We're looking at a device which asks you as solver to take the initial letters of a string of words in the clue. And nervous newcomers should remember that here we're looking at clues in isolation in a genuine puzzle environment, you'd have some letters from other clues, considerably lightening the solving load. Here we see a soundalike for the snappy creature the 'GATOR, around the letter I for GAITER.If you've been following the series, you may be wondering why we haven't yet tackled the staple diet of the setter: the anagram. Here's a clue from the Daily Telegraph which uses the same device to greater effect:Ģ1d Something which snaps say, around top of instep (6) we take a word used in the city of Nice to mean sweethearts, CHÉRIES, and insert the "first of ripe" to get the fruit CHERRIES. In crosswording, "first of ripe" is likely to mean the first letter of the word "ripe" and so in this Sunday Telegraph clue.ġ7a Nice sweets containing first of ripe fruit (8) Either the container or the contained phrase might be the result of some cryptic adventure itself, requiring you to draw on other posts in this series. It's not always that simpleĪs the TORREMOLINOS clue tells us, it's not always a case of putting one word or abbreviation inside the case of another. And there's the subtlest indicator of containment you'll ever meet in "in". Meanwhile, " abandoned storeroom" gives us TORREMOOS, an anagram of STOREROOM and our answer is TORREMOLINOS. OK, so this is a down clue, which means that if "nothing" indicates NIL (and here it does), "nothing turned up" indicates LIN. Staying on the beach, here's Phi again:ġ1d Nothing turned up in abandoned storeroom in Spanish resort (12) In a similar vein, here's Orlando:Ģ3ac Girl rings friend and mum in holiday location (3,6)Ī great surface reading, very clear and natural, and the answer is LAS PALMAS. The pleasure with this kind of clue is typically in realising that an expression like "run rings around" has been used to run rings around you. "About", for example, might mean "encircling", but it can also mean "reverse this bit of the clue", or RE, or even just C. But many of the phrases most often used to indicate a container clue are also frequently used to mean utterly different cryptic devices. it's one thing after - as well as inside - another.Īnd, newcomer, please don't let what I'm about to say put you off. I mean, the lewd phrases alone are enough to fill a filthy reference book or three. On the other hand, the English language is not short of vocabulary to describe putting one thing inside another. Even "describe" can mean to go around something, and " this without that" can mean that this is going around the outside of that. If you see a phrase like "packing" or "sheltered by" or "entering" in a clue, it might well pay to look for a container. "Banks", the dictionaries remind us, can have the sense of "encloses" we've been discussing and so here Albert CAMUS encloses a small amount of money to give us CAMPUS. It's the same structure: the definition is "embryos" in the wordplay, we put an R inside GEMS for GERMS. Sometimes it's fairly obvious that this is what's going on, as with this clue from Chifonie:ġ0ac Embryos right to be included in valuable items (5) It's also obliging of Phi to use the words "brought into" to hint that we put a P into SARK. And so the definition and the wordplay match and we can write SPARK in the grid. We confirm it by taking the physicist's abbreviation for power - that is, P - and putting it in a Channel Island, in this case SARK. But we wouldn't get that from the definition alone. Here, Phi has obligingly put the definition at the start of the clue: a SPARK is a quantity of electricity. The rest of the clue is wordplay, where you have to get playful, as with this from Phi:ĩac Quantity of electricity or power brought into Channel Island (5) In clues with containers, the definition gives you, as ever, a straight description of the word or phrase. Unlike the spoonerisms we looked at last time, which are an occasional crosswording treat, this is a device solvers expect to find as often as not in a puzzle. A cryptic clue typically gives you two chances to get the answer: a definition found either at the beginning or the end (which I'll indicate in bold type in the examples below), and some wordplay (look out for the colours).
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