Clued In (Blogs)

Clued In #347 | Feeling dull? Boost your brain with a cryptic puzzle

 |  14 July 2021

Hey there, and welcome back to Clued In!

You have got to be rather smart to solve a cryptic crossword, you have been told. Haven’t you? Well, that’s true only in a demoralising sense. You see, smartness is not something that you have to be necessarily born with and otherwise doomed to survive without. Like bicycling, walking, cutting a vegetable, solving a rubik’s cube, writing or typing, smartness is just a proficiency or skill we develop with respect to a particular task. And you can substitute cryptic crosswords for any of the aforementioned everyday tasks and that sentence would still be true!

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

And guess what, is .The Hindu Cryptic on Sundayabsolutely free! All you have to do is sign up to play

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.

Click right to subscribe to the interactive THCrosswordPlus, so you can solve on your mobile phone, get hints, and even check your answers on the go!here

The Hindu Cryptic #13300 | Afterdark | 27 AcrossClue explained:Commercial earnings? Try to change sides cleverly (8)CLUE:

: abbreviation, substitutionClue types

: cleverlyDefinition

:AnswerADROITLY

We need an 8-letter word here that means ‘cleverly’.

Another word for ‘commercial’ is “advertisement”, an abbreviation for which is AD.

Another phrase for ‘earnings’ is “Return On Investment”, which can be abbreviated as ROI.

From the fodder ‘try’, we literally get the letters TRY.

“Left” and “Right” are examples of the two ‘sides’. They are abbreviated as L and R respectively. So, ‘change sides’ is an instruction that we must substitute the L for the R in TRY, and make it TLY.

Altogether, that spells ADROITLY, our 8-letter meaning ‘cleverly’!