This was a big'un! Loved the clue for ITALICISE, though I put ITALICIZE first which threw me off for a bit. ROCHESTER's clue was great as well. Really impressive fitting 8 9-letter entries so smoothly.
Glad you liked the whole concept! We used the same grid (well, a flipped version) for Weekly Words Week 30 if you haven't tried that one yet and want another dose of the fun.
Enjoyed the puzzle, though I made the same initial error as Jeff and had “italiciZe”. Happy that the Crosshare newsletter brought your puzzle to my attention. It’s awesome to see a library’s staff creating crosswords.
COVID had many unfortunate effects on our library, but one of the positive effects was giving us the chance to branch out into more experimental virtual offerings like crosswords!
Italicizing a word in writing stresses that word. In Britain they spell it ITALICISE, not ITALICIZE, so to hint that we wanted the British spelling, the clue uses the British spelling of neighbor as well. So if you wanted to stress the word "neighbour" you would ITALICISE it!
Daz 45:05 · 2021-09-10T15:35:35.468Z
Ah, fantastic! Thanks!
Phil The 16:40 · 2022-07-16T08:26:52.961Z
As a Brit, of course I never noticed that you spelled neighbour correctly LOL