Note that while I have solved many a cryptic crossword over the years, this is the first time I have actually set one myself. I have tried to ensure the clues all meet the standards of a traditional cryptic crossword - any of you regulars, go easy on me with your feedback! Thanks :)

25d is amusing.

@GarethMcCaughan I'll be honest, that clue was the highlight of creating this puzzle for me!

13a seems to be a bit of an exception (but I am not sure I've correctly understood the rule it seems to be an exception to)...

@GarethMcCaughan I've added the enigmatic-puzzle tag, to help emphasise Admete's words in the story that "the crossword itself isn’t quite as straightforward as you might expect"...

That much I already understood. (It looked as if a certain thing was true about a certain set of clues, but in fact I think it isn't. It's not as easy to tell as it might have been, because several of them have a certain unusual property.)

My recommendation would be to see it through and see how it all pans out in the end...

Somehow this CCross is actually solvable for me :o

or at least, I'm making progress

I do like that the crossword itself looks like a belt buckle

I am seeing it through; I have all but (I believe) two of the answers, and most of them suitably in. My apologies for being, ahahahaaa, cryptic; I hoped to be understood by the setter but not by others :-).

Got to be honest @Avi - a happy coincidence, that!

@GarethMcCaughan I follow you :)

I've made a fair bit of progress, but not as much as Gareth - I've filled about half the grid.

@GarethM If you've spotted that then

(oops) you're well on teh way...

is "concerning" a valid anagrind?

I would hope not

@Avi Nope

I should also say that I think I've done what I'm supposed to do to get the final answer (although I am missing a couple of clue answers, I don't think that is an obstacle) and ... it just looks like a belt buckle? :-)

D:

Funny how people are saying it looks like a belt buckle - I honestly didn't plan for that!

11. Concerning weed? Move flowers - are there any indicators here?

move, maybe, but what does it mean

As it happens, there are no indicators in that particular clue.

I don't mean the whole crossword looks like a belt buckle.

ok, I'll keep thinking then

@GarethMcCaughan - Just to check from your last comment but one... Have you sussed the final answer or is that step still to go?

Also have all but two clues now. Also see a likely final answer extraction. Also not getting anywhere...

Well, I don't have a final answer because, as I say, it just looks (more or less) like a belt buckle.

Okay. All the clues you need for the final solve are embedded in the story...

One of the embedded clues is very apparent. I've had a quick look for others and not seen anything I can use, though there's at least one thing that looks like it's meant to be clue-y and that I haven't yet found anything to do with.

@Deusovi just out of curiosity, are you stuck on the same two clues as me? (1d, 5d)

11. Concerning weed? Move flowers (5) - is this PLANT (ddef)?

@Avi No, but you are looking for a ddef...

I was, but I just got 5D. Stuck on 1D.

;-;

and yes, I suspect I'm looking at the same thing Gareth is (that's meant to be clue-y)

I may have got 5d too, in which case one of my others that I didn't trust much is in fact wrong

ah, duh, yes it was wrong but now it's right

8a is TURK + U?

yes

that's what I got

cool

Re 1D, a tiny bit of (general) knowledge about Italian football teams might help...

I was afraid of that

^

the problem there is that you assumed anyone here knows anything about sports

Ha! Yes, I've noticed that sports questions don't always go down especially well on PSE!

hm, one problem I'm having is that there appear to be at least four instances of ambiguity in the final grid

True. But once you spot how to extract the final answer, all ambiguity will be resolved...

If Gareth and Deus are already on this cryptic crossword, I'm not even going to bother starting :-)

3d is REUNITE* for sure

but 11a is killing me

Actually, in one of those instances the ambiguity has no effect.

hm that seems to confirm the idea I had?

In the other two, you'll spot the right way to resolve it...

maybe SPROUT (ddef)?

sketchy though

but the idea I had doesn't seem to match up with the obvious clued thing that Gareth had mentioned

@Deusovi By my count there are only 3 'ambiguous' across clues...? What am I missing?

I count 4 (all across).

