The DA Trippers

(the circled answers are either incorrect or benefited from the Saturday Age)

This one took a long time to get done. I didn’t have all that much time to devote to the crossword, and, quite frankly, I didn’t get very far early on when I tried. Thankfully, RC, N? (she’s new!) and I got together at a Melbourne Cup Day barbecue to hammer out most of it and leave ourselves mightily perplexed by three clues we could not answer.

As usual, this crossword features some DA Gold and DA Confusion. What is unprecedented is the amount of DA Teachings on offer: I learnt seven new words from this one crossword alone!

I haven’t yet had a good go at last Friday’s cryptic, and tomorrow’s public holiday for Melbourne Cup Day, at least in Melbourne, is shaping up as a good time to devote myself to DA.

But, in the meantime, here’s a little cryptic crossword I prepared earlier. It was my first attempt at creating a 15 x 15 cryptic, and, well, it was fun.

Here it is:

(The red clues were from the Saturday Age)

RC is back in town after many months of absence, and Friday night we caught up over wine and a DA.

Themed crosswords have been a feature of DA’s efforts of late, but we had never before been greeted with the peculiar instruction:

Please note: all across clues are 22-across, and go otherwise undefined.

We weren’t sure how to correctly interpret the instruction. My guess was that the answers to the across clues in sequence would constitute a poem or the lyrics to a song. The absence of short clues for English’s prepositions, pronouns and articles put paid to such a notion, so we plunged headlong into the down clues, hoping something would come of our efforts over time.

We did manage to get a few answers out, but it was RC who made the important breakthrough on the humorous 7-down:

7 down: Residents liable to be punished by thematic overindulgence? (6)

Somehow, from somewhere in the dark recesses of his prodigious mind, RC managed to drag out livers as a synonym for residents so that residents = livers = liable to be punished by thematic overindulgence. And, with that, we had ourselves the theme locked up.

Clearly, alcohol had something to do with the theme, and when RC in a flash turned to 12-across and proclaimed it to be Stella Artois, we knew we had for ourselves an amber-ale-themed crossword.

Notwithstanding the theme being revealed, further progress was arduous; DA had still managed to make the crossword quite difficult even for boys well-versed in beer. We called it a night having done about half the crossword some time after midnight, and we were both impressed by the amount of mental strain involved in getting as far as we did, which wasn’t all that far at all.

I answered a few more clues on Saturday before admitting defeat and consulting the answers on Sunday. How a few of the clues work still baffles me; how my favourite of all beers, Tsingtao, went unsolved baffles me still more.

I was caught up with the preparations and celebrations that came of my brother-in-law’s 40th birthday party over the weekend. I did manage to sneak peeks at the DA, but they were to no avail; my fleeting glances met with no solutions, and now I ask for absolution.

I’ve got no crossword to upload and I’ve got nothing to say, really, about Friday’s DA. If any of you have something to offer, please do, and I will have to live vicariously through your accounts. 

So DA will have to wait until the coming of this week’s end, when Friday’s crossword will surely make a more enduring mark on my doings, and RC might just be back in the cryptic circle after many months of absence.

(I solved the answers in red, the Saturday Age solved the answers in black)

Another tough one; DA is making us hurt. I flew the flag solo on Friday because the weekend was gonna be hectic. I made reasonable progress and got about a third of it done, but when I went through it again on the Saturday and found myself making no further progress, I gave up and checked the answers. The answers, however, often didn’t help me in figuring out how the clues were constructed; DA was in a nasty mood again, and this time around he seemed to be making the direct clues particularly cryptic.

To make up for my lack of success, a couple of tram rides over the weekend were spent doing a Thursday NS that I had scrounged from an old newspaper. Success was quickly forthcoming; that sense of cryptic-solving satisfaction, however, was not.

An aside: Does a lack of DA success cause me to use the non-commital semi-colon more often? Does the semi-colon reflect my sense of confusion? Does a tough DA make me less declarative? Is this uncertainty a good thing? Should I be happy that I’m not Hemingway?

