A rather dry, themeless cryptic

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• BJ constructor · 2021-09-27T04:34:46.467Z

  Thanks for trying out my puzzle!

  If there were any clues you liked/hated, feel free to let me know—it's the best way I can improve in future

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• Mike D 8:18 · 2021-09-27T13:20:03.777Z

  Thanks for sharing it BJ! I'm new at cryptics so I only managed to get a couple of these, but it's always fun to try!

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  • BJ constructor · 2021-09-27T21:26:37.214Z

    Thanks for the kind words Mike! One thing I tried to do was have a few wordplay indicators 'hidden' in compound words, such as "upset [to get tes]" or "bless [to remove a b]"—which would be pretty cruel for a new solver.

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    • Mike D 8:18 · 2021-09-28T00:07:47.399Z

      Oh wow that is definitely beyond my abilities

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  • BJ constructor · 2021-09-27T21:26:37.067Z

    Thanks for the kind words Mike! One thing I tried to do was have a few wordplay indicators 'hidden' in compound words, such as "upset [to get tes]" or "bless [to remove a b]"—which would be pretty cruel for a new solver.

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• quatrevingtneuf 29:22 · 2021-09-29T20:49:48.911Z

  28A was quite nice. some of the clues seem to have part-of-speech mismatches? a good effort

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  • BJ constructor · 2021-09-29T22:19:52.196Z

    I was quite pleased with 28A :)

    In the spirit of improvement, could you give an example of something you thought didn't really work?

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    • quatrevingtneuf 29:22 · 2021-09-30T00:16:46.157Z

      13A - seems like either the def doesn’t work, or “object” is doing double duty 23A - part of speech mismatch (though i suppose for an &lit we can be a little lenient) 9D, 16A, 18D - can’t sort out your intended parsing

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      • BJ constructor · 2021-09-30T02:10:51.068Z

        Thanks for responding. Here were my intents: Definition of 13A is just 'Organic' (related to organs). If you still think that's still suspect then it's probably a dud. 9D A'then'a (aa) picked up (surrounding, maybe dodgy?) some (hence somewhat) of the odd letters of upSeT cHeMist

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        • quatrevingtneuf 29:22 · 2021-09-30T03:30:08.419Z

          afaict “viscus” is a noun only, so that’s probably a loss and i’m not used to seeing odd/even applied to a subset of a string, though that may be down to regional conventions

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          • BJ constructor · 2021-09-30T08:55:20.897Z

            You're sadly correct wrt viscus. I'm not yet prepared to give up on the D->V wordplay; so have replaced it w/ a (too hard?) clue, going from reductions->discounts->discus->viscus. I don't love "left not" as the deletion indicator, so I might still tinker with it.

            Thanks again!

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    • BJ constructor · 2021-09-30T02:14:11.335Z

      18D = change 'B' (born) in cenobite to 'J' (to top Judge), and anagram it (suffered); meaning banishment. 16A is probably doing too much, but Not one French waiter -> water -> eau, anagrammed with SOL(sun)shine removing (absent) 'in', and meaning "drinking holes".

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      • quatrevingtneuf 29:22 · 2021-09-30T03:51:49.868Z

        re: 16A - i believe this constitutes an indirect anagram, which is generally non-kosher

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        • BJ constructor · 2021-09-30T04:42:35.702Z

          

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        • BJ constructor · 2021-09-30T08:09:56.425Z

          Thank you very much for pointing that out! I've changed the clue to be "Old places of sin use haloes badly? (9)". It's still a somewhat cryptic definition, but just a straight anagram of use haloes; and the link to 17A might get people over the line if they get stuck.

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