I’ve given that a Like for your festive wishes, the actual crossword needs to be catapulted into the surface of the sun

Merry Christmas to you too, and thanks for your ongoing support - have a great 2026 🥂

Oh and 1a was inspired by someone who just Liked the post 😊

👆👏👏👏

Yes, bizarrely French doesn’t have a word for ‘punch’ and says ‘blow of the fist’… similarly there is no single word for ‘kick’, they say ‘coup de pied’ 🤷‍♂️

Reminds me of a clue I tried earlier this year but neither of my test solvers liked it 😆

- Index entry for English author showing obstinacy (4-4)

Sadly I’m going to miss this! It’s the Christmas edition of the monthly photography walk I run — have lots of fun and see y’all in 2026 🥂

A slow start but I’m about halfway through now 💪 oh wait you said the second half was harder 😆

“Terribly guilty? Not if I abandoned sin (8)”

That version works fine cryptically for me:

anagrind / GU(i)LTY+NOT if ‘I’ left / def

… although the surface is slightly less smooth

You’ve put your finger on something that has been eluding me! The reason it *could seem to be* grammatically incorrect (which will be a problem for some) is that cryptic clues are generally written in the present tense; that is the most obvious way to parse it. The correct parse, less evident here

You’ve actually persuaded me that it is defensible 😁

But my main point is:

fixing clues > defending clues

😆

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was: in any conflict between the surface grammar and the cryptic grammar, the latter must always win out 😁

They’re not identical. The future tense version is unequivocal; the conditional version works if you actually put “if I were to quit” in the clue. Not putting in “were to” leaves you with “if I quit” which is polysemous 😁

I get that it can be justified, I just mean that a clue that requires a case for the defence might be best avoided where possible 😁

One simple fix is to make it future tense: “… if I will quit” - this works for surface (‘I’ to be read as pronoun) and cryptic grammar (‘I’ to be read as letter)

Yes, and I’m afraid I’m not sure the conditional thing works either, but even if it did - expecting the solver to assume a specific interpretation that involves re-introducing elided words is possibly an example of putting setter convenience over solver experience.

I would just rewrite the clue 😁

Is the query about the ‘I’ by any chance…?