Thursday 1 November 2018

Leaked Clues From The IWSC Jumbo Christmas Crossword


So the big surprise this week, here at Sediment at least, was the partial leak of the IWSC's Wine and Spirits Christmas Crossword puzzle. Normally the IWSC goes to formidable lengths to keep its brain-teasers (high point of many a oenophile's year) under wraps until the week of Christmas itself, but this year someone's hacked the compilers and got out not quite half the clues and none of the actual grid. The solutions are also out in the wild, but heavily encrypted; they'll take a while to unscramble.

Anyway. Too excited and intemperate to wait, I've decided to put up the stuff that we have got, so anyone who wants to can get stuck in. I've managed a couple already (I'm pretty sure 15 Down is Chianti), but others are slightly harder going. Solutions should be through in a fortnight.

Across:
4. Familiar appelation unites us from the Sixties (6)
7. Sell a Gallic sweetheart? Take your pick! (8)
8. Here I live in fear (7)
13. Sweet, mistaken, earnest us (9)
14. Familiar aroma in odd pet case? (4,3)
19. See 27 Down
22. Ventoux mechanism turns white (10)
26. Writer gives up for old Antipodean (8)
30. Missouri anticipates mixture of dregs and an abrupt left to create a flower (7)
34. Flavour like Kew? (9)
39. Fizzy, favoured six-legger contains harm? (9)
40. What we're left with, 'e claimed to argue (8)

Down:
2. Prophet rises and gets working for a piece of California (6)
6. Adhesive dyestuff? Buff's commonplace (6,7)
11. Messy slob's tipple (4)
13. He waits for battle, story-teller loses article but invests a quarter (9)
15. Some kind of CIA suggestion - Machiavelli might recognise it (7)
18. Magical object loses player, gains most of actress - it's the water of life (8)
23. Look in the residue, Rosemary, for traces of a river (5)
31. Common Era's not suited? It's a mess near Dijon (5,2,5)
35. German opera contains mixed-up falsehoods? Hock the lot! (8)
36. Typical Chardonnay to evoke a serving hatch (7)
37. Keatsian Hippocrene (3,4,3,8)

CJ













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