In the sample clues below, the links take you to explainers from our beginners series. There is often a link via the setter’s name to an interview with him or her, in case you feel like getting to know these people better.
The news in clues
One of Paul’s aliases elsewhere is Dada. In the Sunday Telegraph, one day after a certain Liverpool-Tottenham game, Dada gave us this clue …
5d In disagreement, a certain VAR almost entirely inaccurate (2,8)
[ wordplay: anagram of (‘inaccurate’) most of (‘almost entirely’) ACERTAINVAR ]
[ anagram of ACERTAINVA ]
[ definition: in disagreement ]
… for AT VARIANCE. Also in a prize puzzle, Boatman gives us this image …
10a Perhaps Trump for a term as prison’s foremost inmate? (9)
[ wordplay: first (‘foremost’) letter of PRISON + synonym for ‘inmate’ ]
[ P + RESIDENT ]
[ definition: Perhaps Trump for a term ]
… en route to PRESIDENT in a puzzle that turned out to have collars as its hidden theme.
Latter patter
Sometimes the apparent reason why we call some item or other by some name or other is so baffling that I cannot keep it in my head. So it is with the answer to this recent clue by Chandler in the quiptic, the Guardian’s puzzle “for beginners and those in a hurry”:
21d TV chef James has current drink (7)
[ wordplay: surname of TV chef James + scientific abbrev. for ‘current’ ]
[ MARTIN + I ]
[ definition: drink ]
A MARTINI is, of course, a cocktail. It shares its name with a brand of vermouth that is often used in assembling that cocktail. But, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us, while a bottle of Martini might take its name from one Alessandro Martini, the earliest form of the name of the cocktail is in fact the name of a city in western California. Anyone fancy a martinez? And if so, would you like me to make it using Martini?
Either way, our next challenge is another cocktail name with elusive origins. Perhaps it makes you screwy; perhaps employees at American car plants used to add booze to their morning orange juice and stir it with a tool that came to hand. Whatever the reason, reader: how would you clue SCREWDRIVER?
Puzzling elsewhere
As we noted here in 2014, no contest has ever seemed as one-sided as the Times Crossword Championship.
Until now:
Congratulations to the new Times Crossword Champion Matthew Marcus - @thesunneversets - and to 2nd and 3rd placed Peter Steggle and David Webb. Great to get the Championship going again after a four-year gap.
— Mick Hodgkin (@Mickhodgkin) October 22, 2023
(pic: Stewart Williams) pic.twitter.com/1hwWjGAW8p
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for PIRANHA. It’s not often that a winner of the audacity award prompts a fascinating technical discussion, but that’s what happened with Newlaplandes’s Therese Coffey-baiting “Number twos from spillage might drift past in the water and swimmers should avoid them”. Here it is.
Unusually again, the audacity laureate also takes one of the runner-up places with “Fish in trouble with cats could be Carpathian’s”, alongside Croquem’s “South American swimmer managed to get a hip replacement carried out”; the winner is the ornate “Predator in Americas, biting human’s skin with tear all over?”
Kludos to Thepoisonedgift. 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 of the Fortnight
This clue was not in fact printed this fortnight. It was recommended by reader/solver/setter The Void (who is also co-host of the cryptic podcast Off Grid) before I had a recent spell of what we used to call “This” around these parts and having recovered, I’ve also recovered my memory of it.
It’s from the Hindu newspaper, set by Gussalufz:
9a Smooth surfaces, since I’m setting (7)
[ wordplay: anagram (‘setting’) of SINCEIM ]
[ definition: smooth surfaces ]
And that would be, once we’re passed the “crosswords about crosswords” sense, which is in itself a smooth surface, MENISCI. Cheers!
Crossword blog will return on 5 November
Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com. The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop
