Crossword roundup: one thousand ways to jive
The news in clues
During our last roundup, we imagined Donald Trump completing a UK cryptic and mumbling merrily to himself ...
You are a synonym – who knows, maybe the synonym – for the word ‘politician’. Are you listening, Fred?
If you care for the man’s sense of self-worth, hope that he didn’t take a crack at Peter’s recent Independent on Sunday puzzle, where ...
8d Politician in charge detailed caps (6)
[ abbrev. for ‘politician’, surrounded by (‘in’) synonym for ‘charge’ without its last letter (‘de-tailed’) ]
[ MP surrounded by TRUST without last letter ]
[ MP in TRUS ]
... there’s every opportunity to link the very first world (“politician”) to the entry (TRUMPS), and Peter passes it up. But! Turn instead to the Financial Times, and Julius has a clue ...
3d Didn’t Trump go after journalist with court case? (8,4)
[ synonym for ‘go after’ + abbrev. for a (senior) journalist, then (‘with’) term for a court case ]
[ FOLLOW + ED, then SUIT ]
... which definitely must be about you, maybe referencing your recent ...
... alliterative pseudonyms, a shell company, secret arbitration, threats and at least one active lawsuit ...
... and whatever that word means, you must be the alliterativest president that the US has ever had the privilege to witness. Take that, Wilson, Hoover and Reagan! You’re still being talked about.
Latter patter
Last Tuesday’s Telegraph puzzle has a device I don’t notice that often ...
15ac There may be talk after this Fifties dance (4)
[ word which can be followed by ‘talk’ ]
So far as I know they didn’t dance the baby, the back, the fast or the shop in the 50s. Put another way: they may well have so danced, but none of them fits the crossing letters. The clue (for JIVE) is perfectly pitched at its solvers; if instead the Telegraph’s audience were, say, Louis Armstrong – adept at using “jive” with manifold meanings in his autobiography – the definition part could equally read ...
There may be artist after this
There may be bomber after this
There may be kit after this
There may be rattle after this
There may be stick after this
There may be hand after this
There may be roller after this
There may be time after this
There may be turkey after this
... and others from Green’s Dictionary of Slang that I prefer not to type here. Some terms for which you might not expect to see Armstrong among the citations in the Oxford English Dictionary are “scrape”, “flu epidemic”, the 15th-century “mother wit” and the subject of our next challenge. It used to end “-be”, “-y” or “-bye” but has since settled into the form we love: reader, how would you clue FREEBIE? On which topic ...
Cluing competition
Many thanks for your perseverance and resilience in cluing ZZZ. I enjoyed Tony Collman’s dialectical “Said out loud three times: ‘In Somerset this may accompany sleep’” and Steveran’s evocative “Frozen pizza’s off, spattered pinafore trashed! How does a kipper sound?”
The runners-up are the regrettably anonymous ID2155366’s “Nappy, full of the unknown” and Lizard’s louche “Triple dose of fizz finally engenders sleep”; the winner is Richard Ellis’s plausible-yet-implausible “Axes night-time broadcasting”.
Kludos again to Richard. Please leave any entries for this week’s competition and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the fortnight
Solvers might have noticed a dearth for some months in clues from the Times. I’m sure that paper’s setters are as relentlessly inventive as ever, but the paper’s site remains inaccessible to me. Thanks, then, to Catarella for flagging this flawless clue (no link; no clue number; sorry) ...
Plates and saucers etc. still not drinking cups! (3,3)
[ synonym for ‘still’, which is surrounded by (‘... cups’) abbrev. for ‘not drinking’ ]
[ EASE surrounded by TT ]
... for TEA SET. Delicious.
