‘Rejected’ is used in its rare literal sense of ‘thrown back’ we also have a seldom-seen abbreviation for ‘Dutch’ and a pharmaceutical term for honey.ĥd Cable over subs for second electronic transfer (6) The impostor is a noun which becomes a verb form once corrected.Ĥd Rejected Dutch honey pots mace flavoured (7) ‘By’ is seen quite often in across clues indicating that one wordplay element should be placed next to another, but here it appears in a down clue with the meaning of ‘in addition to’. The impostor gives up its extra letter and then loses a further letter by a cryptic reduction before being ‘stirred’ and put ‘in’ another wordplay element.Ģd Recovers curé abandoned by pirates seizing last of treasure (7) There are limited possibilities here for the impostor, and identifying it (and thus the familiar word produced by the removal of the bonus letter) is key to parsing this clue.ģ7a Beans, not initially stirred in, boil over, creating condensation (7) The ‘Maybe’ suggests that the definition won’t be found in the dictionary, and nor will it, but when each word is preceded by ‘good’ or ‘best’ they come to pretty much the same thing.ģ4a Language abandoned by Glaswegian along with acceptance of special treatment (5) The second letter in a word meaning ‘draughts’ (and a core subject at Hogwarts) must be moved to the start. ‘To spend a penny’ is to be interpreted in its euphemistic sense, leading to a three-letter word which has a slang term for a sixpence (consigned to history by decimalisation) ‘kept back’.Ģ6a Maybe beats second to take first place in draughts (7) The convention of underlining the definition should help here. The word ‘on’ is used in the sense of ‘beside’ and can be ignored.ġ9a To survive yearns to spend a penny has sixpence kept back (5) The impostor here readily suggests itself, with the corrected word denoting a geographical feature. ‘Shortly’ indicates that another word should lose its last letter.ġ8a Trinket first for reseller on eBay bringing in grand (7) The Scots pronoun in the wordplay could also be ‘a pair of ducks’. The ‘In places it’ tells us that the first part of the charade here is a (very short indeed) dialect word for ‘it’, not to mention ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘they’.ġ4a Owe for Scotch – when relative shortly comes round, not in! (6) With ‘extra letter’ clues I am always on the lookout for words with single-character abbreviations which may have been camouflaged by the addition of a letter, and we have just such a one in this clue. Remember that bit in the preamble about the number of words shown in brackets referring to the answer? It means that the answer to a clue shown as ‘two words’ will indeed consist of two words, but the solution to be entered in the grid very likely won’t.ġ2a In places it ruins artist’s hanging (5) The ‘(3, two words)’ catches the eye here. The impostor here isn’t hard to spot, but you may well need to use the dictionary (as I did) to identify the corrected word along with its four-letter synonym (more often applied to a poet) which, when tacked onto the end of a three-letter abbreviation, will be ‘returning’.ĩa Dislike path teen is travelling (3, two words) After last week’s unusual one-in, one-out device, here we just have to remove a superfluous letter from every clue, and we’re going to come across 12 answers that won’t fit in the grid no point trying to work out how they might be modified until we know what some of them are, so let’s get solving…ġa Relative scope to return extra canvas (7) I wondered if there was some special significance to the wording of the first sentence, but in hindsight it could simply have read “ Each clue contains an extra letter which must be removed prior to solving“. Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended. The handling of the clues interspersing the words of the message indicates the content of those cells and the number involved. After initially filling the grid, solvers must illustrate one of the by-products by erasing a number of cells. 12 answers must be entered in accordance with this process (as real words numbers in brackets refer to the space available, numbers of words to the answer). A description of a process of GROWING CONCERN and the person describing it are spelled out word by word by most of these letters in clue order. Preamble : To improve it superficially, each clue has had an extra letter added, which must be omitted to obtain a solution. Today we have the third in the Elementary series of puzzles, and we’re starting to get a pretty good idea of what to expect theme-wise. Enigmatic Variations 1548 (Hints) Elementary III: Growing Concern by Brock Hints and tips by Phibs
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