You are here:   Home >  Past Puzzles & Solutions [March 2003]                     Click here to print this page print icon 

Puzzle #22--March 2003 "New Directions"

Instructions: This puzzle contains an unusual feature explained below. First, as usual, guess the words defined by the cryptic clues (words vary in length from four to ten letters), 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 margin continue on the next line below; down words that don't end at the bottom margin continue in the next coumn to the right. Seven across words and six down words won't fit in the grid unless one of their letters is omitted. Those thirteen letters, taken in order, spell a word that suggests how across and down words are to be entered after the first row and the first column respectively. Answers include two proper names. As ever, I am grateful to Kevin Wald for help with the clues. (If you are having trouble printing these puzzles, you can download an Adobe Acrobat version of the puzzle and grid). [Want to see some hints?]

Across

  1. Calcium carbonate and boron added to fertilizer and earth
  2. Shave weight, no doubt
  3. Making sense of present number in bed
  4. Mutual confusion without a true commotion
  5. Separates and loses it badly around start of analysis
  6. Snake and horse god
  7. Keeper holds sword back
  8. Consider steam or water
  9. Locate snake without a prayer service
  10. Preserve oath with no end of fuss
  11. Part of lacework for a woman just married
  12. Time one went ahead covered with plaques
  13. Standing up to enter data
  14. Wait! River is engulfing track
  15. Bring up in back
  16. Second-rate room
  17. Intellectual lament is misguided
  18. Place started formerly as a seaport
  19. Advantage of writer if held back
  20. Something especially good read in French in the afternoon
  21. Mocked clear turnaround in bumpy ride
  22. Apply balm to nation at war

Down

  1. Before error occurs, consider covering end manifold
  2. Florentine gets New England drug
  3. Plant and mark about one hundred
  4. Torn raiment covers town disciplinarian
  5. His campaigns must encompass fraud
  6. Lament Zulu, beheaded and dead
  7. Grind or grate steel, keeping quiet
  8. Carol without one liquid consonant
  9. Spotted pome ingested by doctor of divinity
  10. Thespesia, a Shakespearean character
  11. Hear plot developing in excess
  12. Color of marine crustaceans
  13. Architectural feature of plantation
  14. New-fangled science getting rid of carbon relatives
  15. Whipped head of beer consumed
  16. Dessert course includes aromatic plant
  17. Genteel, but made to pay again
  18. Arkansas goes after son of aristocrat
  19. Dark course prepared with heart of sable
  20. Study brief about arena's center at the same time

© Copyright 2001-2004. John de Cuevas. All rights reserved.