Wednesday 11 January 2012

Cryptic Crosswords – Solving hints #2

 

Here we go again.  Move on if you just aren’t interested in how to get to grips with cryptic crosswords.  They are a very British institution.  The US doesn’t seem to have them. 

You find a daily one in the Herald and the Dom Post.  I actually prefer the ones in the Dom Post.  But all the quality UK papers have them and in some cases you can do them online.

This clue is not straightforward, because one half of the clue isn’t really quite on the money – but this does happen quite often, so I include it so you can see.  It includes something else which is common – the use of a term which has an abbreviation:
    Chaplain may give tramp religious education (5)

Again in 2 parts, when solving I started first with ‘religious education” because I know that RE is used as an abbreviation.  So 2 of the 5 letters are RE.  Another word for a chaplain is padre – so I suspected that was right.  So is pad related to “tramp” – a bit of a long bow but padre was the right answer.

The final example for today is:
Chooses not to be involved with new post abroad (4,3)

Again a two-parter as follows
Chooses not to be involved / with new post abroad

Starting with the second part, the use of “new” signals an anagram – of “post” which could be opts which matches the concept of choice in the first part of the clue.  “Abroad” could mean “out” and putting those words together you get “opts out” which of course is the meaning of the first part of the clue.  So here only part of the answer was an anagram.

In case you missed it, this is a link to the first part of this series - http://caroleschatter.blogspot.co.nz/search/label/Cryptic%20Crosswords

Click here for the next post in the series.

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