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A Confusing Piece of Gold (18th of July edition)

3 across: Time for bar, swallowing back essential drug?! (4, 1′ 5)

The apostrophe certainly came in handy here, so it wasn’t too hard to figure out that the time to go to the bar to swallow back a nice drug is a funny piece of beer o’ clock cryptic-crossword gold. What is hard to figure out, though, is any logical explanation for the answer other than its being a direct cryptic synonym.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 6:25 pm and is filed under DA Confusion, DA Gold. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “A Confusing Piece of Gold (18th of July edition)”

  1. NC Says:
    July 25th, 2008 at 7:26 pm

    I think it works like this.

    The definition is just TIME (for).
    bar=BLOCK. “swallowing” is a containment indicator. essential=core, “back” is a reversal indicator, so “essential back”=EROC.
    Oh, and drug=E (ecstasy). Hence, BeerocLOCK or “beer o’clock”.

    I ended up 2 clues short of cracking DA this time (on my own again like last time, AJ was busy again). I gave up around midnight.

    One was 5-across. (looks like an easy anagram, but I am pretty weak on dead white male musicians, which is what I suspect the answer is, and I refuse to google or look up encyclopedias). The other was 27-across.

    Oh well, a valiant effort against a top-notch opponent, but just falling short (a bit like the Hawks vs the Cats last night really).

    How did everybody else go?

  2. TH Says:
    July 27th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

    AS and I polished it off over breakfast on Sun. I suspect he’ll be posting a rundown this morning. You’re right about 5-across.

  3. AS Says:
    July 27th, 2008 at 10:11 pm

    And 27 across was one of the last ones we got out.

  4. NC Says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 5:39 am

    I am kicking myself over 27-across. I really should have solved it.

    Sydney’s top journo penning 2-down (THEATRE) work, is given wide distribution.

    Sydney’s top = S
    journo = ED (short for editor)
    theatre work = PLAY
    penning = containment indicator (nice one. penning as in an animal pen. I’ll try to remember that one.)

    SPLAYED = given wide distribution

    I solved 1-across but I don’t understand how it works. I will post it to DA Confusion if no-one else does.

  5. AS Says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 8:49 am

    1 across is actually quite nasty because of a recondite synonym.

    West of theatre = mae and point = tine (that I only got after consulting the dictionary).

    From there, the answer is easy.

  6. NC Says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 7:33 pm

    Nasty indeed.

    I don’t think I would ever have gotten that if not for the cross clues.
    I had a fixation that point must mean N,S,W or E.

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