In the sample clues below, the links take you to explainers from our beginners series. The setter’s name often links to an interview with him or her, in case you feel like getting to know these people better.
As the weather warms, we think about spending more time outside. Which means we may think about spending time near water. Which, these days, means we think about what that water is full of.
Two setters whose thoughts have gone in that direction are this paper’s Tramp …
3d It rains, empty sewage at sea, this might get dirt on surface (9)
[ wordplay: anagram of (‘at sea’) ITRAINS with first & last letters of (‘empty’) SEWAGE ]
[ anagram of ITRAINSSE ]
[ definition: this might get dirt on surface ]
… in a clue for SANITISER, along with the Financial Times’s Goliath (known locally as Philistine) …
25a Sea that’s guaranteed turd-free after treatment … (6)
[ wordplay: anagram (‘after treatment’) of GUARANTEED without the letters of TURD (‘turd-free’) ]
[ anagram of GAANEE ]
[ definition: name of a sea
… in a clue for AEGEAN. (You can ignore the ellipsis for now.) Meanwhile, the latest Financial Times news puzzle is by Buccaneer (this parish’s Picaroon).
Latter patter
If you’re in need of cheer, you need only read the responses to our new quick cryptic crossword in the letters page: after some heartwarming tales, we also get this:
I anticipate huge political ramifications across the crossword-solving public from your new easier cryptic crossword. It could save the election. My sister-in-law will no longer will have to bring the insidious Telegraph with its do-able crossword into her house.
Dr Sue Roberts
Wallingford, Oxfordshire
The quick cryptic, just like the daily cryptic, mixes up words from all areas of life, telling some stories along the way; it just reveals more readily that the clues aren’t really telling those stories, they’re telling you some word to write in. Here’s one from Picaroon:
8a Oval’s wild series of shots (5)
[ wordplay: anagram (‘wild’) of OVALS ]
[ definition: series of shots ]
Nothing at all to do with cricket, then. Happily, nowadays a SALVO is more often one of applause or at least opening remarks. But it used to be something more specific than a bunch of artillery going off. It came to us from Italian, with the meaning:
a simultaneous discharge of two or more guns, either in military action or as a salute
So its root is, like the applause, a much happier thing. Salvo. Salute. (Unless you’re Australian, in which case it means, in the typical antipodean way, a member of the Salvation Army.)
The subject of our next challenge is one of those words that has two utterly different meanings, one from German and one from Old Norse. Reader, how would you clue HAIL?
Cluing competition
Many thanks for your clues for KEDGEREE which made me feel very hungry (except the revolting ones).
There is an audacity award for Wellywearer2 for not only bringing us a poetic definition but also inventing a word:
Fishy dishy, nicely riced
eggsultant and a little spiced (8)
The runners-up are RobSimmo’s triumphant “I knew dig near here would occasionally reveal a dish” and AmusingJay’s unfortunate “Awful reek surrounding side dish”; the winner is the ingenious “In walked Gere – expecting a dish?”.
Kludos to IanBrad. Please leave entries for the current competition – and especially non-print finds and picks that I may have missed from the broadsheet cryptics – in the comments.
Clue from elsewhere of the fortnight
Often the fodder for an anagram has pleasingly got nothing to do with the entry, and sometimes that fodder sits in disguise as a wholly remarkable and plausible piece of language. So it is with this Times clue …
20a Unremarkable actions helping criminal (7,7)
[ wordplay: anagram (‘criminal’) of ACTIONSHELPING ]
[ definition: unremarkable ]
… and the penny-drop moment is something special. (The answer itself is the everyday phrase, NOTHING SPECIAL.)
The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop
