cryptic quiz 2

Posted on July 26, 2012 by commonercryptics under cryptic quiz

For the instructions to the following, please see cryptic quiz 1.

1. Vacuum cleaner   (i) homophone      a) Football club
2. Cannot reveal       (ii) anagram      b) capital
3. Grass drink           (iii) homonym                      c) Bond film
4. Goat BO           (iv) odds                           d) President
5. Dark neon            (v) embedded/reversal   e) country

And what might these novel films be?

1. Dad Hire? (3,4)
2. Unable Baker? (11)
3. Dame Dragon? (10)

And who links them?

Solutions will be posted in about a week’s time, and a new cryptic crossword a day or two after that…

cryptic crossword 74

Posted on July 20, 2012 by commonercryptics under cryptic crosswords

The interactive version can be found by clicking below:

crossword 74 – interactive version

To gain a suitable printout of the puzzle, just click on the image above.

In ‘Print preview’ the ‘Scale’ option can then be used to change the size if necessary

[Solutions can now be found here]

cryptic quiz 1

Posted on July 13, 2012 by commonercryptics under cryptic quiz

I’m taking a bit of a break from the double crosswords for a while. For a bit of variety, here is something of a quick cryptic quiz. A cryptic crossword will be up as usual next friday.

For those not so familiar with cryptic crosswords, or terms used, here are a few explanations:

Homophones: words that sound the same as another (like write and right). And Spoonerisms are words that sound like other, but with the initials switched (so, All Right Now might become All Night Row)

Double Definitions: words with a different meaning but the same spelling (the opposites of left and wrong). And Charade clues are two or more words stuck together (like Her and Ring making Herring)

Embedded words: words hidden within a word or phrase (like ‘Hello, servant’ has the word ‘loser’ in it) – these might also be reversed (‘claw at tomatoes’ has ‘Ottawa’ reversed within)

For want of a better word, ‘cryptic’ will apply to something more miscellaneous – perhaps a few cryptic terms for letter, words or phrases, stuck together (‘Ring chap’, for example, will give you a country – the word ‘ring’ representing a letter – O – and ‘chap’ a word.)

Odds / evens: pick out just the odd or even letters in a word or phrase (so, ‘groom peed’ would give you a Hitchcock film or Cluedo weapon; ‘plan raids’ would give you a European capital)

So below are five clues (on the left-hand side) to five definitions (on the right-hand side). In the middle are the ways of connecting them up. So, for example, if on the left-hand side you had “John Travolta film” and on the right-hand side, “Country”, you would be finding a homophone of a John Travolta film (Grease) to find a country (Greece).

To confuse things, the clues, the techniques and the definitions have all been mixed up. You need to find the right solution to each clue using the right technique…

The following are clues to (one-word) films. The twist is, each time an extra letter is added (that is, one for the first, two for the second and three for the third).