A hive buzzing with words

Question

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1. A turtle that goes into battle on a cart. (16)

2. That which is overshadowed by the front. (10)

3. A vital component of gaining speed. (12)

4. A time measuring device that has gained wisdom through the ages. (9)

5. A hellish creature next to a narrow passage of water. (11)

6. Yo, why are you backwards? (7)

7. With this addendum a recreational place of greenery receives many upgrades, including nausea inducing contraptions. (9)

8. The between taker. (12)

9. The dualistic one. (6)

10. An era beyond political divide, for whatever reason. (12)

11. Knit not, knot. Apologies for relaxed ending. (7)

12. The ones who are the blight of the orderly ones. (7)

13. A rhetorical device containing trace amounts of Fe. (5)

14. A multifaceted phenomenon, one facet of which is subscarlet. (9)

15. Security clearance provided to a charged atom. (7)

Letters from cells with honey drops spell the word NECTAR.

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Notes:

The puzzle incorporates elements from the following languages:

• English
• Japanese
• Greek
• French
• German

Words 1 and 9 start from the same cell.

The border with ridges is where word 6 ends.

Answer 1

The grid

The clues

The clues were quite difficult, because they are not really cryptic clues that combine wordplay and definition. They are just oblique way to circumscribe the answer some way or other. Some are quite straightforward, like 3. Some, like 4, 5 and 15 consist only of wordplay, but don't have a definition to confirm it. I've made liberal use of online saerch tools that allow wildcards. Sorry about that :)

1: PANZERKAMPFWAGEN (or Panzer, which can also mean the shell of a turtle)
2: BACKGROUND
3: ACCELERATION
4: CLOCKWISE (CLOCK + WISE)
5: DEMONSTRATE (DEMON + homophone of strait)
6: EPSILON (This is the Greek answer; no idea how it works)
7: AMUSEMENT (allusion to amusement parks)
8: ENTREPRENEUR (That's the French answer, literally "between taker")
9: PHOTON (with allusion to the dualism of light)
10: AFTERPARTIES (Stiv found this: AFTER + PARTIES, i.e. political divisions)
11: MACRAME (Another French answer, usually with an acute accent at the end, but "relaxed" here)
12: CHAOTIC (as opposed to orderly)
13: IRONY (iron-y, i.e. containing some Fe)
14: RADIATION ("subscarlet" is infra-red, of course)
15: PASSION (PASS + ION)

Mild criticism

I like the idea of a hexagonal crossword and I imagine that a lot of effort went into creating and presenting it. Unfortunately, the "meat", that is the clues themselves, are not on par with the pretty presentation. That's a pity.

I've already voiced most of my problems with the clues above. When I see the cryptic-crosswod tag, I (and I guess many others here) expect to see cryptic crosswords as they appear in British or American newspapers. These clues follow a rather strict set of rules. Deusovi has written a very thorough guide to cryptic clues. It's pretty long.

These rules make the clues fair for the solvers. (Mind you, there's still enough leeway to create very tricky clues!) Solving non-standard cryptic clues is like playing chess with someone who doesn't know the rules: No, you can't move your pawn backwards! No, only the knight can jump over other pieces! No, you cannot move the rook diagonally! It's a bit disappointing for both parties. You can only enjoy playing chess once you know the rules. It's the same with cryptic clues.

Also, there are not enough intersections. For example, "radiation" has only two letters that can be determined by solving other clues. (My entry into this crossword was the rather plain "acceleration" about which there wasn't much doubt.)

I like how you specify that some answers come from other languages, but in the end that concerns only one third of the clues. If the clues had a common theme, for example, if all of them were loanwords from other languages, that would also help with the looseness of some clues. (But you probably should let the solver figure that theme out.)

Oh, and yet another thing: The extra bit with the drops of honey that spell NECTAR is super nice, but why squander it by revealing the answer up front? I would have liked it if the NECTAR had been the overall answer of the puzzle. Always nice to round off the solving with a confirmation.

I'm sorry to sound so negative here. I liked the puzzle, but I think it has potential to be a better puzzle.