Actually, whoops, you're right

three instances

Okay good, I was beginning to doubt my eyes!

in my defense, counting is hard

the ambiguities are what I was referring to earlier "several of them have a certain unusual property".

though I'm fairly sure how they want resolving, to make two things resemble one another

Ah, well we may have been talking at slightly crossed purposes earlier then - there may be another 'unusual property' clued by the story text...

@GarethMcCaughan yes, agreed - I figured that's what Stiv was hinting at

the resemblances seemed to be the natural extraction, but it wouldn't take into account the remaining part of the story text (and it doesn't seem to be very useful)

I looked all through the list here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…, and also through a list of actual names of Italian football clubs, without spotting anything useful for 1d

unless of course I have some of the other clues wrong

I've also been looking through various lists, no luck

That page will help!

ah

okay, got it

uh-oh

that clue, I mean

no idea how to extract still

you're still importantly ahead of me :-)

also, I'm at work and need to go home soon, and I don't think I'll have solved it before I leave

coincidentally, I have to head to class soon, so I'll be a bit distracted

Out of interest @Deusovi do you think clue 1D satisfies the usual cryptic creation rules or is it irregular in any way?

1D is probably fine (though I might quibble with one part of it). There are a few other clues I have complaints about, though

without having solved it I'll guess that "by" is a little naughty

Others! Oh no!

(mostly things that I suspect would be acceptable in Libertarian publications, but I'm a fairly strict Ximenian)

I bet Deusovi would like one word of 20a to be plural, though it would wreck the surface

22a is rather loose

there are some "of"s and "the"s and the like that are slightly untidy

but I mean basically it's fine

and, again, 25d is really funny

anyway, I need to be AFK for a while now. Congratulations to Deusovi on probably solving it first :-).

I'm guessing that the punctuation use is one of your bugbears then!

No, punctuation isn't the issue here - Gareth's right about some of my complaints

12A seems to have one word too many; ditto for 6D (which is also missing a 'for example')

anyway, I'll complain about my perceived flaws later - for now, I'll go back to staring at this grid

the answer doesn't happen to be IRONER, does it? or RENOIR? (I highly doubt it but it's worth a shot)

No.

didn't think so, but it was worth a shot

Sorry that full stop looks very stiff!

(yeah, a bit!)

So, to be less vague: Grid is entirely filled. Many of the left hand side letters seem to match those in the same position on the right side, but those don't spell anything useful (either overlaying by translation or by reflection). I haven't figured out how to use the first line of the shop policy.

That's the only thing you're missing by the sound of it...!

It's not about identical letters but there is a way to work out which letters to focus on...

yeah, figured that was the last bit to interpret

not seeing how though

I'm about to go AWOL for a couple of hours (dinner and kids' bedtimes) but I'll check back in later. Maybe inspiration will strike in the meantime...! It might even hit you if you write up what you've got so far... Good luck!

Alright, partial answer posted.

Let's see if anyone else can spot what Gareth and I missed.

so what I meant by "looks like a belt buckle" is that if you shade the backward clues you get, on the RHS of the grid, something that looks rather like one end of a belt.

so is "device" the whole def for 1d? Not a fan, but never mind.

It looks less like one end of a belt now it's established that 1d is backwards, though.

I also considered shading the backward clues, but it didn't seem very useful

oh, I have another idea. (I bet it doesn't work, though)

nah, it doesn't

I was thinking that if you "fold" the crossword in the obvious way then almost all of it is shaded (when you shade reversed lights) on at least one side, so maybe the letters left unshaded are significant

but that doesn't seem plausible, looking at what some of them are

in particular you get K F S L in the middle of the upper half

hm, tried all letters that are the starts of words (or that are only the starts of words); nothing, again

the latter looked potentially promising with Q and U, reading upwards from right to left

@GarethMcCaughan Yes it is. Sorry!

Nothing to do with the backwards clues either

if the top row is RAWER< and RATTY, a letter that would fit inbetween is 'D'

doesn't seem like that works for other rows though