Saturday, 27 August 2011

Mitzicryptic catchup

I have been crypticising diligently.

Here are some more accurate results of my efforts.

Q New piece of fiction (5)
A Novel

Q Meeting up once more on a French island (7)
A Reunion
(this relied on general knowledge; post-colonial island near Mauritius.)

Q Piggy friend to whom one writes (3-3)
A pen-pal

Q Reforms only in French city
A Lyon
(anagram of 'only'; gen knowledge of French geog required! plus, what's with the Frenchness? Bloody Dominic Strauss-Kahn.)

Just realised I have lost a cryptic (or mislabelled soemthing, somewhere) because I can't find the solutions for the "pen-pal" edition...oh well!

Onwards to 'Friday'.

Q Spotted area on Adriatic Coast (8)
A Dalmatia

Q After starters, be with her for choice language (6/2)
A Either/or (I mainly got this from the use of the / !)

This was my favourite.

Q Dusty whodunnit a welcome sight at a summer barbie? (ie Barbecue) (4, 4)
A cold case

Mitzicryptic August 27

3 clues from yesterday, and a couple from the day before. Many activities in meat-space have prevented me attended to the blogging part of the challenge, but I find it's good to prioritise 3-D activities and not become a slave drone to technology (said daucer-eyed with itching typing fingers.)

I am curious about how much cryptic crosswords rely on one's general knowledge beyond the vocab-knowledge that is concealed in the actual clue.

My recent reliance on Aussie slang was incorrect. While a "terrible blue" is related to fury', the clue simply needed me to mix up the letters in 'blue', at it to the letter "c", and think of a word related to 'cell'...the answer was CUBICLE (not 'century'...): it was not a cricket question.

Either way, from 'cubicle', I worked out another answer.

Q Bloke has right to be concealed (6)
A Covers
('cove' is old-fashioned cockney word for bloke)

Q Lubricates tablets in tanker's mishaps (3, 6)
A Oil Spills
(the tanker mishap was a bit of a giveaway, but the "tablets" reference is a synonym for 'pills'.)

Q Omen Sean misplaced for windflowers (8)
A Anemones
(my friend T used to have Japanese windflowers in a pot; it took me a while, and I would not have known anemones were the nerd name for windflowers, but I went with a gut instinct, seeing as the letters were 'misplaced', as you can see.)

Q Model in sleep ruined grinding tool (6)
A Pestle