I made the grid with an eye to potential wordplays, wrote all the clues, then rewrote all the clues as I found fault in each, then rewrote a few of the trickier ones again, then spent an hour fiddling with the exact wording choices for a few indicators
feels like you'd have to have a short word for either "racist attacks" or "scandals" (probably the latter), and none come to mind
the reason i say probably the latter is "racist attacks" being the def would put an S naturally at the end
castle can be KEEP but if it's that it would have to be the entire first word of the answer
NINE ELEVEN would be a term for "attacks" that fits the enumeration but 1) you wouldn't really call them "racist" and 2) there's also the slight issue of none of the wp making sense
@Jafe the definition could be "Racist": I was thinking the answer might be someone's name, or an indication of group membership (like ANTI SEMITE, though it's not usually spelled that way). But I, too, haven't gotten any farther than speculation.
"castle with black" could be a chess term but AFAIK there is no specific notation for black castling as opposed to white (it's 0-0 or 0-0-0 either way)
having said that i realise there are other historical notations and down the rabbit hole we go...
(In German a Jigsaw is simply called Puzzle, the pun is lost in English...)
A jigsaw has to match by form and (mostly!) by color at the tile borders. Assume your basic jigsaw tile consists of $m*m$ squares. Any square of the tile may have any of $k$ colors (obviously, only colors on the border of...
someone gave my 4-year-old a miniature 3x3x3 rubik's cube to play with and now i have to learn how to solve it in order to not break the illusion of "dad knows everything"
i definitely recommend this strategy if anyone you hate has small children
Just a mediocre 5x5 cryptic. Nothing fancy, no theme, and hopefully I didn't do anything funky with the conventions of cryptic clues.
Clues:
1A Nothing held by fake-rich group (5)
4A Code from an alien: "Hello, Charlie" (5)
5A Band separates, retiring (5)
1D Coast announced services (5)
2D ...
Four across was the first one I solved. I tried getting three down using pURe, but I couldn't find anything. Then I got five across, which then gave me inspiration to get three down with __C_P. Two down then came with help from the cross, but I think I would've gotten it regardless. The O made sense for "nothing held by" so a quick jumble of "rich" gave me one across.
I knew from the beginning one down was a homophone but didn't see anything, so I waited for crossing. C_E_S meant I couldn't get "chess" out of my head (lol), but a quick perusal of wordhippo for "coast" and "services" eventually gave me one down.
I'm working on a cryptic, so I've been staring at a list of abbreviations on and off for about a month now - I saw "Charlie", then "alien", and knew what was going on XD
I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing tho - I find a lot cryptic clues in puzzles on PSE can be pretty convoluted (which also isn't a bad thing), so essentially in the context of a bite-sized cryptic, it was a nice treat :) It's nice to see puzzles of varying difficulty levels
That's one thing I like about the one I'm cooking up - there are some clues that are (hopefully) pretty easy, but some that are (hopefully) significantly harder
I really liked the misdirections in your clues: "band", "coast", "services", and even "sum" - I was looking at "add", "net", etc. to try and match with "pURe" for a bit lol
I hope you will like this riddle:
I am an invisible key but I don't open a lock.
I am infinite and I am growing faster than anything.
You are in me but you cannot see me.
You need me when there is too much going on around you.
I am a physical quantity.
Who am I?
One thing that strikes me about the C4 -- and this is probably worthless -- is that "attacks castle" in chess notation can be "xR", and an x-ray is a black scan.
Just a mediocre 5x5 cryptic. Nothing fancy, no theme, and hopefully I didn't do anything funky with the conventions of cryptic clues.
Clues:
1A Nothing held by fake-rich group (5)
4A Code from an alien: "Hello, Charlie" (5)
5A Band separates, retiring (5)
1D Coast announced services (5)
2D ...
I hope you will like this riddle:
I am an invisible key but I don't open a lock.
I am infinite and I am growing faster than anything.
You are in me but you cannot see me.
You need me when there is too much going on around you.
I am a physical quantity.
Who am I?
