Make lace in silicon on location

©2006. Arthur Schless. All rights reserved.