“An A to Z of …” is an occasional series of mainly cryptic puzzles, a bit like cryptic crosswords. Each one is based on a single town or parish, in this case the town of Clay Cross. The bookmark list links to others in this series and also the “So You Think You Know” puzzles.
Clay Cross has its own parish council, so the boundaries used for this puzzle are clearcut – the designated area might be a bit further out than you realise, so if you don’t know where Clay Cross officially starts and finishes, you can find a map online that will show you. There is no need to visit the posted coordinates, which are not relevant to the puzzle itself, and which would also be rather wet.
Your task is to use the clues below to identify 20 street names within the parish, and then use the answers in a few calculations to arrive at the final cache coordinates. For all of the answers you need to miss out words like “road”, “lane”, “avenue”, etc; likewise, if a street name begins with “The”, this should be omitted. All but one of the answers consist of a single word. If you find an answer to one of the clues that seems ideal, but you can’t find a matching street, then the chances are that you are wrong (or you’re using an old map!)
- Are there big rabbits in those trees?
- Clarrie and Eddie
- ‘E didn’t let go
- Furnace
- Le Manège Enchanté’s Margotte
- Margate and Ramsgate
- Modern bazaar
- Not the rearranged letters
- One of Five
- “Pen pusher” and “couch potato” are examples
- Perhaps it’s the art of being a yob?
- Put cloak down
- RLS island character
- Rome to Brindisi
- Similar to wooden cavities
- Source of iron
- Statue near portrait gallery
- Swan
- The jockey reaches inside
- Wonderful, wonderful …
Once you have solved them, put the 20 street names into alphabetical order, and then use this to calculate the coordinates.
The cache is to be found at N 53 AB.CDE W 001 2W.XYZ, where:
A = Number of street names beginning with the letter W
B = Number of letters in the 15th street name
C = Number of letters in the 3rd street name
D = Number of letters in the 12th street name
E = Number of street names beginning with the letters A, B, C, D, E, F or G
W = Number of letters in the 7th street name
X = Number of letters in the 14th street name, minus the number of letters in the 11th street name
Y = Number of street names beginning with the letter P
Z = Number of letters in the 13th street name