Fracks in Five

We really enjoyed releasing our sequence of "High" puzzles, where we got to think about how to make a variety cryptic fair without instructions. Today's puzzle, based on a Henry Hook idea, picks up that thread and explores how to make a variety cryptic fair without a grid.

"Crossers? In a Rackenfracker?" we've been known to joke, because frequently our puzzles require application of some logic before things can be confidently entered in the grid, but once they are, that enables the often-critical solving aid of letters shared by crossing words. Checked letters are sacred in cryptics as, pace Kosman and Picciotto, one of three legs of the solving stool: definition, wordplay, crossers.

This puzzle, which is based on games you might know best as Scattergories or Facts in Five (from which we borrowed the above image), takes that stool and swaps out the "crossing letters" leg for a "second definition" leg that is further braced by a crossing-letters-adjacent "all the words start with one of five letters" joist.

And then we cut off the foot of that leg by making you come up with those second definitions and starting letters. Oh, but then we added some shiny brass brads to the tune of "also the answers are given in alphabetical order by last letter." Go on, take a seat, it should be fine.

Thanks this week to Alex Boisvert, who extended the functionality of his variety solver to accommodate this puzzle. Thanks also to test solvers Andy Stilp and John Sams and editor Andy Yingst, as well as to Mr. Hook.