i Cryptic Crossword 3581 by Serpent

Difficulty rating (out of five): 🌟🌟🌟🌟

It would be instructive to place today’s Serpent puzzle alongside Klingsor’s from yesterday and Dac’s from Wednesday. They’re remarkably similar in that all three provide totally credible surface readings and watertight, satisfying cryptic readings of a quality that represents the very best of British Cryptic Crosswords. Where they differ is in the difficulty level. Not of vocabulary – all three tend to eschew obscurities – but rather in the degree of misdirection; how hidden the real instuctions of the clue are; how ‘cryptic’ it is.

So Serpent is the most difficult of the three, and this one definitely warranted 4 stars, but oh, how satisfying to solve! The greater difficulty means that – provided you can solve it of course – the penny drops with an even greater clang. I loved it.

Some of the best surface readings were those for GRIFTS, COCKROACH, MINSTREL, and BROADEN. Then the brilliantly disguised bits of wordplay include ‘messing with the inside'(of ones head) to change ‘nail’ to (CRA)NIAL, ‘Allow housing association’s case’ in 8d… well frankly I could go on and list them all – you’ll doubtless have your own favourites. For a CoD we’re spoilt for choice, but I’m plumping for this one:

14d Sneak into enemy camp and learn if it’s prepared to accept end to conflict (10)

There is a ghost theme – easily spotted at the end if you just read through the across clues: We had CAPTAIN BEEF/HEART and the symmetrically positioned TROUT MASK REPLICA. Nice spot that, Serpent, and it coincided with the anniversary of the album’s original release.

Beermagnet did a sterling job over on Fifteensquared back in the day, although I suspect the ‘correct’ definition for AMOEBA at 23d is actually ‘being confined to a single cell’, with ‘being’ as a noun. Serpent doesn’t really do verbiage.

Here’s that link:

www.fifteensquared.net/2018/06/16/independent-9883-by-serpent