Rob, a new discoverer of the DA Trippers blog, has sent me an email asking if I could remember a particular clue from some years ago. I couldn’t, but I thought I might ask the rest of you if you can remember what looks to be an hilarious clue.
In Rob’s own words:
I was wondering if you might remember the wording of a DA clue from some years ago. The answer was something pretty close to “no animals were harmed in the making of this crossword” and the clue was both anagrammatic and definitional. Very clever.
My files have come to the rescue. The clue was:
Me: cats or dogs and so on with rightful human risk? I warn otherwise!
(2,6,3,4,6,3,6,2,4,9)
The answer is close to what Rob had. Does DA use computing assistance with such clues? If not, they are brilliant, but their brilliance does not translate into a commensurate difficulty, I find. Often if you “close your eyes and squint” at the words required and their numbers of letters, the answer springs out at you, especially if you have a handful of letters. Do other solvers agree?
Yep, it’s sad but true: often the best pieces of word tetris (DA really is the master at getting all sorts of words fitting together in a grid) are reasonably easy to solve just because of the letter distribution.
And IG, I’m very impressed with your files. They must go back a mighty long way.
What you might also be interested in is this:
http://datrippers.com/2010/01/22/the-motherlode-crosswords-from-way-back/
YES! Thanks for finding this for me. It’s one of my favourite &lit clues. What a brilliant effort, both by DA for designing a perfect (and perfectly gettable) &lit, and to the DA trippers for finding it.