LING, while not a word most of us use every day, is extremely popular with crossword compilers. It can mean either [1] a type of FISH or [2] a type of plant, similar to HEATHER. ERICA is also a name for HEATHER. Cue any number of bad puns....
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I confidently plunked down GOSLING at 1D and came up a letter short! I don't understand the reference to house buyers in 5A - Britishism or my own confusion? Any way, a very enjoyable puzzle!
Thank you - I'm so glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the lovely comment. There are just too many birds ending in -ING! I wish I'd thought of the GOSLING clue, because that is very clever.
"In a chain" possibly is a Britishism and, really, it would have been more accurate to say HOUSE SELLERS, so my bad - it's when the people who are supposed to be buying your house are taking ages, because they have to wait until they have sold THEIR old house in order to have the funds to complete the purchase, but the people who are supposed to be buying their old house are also taking ages, because they have to wait until they sold THEIR house to have the funds...and so on.
That explains it - I'm familiar with the problem, but I don't think we have a phrase for it in the US. Any way, I agree with namitea - please include the Britishisms - I enjoy them!
Thank you. :) Apologies for 6 across. I think the phrase in a house-selling context must be a Britishism (I try to avoid Britishisms unless they're an integral feature of the clue type I'm trying to explain, but I don't always know a phrase is a Britishism until I post it and everybody else finds it incomprehensible) - it's when you're trying to sell your house, so you can get the money to complete the purchase on the house you're trying to buy, but it's taking ages because they people who are supposed to be buying YOUR house are also waiting for the sale of THEIR house to go through before they get the money to complete their purchase of your house, but the sale of THEIR house is taking a long time, because the people who are supposed to be buying it are waiting for the sale of their own house to go through etc.
Children often make DAISY CHAINS by making a hole in the stem of the daisy and threading the next daisy through , and then making a hole in the stem of THAT daisy and threading another daisy through, and so on
Thanks a lot for the explanation! I think it is actually nice that you include Britishisms, it is fun to learn about! (and as a Dutch person I also don’t know anything typically American either, which is a challenge for me in some other puzzles posted here haha) That is a very typical problem, I don’t believe we have a specific word for it in Dutch though.
And ooh yes, daisy chains.. that makes sense! For some reason I thought ‘daisy’ was part of like a letter that needed to be added in the answer (so I was like hmm should there be a D somewhere haha).
You think like a crossworder - I often expect every word to symbolise a letter, somehow!
Wow - your English is AMAZING - I would never have known you weren't a native speaker.
American references go over my head a lot of the time, too, and so do British references that are to do with modern culture or sport. There's a gentleman in my crossword club who always has to explain soccer clues to me.
daupo 7:50 · 2025-03-03T17:50:08.540Z
I'm pretty new to cryptics, and this was a good trainer for me, thanks!