Cryptic crossword

I had a big idea for this post.  It was going to be an interactive crossword, embedded in the post that you could fill in right here. I made the crossword, with a vague travel theme, and had it all ready to embed. (For the benefit of any non-UK readers, this is a cryptic crossword; here’s a tutorial.)

Alas, the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men…  It turns out that the intersection of amateur bloggers and amateur crossword writers is, essentially, me.  So there’s no way for me to embed a custom crossword on this site without either paying WordPress a lot of money, or paying some crossword provider a lot of money, or paying a small amount of money to a small provider but that involves entering my card details to a little-known website, which doesn’t feel like a sensible idea.  (I did find a cool bit of open-source software called QXW, which is a helper for filling in crossword grids of various types—that I wish I’d known about before I made this grid using some self-made rudimentary R code to help me—but it only does the grid bit: it doesn’t let you write the clues within the software.)

So I gave up.  Instead, I present the crossword in three ways:

• As an image, so you can actually see it on this page (made using QXW);
• As a PDF, that you can print and play (or annotate on-screen, if you like);
• As a .puz format file.  You can play these in free software called Across Lite, or in other crossword puzzle software.

Here it is, then.  First, the image:

Across		Down
1 (and 5ac) Getting well clear of cow crossing here (8,6) 5 See 1 across 10 Tailless dog attracts endless racket in return, causing clash (9) 11 He held everything up—the result of an old version of Google Maps? (5) 12 Back me into a crumbling abyss: need somewhere to get assistance abroad (7) 13 Our French horn’s embellishment is cut short—that gets right up my nose! (7) 15 Sounds like the meat could kill a vampire (5) 16 Cumbrian village caught up in bad year, clearly (9) 18 Carving remade with glint (9) 19 Questionnaires representing constructions (5) 21 Imperfect chamber or one of its members (7) 23 Hostile with a lot of hay? (7) 24 Get tested if you have this, always, with no alternative (5) 26 Perhaps that old lizard might help to solve this (9) 27 Brando’s other half and one of his characters get together—that’s capital! (6) 28 What to do to never again mix up any verse (5,3)		1 Goes over old origins, from the sound of it (7) 2 A chocolate for a city in Florida—what a joyous occasion this is! (11) 3 Most stuffy ship I found in grip of chaplain (9) 4 Like building works, maybe, found in Illinois yards (5) 6 Cross Charles and Davies, and they’ll see right through you (1-4) 7 Bird of West Latvian origins (3) 8 Not the last town in Norfolk to have fun or show off (7) 9 Ceaseless damage in gnu den (8) 14 The costs to go back and forth, as when the Queen will go north and change direction, are on top of food served at the start (6,5) 16 When a spy is hidden in an obscured image, leave the country (8) 17 Cleanse the skin of a fox elite, carelessly (9) 18 Hope in the face of devastating illness is one mode of thinking (7) 20 Spend yen: how ostentatious! (7) 22 “Trunk” is “brief”, with an Old English translation (5) 23 Note British Rail on the day before (5) 25 Vehicle provided by legless but upstanding navy (3)

Next, the PDF:

And now, here it is in .puz format.

The solutions are contained within the .puz file, but I’ll put the answers up in plaintext next week.

I really should go back to just writing text…

Update 21/02/2026: Hello, it’s Alex from the future! Firstly, for anyone hunting for the answers in plaintext—I never did that. Oops…

Since I moved the hosting of this blog from WordPress.com, I have more options for embedding stuff in a page. Which means I can now do what I wanted to back in 2021, and just have a playable crossword below. (See the obligatory privacy note below the puzzle before clicking on it if you are GDPR-inclined.)

Obligatory privacy note: if you click to view the crossword it will send data to Amuse Labs, where the puzzle is hosted, and set cookies in your browser which is necessary to remember the state of the puzzle. If you click the “Always display content” button crosswords will automatically load when you visit the website again, and a cookie will be stored to remember this preference. By clicking on the puzzle you consent to the applicable parts of this. For more information see the privacy and cookie policy.