Crossword blog: is chop suey Chinese?

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

A summary of the year so far in Westminster in two clues: one from Pasquale …

… for the pleasing FETOR and one from Anto …

… for CONTENDER. Time was, we might turn to some clues about the sunshine for relief in July from the gloom. Not this July. Instead, a recommendation of a themed puzzle. It’s this one, by Brendan, and I’m not announcing the theme.

Puzzling elsewhere

You might still have, hidden somewhere in the Guardian’s Saturday print edition of 16 July, the Puzzles Summer Special assembled by Alex Bellos. It’s a beautiful collection, wrapped in an extraordinary maze, and has a “holiday jumbo” by Picaroon and a cryptic for beginners by Carpathian which uses only four types of clue. I’ve never seen that done before; it works wonderfully well. I hope we see more Puzzle Specials.

One of the puzzles has found its way online, so if you missed the supplement, you can still solve “The most Guardian crossword ever”, set by me. It’s not cryptic, but it’s not entirely a quick, either. If anyone can tell me what type of puzzle it is, I’d appreciate it.

Latter patter

The Pasquale puzzle, above, also includes this recipe …

… for BANOFFI PIE, which features in the “culinary mythology” entry in the wonderful Oxford Companion to Food, essentially a fact check on what might appear to be urban myths. If the last few years have left you, like me, constantly discussing (a) food and (b) truth, it is heaven.

Parts are sobering: searing meat does not keep the juices in and medieval cooks did not use spices to distract attention from the rottenness of their meats. Banoffi pie makes an appearance as a rare example of a dish that provokes little to no debate over where it was devised (the Hungry Monk restaurant in Jevington, East Sussex, in 1972).

Then, there’s the subject of our next challenge. Culinary legend says that a Chinese cook in San Francisco devised a way of using up odds and ends and pretended it was a traditional dish. As anyone who has enjoyed a chicken tikka masala can confirm, there is nothing wrong with émigré innovation; in this case, though, the dish is Toisanese, and the name really does seem to come from the Cantonese for “miscellaneous leftovers”. Reader, how would you clue CHOP SUEY?

Cluing competition

Many thanks for your clues for CLUE. Of the self-referential clues, my favourite is Montano’s “Capital letters used excessively at first – LIKE THIS?” and the audacity award goes to Sheamlas for the ingenious “What Hercule and Clouseau both have to work out?”

The runners-up are Wellywearer2’s snappy “Grid reference?” and Nestingmachine’s canine “Pointer birthed by setter”; the winner, to which I’ve imperiously added a question mark, is JasCanis’s “Overthrow of republic oddly lacking evidence?” Kludos to Jas.

Please leave entries for the current competition – as well as your non-print finds and picks from the broadsheet cryptics – in the comments, below.

Clue of the Fortnight

Trelawney is one of the more beginner-friendly setters in the Times’ Quick Cryptic series, with clues such as this double definition …

… of SPLIT SECOND. As we got used to saying and are now saying again, stay safe.

The crossword blog returns on 15 August

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