Clued In (Blogs)

Clued In #339 | Find your flow in the grid

 |  04 July 2021

Hey there, and welcome back to Clued In!

What is a crossword puzzle if not an interconnected and interweaving grid where one gridfill derives and defines another? A bit like Life, isn’t it?

Was the above clue fun to solve? Did you get a kick out of understanding how to work out the answer to a cryptic crossword clue? Did you enjoy being given a random sentence that ultimately leads to a completely unexpected but totally decipherable answer? Do you feel like you could use some help to guide you towards the answer for each of the 20-30 clues that usually bamboozle you in each puzzle? Well, look no further!

Ok, look just a little further. Because, every Sunday, The Hindu Crossword Plus posts a ! Go ahead and bookmark that link and play the latest puzzle.new The Hindu Cryptic puzzle with annotations for each clue

Each annotation will give you helping hints and hold your hand as we work out the answer together. If you liked the long-winded explanation to the above clue, then you will surely enjoy the crisper versions we give you in puzzles, when you click the button ‘Reveal’ and then ‘Show a hint’.The Hindu Cryptic on Sunday

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To become better at solving cryptic crosswords, you should do one simple thing. Just subscribe to The Hindu Crossword Plus. That’s the place where you can solve cryptics live to your heart’s content. Come over to Clued In to get your doubts cleared and your craft honed.

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The Hindu Cryptic #13291 | Arden | 18 Across & 19 DownClue explained:Channel essentially a 19 (4)CLUES:Tops with Irish cream in coffee, they say it’s great (7)

: letter-pick, clue crossreferencing, insertion, cryptic definition, homophoneClue types

: 19 (Lattice); they say it’s greatDefinitions

: &AnswersRILLLATTICE

In 19 Down, we are looking for a 7-letter word that means ‘they say it’s great’.

‘They say’ is a homophone indicator — a homophone of ‘great’ is grate. So, our definition is actually ‘grate’.

‘Tops’ is a letter-pick indicator that tells us to select the first letters of ‘Irish’ and ‘cream’ — these are I and C.

A kind of coffee is LATTE.

‘In’ is an insertion indicator telling us that I and C go inside LATTE.

Altogether, that spells LATTICE, which is another word for ‘grate’!

*

In 18 Across, we are looking for a 4-letter word.

Now that we have worked out the answer for 19 Down to be LATTICE, we find a synonym for it, which could be GRILLE.

‘Essentially’ is a letter-pick indicator that means for us to select all but the outermost letters of GRILLE. They are RILL.

And a RILL is our 4-letter answer meaning a kind of meandering latticework-like ‘channel’ or stream that snakes around through furrows in rocks or mountains!