Oh sod it, I am just going to come right out and ask for your help.
Our local Saturday paper has a great puzzle section, including the cryptic crossword from the previous week’s London Sunday Times, and the big complicated semi-cryptic one from the New York Times (I think it is also the Sunday version).
I am ONE CLUE away from finishing the cryptic crossword for the first time EVER.
I think I know what the answer is, but I don’t know why. This is almost as bad as not having any idea at all.
My personal code of crossword ethics forbids me from consulting a dictionary or thesaurus. However I formulated the code before I’d even heard of a blog, so I’m gonna say that it is OK to ask for verification of an answer (not the answer itself) from my blog readers.
As i am a Google addict who likes to help people, but have never done a cryptic crossword in my life, I have this one link to give you: http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Quizzes-and-Puzzles/Crosswords/Question629218.html
No idea if that is right. My Google skills have failed me in finding any written information that suggests that “iris” is synonymous with “flag”. I do know there is a “flag iris” species though!
“I do know there is a “flag iris” species though!”
That’ll TOTALLY work! Thanks mate!
If you’re free at 5.30 I’ll buy you a beer!
haha, I read this and then I remembered why I only liked doing cross words with my granny. She would help me out when I got stuck and know the strangest things in the world™.
Good luck with it. Sorry I can’t be of any assistance in this case.
I used to do crosswords with my Grandma too. Like yours, she knew all those unusual words that only avid crossword doers ever use…
She also frequently trounced me, my sister, my Mum (i.e. her daughter) and/or my cousins at Scrabble. Then she would sit back with an almost-but-not-quite smug smile and announce, “I think I shall have a gin and tonic now”.
Just such an occasion is actually my last memory of her, when I was 15. Ahh, happy days and I am bitter-sweetly nostalgic now!
Just for that I will buy you a beer too, but you will have to come here to get it. (Your journey is a wee bit longer than Kyrsten’s!)
‘Iris’ is definitely the answer. Remember, the ‘p’ is silent, as in ‘swimming’, but only every other Wednesday outside Lent (restrictions may apply).
That’s similar to my memories too. Although my gradma liked a small glass of Port wine :) (Something with being scared of strong alcohol? I dunno know. It seems fitting though that the English grandmother has a G&T)
I’ll be more than happy to collect that beer. Whenever I will get my boots to Vancouver again. I think I might be overdue at another meeting with an old uni friend as well….
Even in Canada? I thought the North-Western Commonwealth exclusion applied on Saturdays. But then the crossword itself is originally published on a Sunday, so maybe the Yorkshire Pudding rule applies.
That was obviously a reply to Henry, not Asa.
Obviously.
Crystal clear :)
I need a beer. And it is only 3.30 pm.
And I could have used a beer last Friday! D’oh! hard to log into to non-work websites, you know…
You snooze you lose!
Maybe next week?
You could definitely argue that NN is work related. I do.