Daily Telegraph Cryptic No 31080
Hints and tips by Falcon
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BD Rating – Difficulty * – Enjoyment ***
Greetings from snowy Ottawa where we are experiencing our first snowfall of the season. It began about noon yesterday and is forecast to continue for most of the week. Not a great deal is expected – perhaps only six inches or so.
We have a gentle puzzle to start the week which was much appreciated as I prepare the review Sunday evening and arrived home late from an earlier engagement having had to drive home on snow-covered, slippery roads.
I would like to take this opportunity to make a comment on the term “all-in-one clue” which we often see on the blog. My recollection – and I stand to be corrected by longer serving members of the blogging crew – is that Big Dave introduced this term as an alternative to “&lit. clue” which he regarded as pretentious jargon that did not align with his vision of explaining clues “in plain language”. In those early days, we used the terms all-in-one and semi-all-in-one in place of &lit. and semi-&lit. respectively. Over the years, this term seems to have acquired a broader meaning – perhaps through uninformed usage by more recent members to the community who inferred its meaning without knowing its origin – and I now see it being applied to other types of clues that, similar to &lit clues, don’t have distinct definition and wordplay components such as cryptic definitions and even acrostic clues. Thus it would seem that it is no longer a precise term for one particular type of clue but has become an umbrella term for a collection of clue types. I know it is unlikely that the hands of time can be rolled back, so – ironically – it would appear that if one wishes to be precise when discussing &lit. clues, one must fall back on the very term that Big Dave strove to avoid.
In the hints below, underlining identifies precise definitions and cryptic definitions, FODDER is capitalized, and indicators are italicized. The answers will be revealed by clicking on the ANSWER buttons.
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