Huh 2
Clue doctors, crossword pundits, polymaths – your nous is needed once more to unpack this lot of baffling clues. The first two hail from the one puzzle, namely Times Number 8319, appearing in The Australian in early March.
The last stumper was crafted by Cincinnus, alias Brian Greer, a nimble setter for the Financial Times. I’ve huffed, and I’ve puffed, but I’m blowed if I can figure out any of these three entirely operate on the wordplay level. Can you?
Here they are:
It’s a very old wicket, so declare = AVER [Yes, AVER is hiding in the clue, and there’s declare as definition, but what’s the rest doing?]
Moonshine or beer from some in school = CODSWALLOP [Moonshine is a synoynm for nonsense, or codswallop. And those marble-in-a-bottle beers were known as codswallops....And of course cod are fish, in schools: am I overreading all this?]
++
General strike, latterly = EISENHOWER [General - got it. The rest?]
Five stars – in general – for any passing Samaritan.
March 18th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
‘Old Wicket’ is rhyming slang for ‘meal ticket’. I assume this is a container clue.
Strike latterly = Ike = Eisenhower
March 19th, 2009 at 5:48 am
Strike/ike…it’s all there. With ‘general’ the definition, and latterly our signpost to look in the closing phases. Quite tidy in the end. Thanks Matt for letting me see it.
As for AVER, no doubting it’s a hidden clue (versus container – which is were ORB is contained by SET to make SORBET), but not sold on meal ticket so much. Fittingly, we may have to let this clue go through to the keeper.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:33 am
WALLOP is another word for beer, so it’s just “beer from things in schools” = “wallop from fish” = CODSWALLOP.
The wicket one has got me stumped though.