(the circled answers were not the product of my own mental workings)

TH was in Sydney, I have no idea where in the world RC is these days and I was having a very slow day at work. So I took on this baby mostly during working hours and found myself mostly at Degani’s in Burnley (sans Elvis impersonator, sadly) praising the good DA’s name; I think this is his best since this blog has been started.

Following what seems to be a trend over the last couple of months, this is another themed crossword, and my solving the clue to which most others referred turned out to be a two-stage process:

13 across: Islander virulent against US intervention?

With a t as the first letter and a tentative s as the third, I figured Tasmanian was the answer even though the only explanation I had for it was that Tasmanian = islander. The other clues referring to 13-across all seemed to confirm my suspicion, but I still had no watertight explanation. Only with the solving of 24-across, which put an inopportune e in the middle of Tasmanian, did I realise the answer was going to be Taswegian and the explanation virulent against = tasgian, us = we, virulent against US intervention = Taswegian = islander.

With that, only a few clues remained of the crossword by knock-off time. Between then and the witching hour, though, progress was only made on one of the few unsolved clues, and I consulted the SMH online for the answers to the rest (for some reason, the crossword software never works in my browser on The Age website).

Now Tasmania is happily associated with one of DA’s best. Excepting Launceston, my already high estimation of the place shot through the roof, and I’m expecting cryptic-crossword aficionados to mysteriously drift southward as if this DA were a siren’s call from the other side of Bass Strait.

(the answers written in pen were solved the hard way, the answers written in fineliner were solved by the Saturday Age)

I doubt TH and I solved even a handful on Sunday, while I managed to eke out about that yesterday before giving up and deciding I might as well post about the pain.

This was hellish. And now that we’ve got the answers, I still don’t have the explanations.

Stay tuned for a fair bit of DA Confusion.

Sicilian Orange on Sunday was the scene of the spanking. Never before has DA so roundly defeated us. Truth be told, I’m a little ashamed of posting the barely-completed cryptic, so I’m giving myself a few more days to stare at it blankly in the hope of at least filling in a few more of the vacant spaces.

Nasty, nasty DA work this week.

(the circled answers were not answered)

TH had Bukowskied himself the night before and I was in Richmond minding my sister’s house, so I walked on down to Bridge Road and found myself by myself having a run-of-the-mill breakfast over a DA at the Short Black Cafe.

With so many clues referring to so many others, it was clear this one had to have a theme. And it was with the following clue that the theme was revealed:

10, 26 across: He animates tiger’s 17-across (oddness), wild one in coupling (4, 8)

I know from bitter experience that something like he animates is often all DA uses as the direct clue, so I figured the answer referred to someone who was an animator. I had G_O_____ of the surname and that was enough for The Simpsons creator, Matt Groening, to come to mind and provide me both with the answer and the theme to the crossword! (coupling = mating, wild one = oen, tiger’s oddness = tgr, giving tiger’s oddness, wild one in coupling = matt groening = he animates.)

From there, the crossword proved to be thoroughly amusing albeit reasonably easy for a DA because of the theme, which meant that despite my not having decent explanations for quite a number of the clues, I was able to answer them in good time. I pulled up stumps and consulted the answers reasonably quickly, though, which I now regret, because what remained of the crossword wasn’t all that difficult. Alas, I had things to do and I was in no position to justify at least another hour of DA play, even if the beloved Simpsons family were the theme of the day.

(the circled answers were either wrong or not attempted)

The dreaded lurgy was not so fearsome this week and the DA was attempted with TH on Sunday at our customary venue, Sicilian Orange. Unfortunately, TH had to leave a little early and we couldn’t devote so much time to the crossword’s dregs, but, having seen the answers to the unsolved clues, unsolved they would most probably have remained.

Overall, though, this was perhaps not the greatest of DAs on record: there were not so many clever aural clues and there was a seeming surfeit of ordinary anagram clues. Nevertheless, it was a DA, and I did end up learning something about poetry.

One of these days, I plan to actually force myself to enjoy poetry. Until then, it will remain a curiousity as meaningless to me as abstract expressionism.