“An A to Z of …” is an occasional series of mainly cryptic puzzles, a bit like cryptic crosswords (see the Bookmark List for others). Normally they are based on a single town or parish, but in the case of Clifton it isn’t quite that easy, as there are no civil parish boundaries.
But since I prefer to use fixed boundaries, for the purpose of this puzzle all the answers are in the Nottingham City electoral ward of Clifton East. It might pay to first check precisely where the ward boundaries are, because if you come up with an answer that’s in Clifton West ward then it won’t be the answer you’re looking for.
There is no need to visit the posted coordinates, which are not relevant to the puzzle itself. It’s also rather wet there!
Your task is to use the clues below to identify 20 street names in Clifton, 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. Almost all 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!)
- Basic level? Yes, that’s inclusive.
- Beck meets Greenup Gill at Smithymire Island
- Confused a crew
- Dingley
- Financial cost of doing badly
- Forest shelter
- Give ‘n’ tell carelessly
- Gypsies’ Tent can be found here
- Horse hair pen
- Hywel’s character
- Juniper or larch for example
- Largest artificial hill in Europe
- Lincolnshire village that is also part of Bath
- Major or Bowthorpe for example
- Reassemble mole closely, Roy
- Reynard goes to ground
- TQ494863
- Trees near Suffolk’s smallest town
- Wee lady got agitated
- Where you dip your donuts?
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 52 5A.BCD W 001 1W.XYZ, where:
A = Number of letters in the 12th street name, minus number of letters in the 14th street name
B = Number of letters in the 13th street name
C = Number of letters in the 4th street name, minus number of letters in the 8th street name
D = Number of street names beginning with the letter B
W = Number of street names beginning with the letter W
X = Number of letters in the 6th street name
Y = Number of street names beginning with the letter M
Z = Number of street names beginning with the letter C