Crossword roundup: what word can mean ‘game’, ‘set’ and ‘match’? | Crosswords

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.

The news in clues

As we look forward to puzzles which may mark the end of whatever we will call this era, a couple of snapshots. In a Telegraph Toughie from Django, known locally as Fed (and known more widely as the comedian Dave Gorman), a piece of the Horizon saga:

28a Post Office keeping Fujitsu’s focus with a new keyboard? (5)
[ wordplay: abbrev. for ‘Post Office’ containing (‘keeping’) middle letter (‘focus’) of FUJITSU & A (‘a’) & abbrev. for ‘new’ ]
[ PO containing IAN ]
[ definition: keyboard ]

PIANO, then. And in the Financial Times’ monthly news puzzle, Basilisk (known locally as Jack) recalls – if you recall them – the recent mayoral elections:

4a Mayor who didn’t get in way (6)
[ double definition ]

Here some time recently, gone today: it’s Andy STREET.

Happily, our puzzles tend to remark on a campaign, rather than being used as part of it – unlike, apparently, in Hungary.

Because they can

Someone, I suppose, was going to do it sometime. And it is no great surprise that the someone is my old foe Sabre.

In the Listener puzzle, we have been treated to this:

12d Game, set and match (3)
[ triple definition ]

“Set” is notorious for the space it takes up in the dictionary. Still, to find a definition that also matches “game” and “match” is an achievement that would prompt most of us to take an early lunch. Sabre doubtless prefers to continue compiling his profoundly baffling challenges and take lunch at his normal time.

For the record, then, from Chambers:

noun
19. A noisy card game mimicking a US corn exchange
transitive verb
3. To set (eg cocks in a cockpit)
4. To match (with against)

Game, set and match: all defined by PIT. Here’s the late neurologist Oliver Sacks on the middle one:

When I first got the OED I read it through from A to Z. I wondered which word had the greatest coverage, and in Volume VIII (Q-Sh), I found it: ‘set.’ More than a hundred and twenty meanings were given for the verb ‘set’ used alone; another thirty or so when used in conjunction with various prepositions and adverbs (set aside, set about, set apart, etc.). I got the feeling that this little three-letter word might be the most useful and versatile in the entire English language.

There’s no record of our having set about it in my files, so, reader: how would you clue SET?

Cluing competition

Many thanks for your clues for FLUKE. If there is room in Wellywearer2’s trophy cabinet, he can add another audacity award for the bold:

‘Is it f’Matthew? f’Mark? f’John?’
‘No, by chance, it’s f’t’other one?’

The runners-up are JasCanis’s muscular “Miracle originally foretold by evangelist” and my favourite of the snookers, Thepoisonedgift’s “Trump might do this in Florida with country heading for election?”. The winner is the serendipitous “Daft Punk bluffed ignoring the odds to produce Get Lucky”.

Kludos to GappyTooth. 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.

Vale

If you’d asked me, earlier this year, to describe Richard Rogan, I would have said something like “indomitable crossword editor for the Times, immaculate setter, feel lucky have developed a habit with him of swapping the locations of London’s best hot beverages”.

Two of Richard’s obituaries are here and here. I’d like to revisit his clue from a Times quick cryptic in February which happens to describe, in part, its setter …

22a One’s concerned with fouls, primarily? (3)
[ wordplay: abbrev. for ‘concerned with’ + first letter of (‘primarily’) FOULS ]
[ RE + F ]
[ definition: whole clue! ]

… as well as giving us REF.

Clue from elsewhere of the fortnight

Nominated by reader Smylers, a gorgeously terse Telegraph clue …

11a £51 in cash (6)
[ wordplay: Roman numerals for ‘51’ with slang term for ‘£’ ]
[ LI + QUID ]
[ definition: in cash ]

… for LIQUID. Lunch?

The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop