Times National Crossword Championship 2023 grand finalist shares experience of the tournament and walks through final trickiest clues Music by epidemicsound (www.epidemicsound.com) Secrets Of The Mind by Kikoru
Thank you for your thoughts on the puzzle. Most enjoyable. And very well done to you! Your methodical and careful approach got you to the final and very nearly a victory. A superb result.
Reassuring to hear that your struggles with this grid were not unlike mine - TRAMP, ULAN BATOR, STAIR ROD and others far from fully parsed when my paper went up just inside the 20. If I'd taken the time to understand everything completely I'm not sure I'd have finished inside an hour! And of course we were all lucky that past champions Mark and Roger made little mistakes earlier on that ruled them out of the final. I am very much Aesop's tortoise then but I will take it! Look forward to facing you again in 2024 :) - Matthew M
Matthew himself says in the TftT blog that he froze up because of the competition conditions. I think all three solvers would have done much better if they were just solving at home for fun. When I solved the puzzle myself, I didn't have any trouble with Derbyshire, got pentad, and biffed palmistry, giving me the parsing of tramp. It was pash and obangs which gave me no end of trouble.
Great achievement Well done! With 4D I was thinking "Home for one" could refer to Sir Alec Douglas Home being a Prime Minister (PM) reversed = MP. Your videos are great tutorials.
Delighted for you. You have tried for so long, and spoke openly about your own limitations. Being right proved better than being fast, and you justifiably reached the final. Huge well done
I had heard that Mark apparently solved the final grid in 10 minutes, in the audience, but I suspect your desire to fully parse answers means, although you aren't fast, you get things right. No RIVALRY/REVELRY mistakes for you.
An ANDLIT clue (often written &lit) means "And literally". The whole clue works as a definition and the whole clue works as wordplay. So you can solve the wordplay and then say "and literally" before reading it again as a definition. This contrasts with most other clues which can be physically divided into wordplay and definition.
