This is the latest in my occasional series of cryptic puzzles based on district or borough council areas - follow the bookmark to see these and the related “A to Z of …” puzzles.
The Leicestershire Borough of Charnwood has a population of around 185,000 (2021) and covers some 108 square miles. The largest town in borough, which is named after Charnwood Forest, is the university town of Loughborough. However, much of Charnwood is rural, and within the borough can be found Bradgate Park and Beacon Hill. Surrounding districts are North West Leicestershire, Hinckley and Bosworth, Leicester City, Harborough, Melton, and Rushcliffe (the last one being in Nottinghamshire).
There is no need to visit the posted coordinates, which are not relevant to the puzzle itself, and which are also rather wet!
For this puzzle, you need to solve the mainly cryptic clues below to identify 20 place names in the district – some are sizeable places, but most aren’t. Local knowledge will certainly help, but if you are struggling a good map may well come in handy too. All except two of the place names consist of a single word.
- Archaically has wise first name
- Brush the snowman’s creator
- Buzzing creature is close
- Drivers not in
- Granny’s pot gets brown
- Heightened tintinabulation
- Kill lunch, and mix in some Japanese coins
- Leaf-cutter that goes Woof? Sounds like it.
- Lemony herb growing at altitude
- Meat substitute
- Mixed lewd sport
- Opposite of cold? Off!
- Others help to make this
- Should they go with the hats? It sounds like it.
- Sight turns on order
- Sounds like a singular labium oris
- Swearing the weight
- Turn the rag and don’t finish off
- Twenty cwt of wheat or barley
- Unique rough cob – take the copper out and mix it up
Once you have solved them, put the place names into alphabetical order, and then use this to calculate the coordinates.
The cache is to be found at N52 4A.BCD W001 1E.FGH, where:
A = Number of letters in the 19th place name, minus the number of letters in the 13th place name.
B = Number of letters in the 14th place name.
C = Number of letters in the 7th place name
D = Number of letters in the 9th place name.
E = Number of place names beginning with the letter D
F = Number of place names beginning with the letter Q
G = Number of letters in the 5th place name
H = Number of letters in the 2nd place name
You can find safe parking just around the corner for the cache location.