Solvers navigating their way round this weekend’s FT crosswords might wonder if a sense of geography and the London A-Z might be just as useful as their wordplay skills.
Locations in the world feature in Falcon’s Polymath, the FT’s Saturday general knowledge crossword. Falcon (aka Allan Scott) has even managed to come up with a grid that intersects solutions to a clue about a London West End road junction and one about a property on the Monopoly board.
Knowledge about Irish villages, east African republics and New Zealand cities should also help the solver.
Away from geography, Saturday’s cryptic crossword, set by Leonidas (Nicholas Huntley), has this short snappy clue –
Whale bites male in half (4)
Interactive crosswords on the FT app
Subscribers can now solve the FT’s Daily Cryptic, Polymath and FT Weekend crosswords on the iOS and Android apps
Returning to the global theme, Sunday sees publication of the second in the FT’s monthly World Puzzle series, set by Hamilton, the pseudonym for Andrew Bartlett.
This crossword is themed on a certain country. The name of the country should be inserted in one specific clue — 12 across. Except that the clue for 12 across is blank.
Solvers can work out the name of country by solving half of the clues in the grid, each of which relate to the country in question, such as a place, a celebrity, an animal.
These related clues are indicated by asterisks. But these clues are undefined — there is no basic definition of the solution. What remains in the clue is entirely cryptic.
For example, in the first World Puzzle, 25 across was:
*Rebuild remote inns (9)
‘Rebuilt’ indicates an anagram, of ‘remote inns’, giving the answer minestrone. And, of course, the puzzle was themed on Italy.
The remaining unasterisked clues are normal — defined, cryptic and not related to the country.
The weekend’s crosswords can be found on ft.com/crosswordapp. The World Puzzle is published on Sunday June 4.
