i Cryptic Crossword 1969 Dac
May 31, 2017
1969, a vintage year, and a vintage crossword from Dac. I found this about par for difficulty, though with a little doubt over both 18d and 19d where, though the wordplay was crystal clear, neither were familiar enough I felt 100% confident putting them in. Embarrassingly, no Welsh girl names leapt to mind when I needed to think of one for 13ac, and I reverse engineered the wordplay.
COD? Lots to like as always, with 11ac my favourite – ‘Soldiers taking steps to safeguard Home Rule (9)’.
To January 2013 over on the other side:
http://www.fifteensquared.net/2013/01/09/independent-8186-dac/
Borodin
batarde
Saboteur
flashling
jonofwales
Cornick
sprouthater
uiytjhgmj
willow1235
idothei 
Fairly quick & smooth here; no trouble with 18d (that’ll be my London ancestry helping) but agreed that 19d – my last one in – was a case of “oh looks like that must be a thing then” followed by a quick Google for confirmation.
18d no problem here either, thanks to Arthur Daley; not so hot on Croatia or French liqueurs. Sterling stuff throughout, even by Dac’s standards.
Yeah, actually the liqueur was obscure too wasn’t it?
I think it’s a Don Manley dictum: “hard clues for the easy words, easy clues for the hard words.”
Same here with Croatia and liqueurs. 18d was no problem as a friend just recently told me (at length) all about boracic lint and its use in rhyming slang. 😑
Yup. Me too. I extended my vocabulary today with 19d and 27a.