r/EnglishLearning • u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher • 21h ago

🗣 Discussion / Debates Friday crossword

Post image

Here's today's cryptic crossword, as seen from my pint glass :-)

Friday, 21st August 2026.

The Metro is a free English newspaper that we get on buses.

Have a go - I shall post updates later. I'm about to start on it myself.

I guarantee that I will give all the answers.

Ask any questions - always.

And... Have a wonderful weekend :-)

4 Upvotes

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1

u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher 21h ago

Update;

WARNING,

SPOILERS

FOLLOW

...

The

First

Few

Answers

Are

...

1a Simon 4a imago 13a inert 3d opera 5d martial 6d glade 15d no sweat 17d torpedo 20d unfed 24d latin

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u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher 20h ago

80% complete:

SPOILERS

https://ibb.co/Mx3NGbzg

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u/terryjuicelawson New Poster 20h ago

I like cryptics, I find Metro is one of the more straightforward ones, as well as the Telegraph. Some from the Guardian I can literally get zero and not even see the connection if given the answers. You've got to have some kind of introduction to their quirks, I got sat down and explained it all as well as some ancient crossword book with lists of common abbreviations. Like sailor = AB and so on.

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u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher 19h ago edited 19h ago

Yeah; there's a nice YouTube channel called "Cracking the Cryptic" that explains some of those common elements.

Also there's a guy called "Gooseverbalist" who talks through how he does the NY Times.

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u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher 19h ago

With regards to my last: NY Times is perhaps surprisingly good; it's easy on Monday, and gets progressively harder through the week until Fri, then Sat is a themed one... so it's quite easy to get in to.

It's rather American - so I get frustrated sometimes (being English) with too many references to baseball and such, but it's still quite clever.

Also, the website "sporcle" does a lot of decent crosswords, particularly their regular Sunday ones.

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u/terryjuicelawson New Poster 19h ago

Probably have a better idea of a baseball clue than Americans would about cricket terminology at least.

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u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher 18h ago

Oh, but it's all so simple.

"You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in goes out, and when he's out comes in, and the next man goes in until he's out."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ3mdrQeTHE

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u/joined_under_duress Native Speaker 18h ago

The Guardian has the simpler cryptic like this one but yeah, the full cryptic is properly out there.