The Stickler Weekly 147 Solution

Last week I mentioned that the medically-themed weekly cryptic I did for a medical publication was the hardest regular cryptic I’ve had to write due to the specific nature of medical words. The hardest non-cryptic I’ve written on a regular basis was for a Macquarie Dictionary website that offered various resources to school children. The brief was to cater for 11-15 year-olds, which sounds easy, but I can assure you this was no easy task. The difference in vocabulary on average in this age group is enormous, and if you allow for late developers and advanced students, you end up with a massive spectrum that’s hard to please across the board. There is, though, an approach that mostly works especially in an online environment that the crossword was running. I used nouns. As language develops, our knowledge of things increases gradually, but our ability to describe them increases at an alarming rate. That is, we know about a house from an early age, but the way we describe its shape, size, setting, colour, value etc comes over time as we learn more descriptive words. Therefore, an 11-year-old and 15-year-old will know HOUSE, but the 11-year-old is unlikely to know what a SEMI-DETACHED HOUSE is, where a 15-year-old might. To cover this gap in language, the key is to stick with more factual clues – objects, places, people, etc – things hopefully all the crossword’s audience know, and if they don’t know, the clue should supply enough information for them to find out. The crossword becomes essentially a specific general knowledge one. In an online environment, and using the software that I do, Crossword Compiler, that allows for online publication, it’s possible to link a clue directly to somewhere on the Net that gives the solver the answer.
I no longer write this puzzle (it went when its instigator left the company) but it was as difficult to put together as any Stickler, believe it or not.