The news in clues
A long story in two clues, the first from Picaroon …
12ac How Brexit begins with hopeless nationalist (5)
[ definition: first letter (‘how … begins’) + synonym for ‘hopeless’ ]
[ B + LIMP ]
[ definition: nationalist ]
… for (Colonel) BLIMP; the second from a Telegraph setter …
22ac Leader of Tories ready for nonsense (5)
[ wordplay: first letter (‘leader’) of TORIES + synonym for ‘ready’ ]
[ T + RIPE ]
[ definition: nonsense ]
… for TRIPE. Incidentally, on Brexit-Day-that-wasn’t, we had one of the biggest Cluing Coincidences, in which both the Independent’s Inquisitor and the Times’s Listener used the IVR codes for 28 different countries and both had the UK behaving unlike the others, the chief difference being that the Inquisitor’s eXtent had the word BREXIT as the final reveal, while the Listener’s KevGar used it as a title. Both were excellent.
Latter patter
Crucible’s clue …
21ac Cleans feet crossing river (7)
[ wordplay: the ‘feet’ of some animals, surrounding (‘crossing’) abbrev. for ‘river’ ]
[ HOOVES surrounding R ]
[ definition: cleans ]
… is the kind of thing that gives conniptions to the suits at Techtronic Industries, as they have to keep reminding the world that HOOVER is a proprietary term (while no doubt quietly delighted that it has become ubiquitous).
They have been, I would say, pretty successful in this, much like the assiduous folk of Sellotape and Portakabin/Portaloo. Less so, though: CashPoint, Autocue, Rawlplug, Memory Stick, two words which would be very unwelcome in our cluing competition (JACUZZI and JAZZERCISE) and one which is hopefully marginally less so.
Described in these pages recently as being …
… made from a strain of the soil mould Fusarium venenatum by fermenting it, then adding glucose, fixed nitrogen, vitamins and minerals and heat-treating it to remove excess levels of ribonucleic acid …
… reader, how would you clue QUORN?
Cluing competition
Thanks for your clues for TWEE, a kind set of letters that lends itself to such lovely hidden answers as Porcia’s “Best we engineer sandwiches to be ‘nice’” and Wellywearer2’s “Some Bert Weedon is too sentimental”.
The audacity levels were raised, perhaps in Ousgg’s “Quaint use of 224 characters, perhaps?” and 10FootClaudicant’s clue (though less so now that I’ve imperiously appended an exclamation mark) “Strangely sweet but with no end of soppiness!”; the audacity award could only, though, go to PeterMooreFuller’s “Weally wittle Wedwood?”
The runners-up are Seandmcc’s poignant “Picturesque river delta wiped out” and Lizard’s ingenious “One’s pretty, being 12, not 55”; the winner is Zedible’s striking “Not how the universe ends: with a whimper?”
Kludos to Zedible; please leave entries for this fortnight’s competition and your picks from the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the fortnight
It’s always a pleasure when a switch from definition to wordplay comes in the middle of some words that the solver’s eye finds hard to divide. So it is with Tramp’s clue …
26ac Rod Stewart’s gutted with track (5)
[ wordplay: first & last letters (‘gutted’) of STEWART + synonym for ‘track’ ]
[ ST + RUT]
[ definition: rod ]
… for STRUT. Despite his stellar career, this surface brings to mind a few Rod Stewart tracks, most of all this one, which went a little wrong on the royalties front:
