Lastly for now, a reminder that “whiskey”, because of its use in the phonetic alphabet, might indicate nothing more than a single W in an answer. The same goes for “drunk”, “tipsy”, “loaded” or any other word that might mean the letters of the adjacent words need to reel around into the answer. So we take the first and last letters of “vigilante” and use them to block a “rum” (jumbled-up) version of the letters in “trade”: VE inside ARTED, for the answer AVERTED. Here’s Nutmeg:ġ9d Vigilante extremists blocking rum trade warded off (7) Sticking with the spirits for a moment, other senses of drinks that live on in crosswords if not in the rest of the world are “gin” (in the sense of “trap”, via “engine”), and “rum” (in the sense of “odd”: a “rum-looking chap”, etc).Īnd this means that “rum” can be used in a clue in way that suggests at first that we’re talking about drink, but really means that there’s an anagram about. A “gin and it” is not, as I supposed for years, some wilfully evasive way of referring to a G&T “it” is sweet Italian vermouth and sooner or later, you will come across a “drink” in a clue which indicates an IT in an answer. TENT and ASTI may be seen more often in crosswords than in real life, but the crosswordiest drink of all is one that solvers must imagine is commonly added to gin. So here Rufus asks you to abbreviate “doctor” to DR, add the ASTI, then C as above for DRASTIC. ġ7ac Desperate doctor takes wine cold (7) And the most common crosswording wine, other than house RED, is. And if RED doesn’t work, the wine might equally be SEC, the low-alcohol Spanish red known as TENT or a more familiar PORT. It’s not always that simpleĬryptics thrive on ambiguity, and so a clue that refers to a drinking establishment might equally have DEN or BAR in its answer. Mourinho’s first name is on top of (supported by) that PH, and the answer is the patriarch JOSEPH. Ģ2d Mourinho’s supported by local patriarch (6) Whatever it appears to mean, “local” in cryptic clues should usually be read in the sense of “one’s local”: a pub, indicated on maps with PH for public house. Keep an eye out also for the places we drink. We replace “spots” with a synonym (“sees”), and wine with that same colour: SEES RED. TEST, containing I+RED: TIREDEST, or “most drained”. “One”, as usual, indicates an I, next to a RED for “wine”, both of which come inside (“during”) another word for trial: TEST. Here’s Auster:ġ1ac Most drained one wine during trial (8) RED is assuredly an ingredient scattered widely across the chequered grids of crosswords (and four times in this sentence). And that’s also given by the definition at the end of the clue: delicacy.Īs for the drinks themselves: if you see the word “wine” in a clue, consider the letters R, E and D in the answer. Finally, the TT “sandwiches” the A and the C (see our earlier post on putting one thing inside another) for the answer: TACT. The rest of the wordplay is relatively simple: in “a cold”, the “a” indicates, well, an A, and the “cold” a C (think taps). Here, we look at the word “dry” and replace it with TT, since both indicate “teetotal”. One of the most common references to drink in crosswords is, in fact, a reference to abstinence. In the example clues that follow, remember that cryptics generally give you two routes to the answer: a definition of what it actually means (indicated in bold type), before or after a little recipe for the letters that spell it out (in italics).
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