i Prize Cryptic Crossword 1702 by Phi
July 30, 2016
Saturday 23rd July 2016
Without any of his trademark themes, ghost themes or Ninas, last Saturday’s Phi was fairly straightforward affair, but lends itself to a discussion about vocabulary.
Many solvers like to learn a few new words along the way; on the other hand many like to be able to solve on the train, say, without recourse to a dictionary. So the ideal solution, perhaps, is to have a sprinkling of abstruse vocabulary but always very clearly clued by the wordplay.
I think the man or woman on the Clapham omnibus would have been familiar enough (once given a nudge) with Otago, Malagasy and Obbligato, but Phi also gave us Portamento, Ontogeny and Notus. I was able to convince myself (after the event, natch) that I’d always known the first two, but Notus is definitely new to the Cornick household and duly became my last one in. For the record it belongs to a little group of Ancient Greek winds: Boreas, Eurus, Notus and Zephyrus (going clockwise).
And the clueing from Phi for those rarities was, as ever, reliably clear.
COD? Pleasing and definitely not needing a dictionary, 16a:
Football team not expected to release No. 6 (6)
Full answers, parsing and comments courtesy of Fifteensquared in 2011 here.
Agreed wholeheartedly on the matter of vocabulary, but of course everybody will draw the line in different places. I was happy enough with everything except “Notus” (but would have been fine with Boreas or Zephyrus) – so it’s really down to the cluing, and that one was clear enough in retrospect but pretty opaque until I looked it up on the off chance.
Apparently there is a theme / Nina, but it’s so recondite hardly anyone would have seen it. The “Ligeti” + “Etudes” one last week was within the realm of general knowledge, but “Triduum”? Hmm.
Good Lord! I wouldn’t have spotted that in a month of… well… Saturdays. And I really should have read the comments ‘over there’ through to the end.
And I see it is indeed cluing not clueing… another vagary of this extraordinary language! Thanks AndyT.
The man in the street has a copy of Chambers on his iPhone these days, so he didn’t have any problems when away on holiday. 😉 Don’t remember having any major problems with this one… Thanks for the covering the past week everyone!
Welcome back Jon, hope you had a good break. 🙂
Had a brilliant time, thanks, Andy. 🙂
I liked this one, all fell into place…one or two needed a step back and revisit…Thanks phi and Cornick