How Much More Crypt-ic Can You Get?

The theme of this cryptic crossword is Tamsyn Muir’s novels Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth (the first two books of the Locked Tomb series). No clues or answers rely on familiarity with these works. If knowing even the teeniest little thing counts as a spoiler for you (“Oho, now I know that such a word or concept may play a somewhat memorable role in the story!”), I guess the puzzle has spoilers. Otherwise, no.

If you’ve never done a cryptic crossword before, here are my naïve younger self’s instructions or some better ones from elsewhere online.

If you just want a regular dang crossword, I’ve created a set of standard-style clues so you can join in the fun. Here they are:

If all you really want is the ding-dong answers, here they are, with explanations of the cryptic clues:

I used Crosserville to create this crossword. As far as I can tell, there is no accessible way to export the puzzle for screen readers. If the PDF versions above don’t work for you, but you’d like them to, please message or email me, and let’s see what solution we can come up with together.

Finally, this is the very first crossword I composed. If you want to learn more about what I thought about the process and arrived here by a direct link, you can find a whole blog entry here.