Monthly Archives: July 2010

DA Confusion for the 30th/31st July, 2010

Posted on July 30, 2010 by AS| 12 Comments

Ask the internet and you shall receive.

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Posted in DA Confusion

DA on the 30th/31st of July, 2010

Posted on July 30, 2010 by AS| 13 Comments

Two disappointing DA cryptics in a row is not possible.

I’m expecting this week’s to be a corker.

(No spoilers on this thread until Monday)

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Posted in DA Reports

DA on TV

Posted on July 29, 2010 by AS| 2 Comments

TT has alerted me to an extra special treat for next week: DA on TV!

He’s part of a show seemingly made for us cruciverbalists called Letters and Numbers.

It’s on at 6pm starting Monday, 2nd of August on SBS — and thankfully the same day and time for both Sydney and Melbourne!

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Posted in General Cryptic Talk

Washington Crossing the Delaware by David Shulman

Posted on July 29, 2010 by AS| 6 Comments

There are moments in life when you can only look on in awe.

Check out this sonnet by David Shulman:

Washington Crossing the Delaware

A hard, howling, tossing water scene.
Strong tide was washing hero clean.
“How cold!” Weather stings as in anger.
O Silent night shows war ace danger!

The cold waters swashing on in rage.
Redcoats warn slow his hint engage.
When star general’s action wish’d “Go!”
He saw his ragged continentals row.

Ah, he stands – sailor crew went going.
And so this general watches rowing.
He hastens – winter again grows cold.
A wet crew gain Hessian stronghold.

George can’t lose war with’s hands in;
He’s astern – so go alight, crew, and win!

Notice anything peculiar about it?

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Posted in General Cryptic Talk

Confoundings for the DA on 23rd/24th of July, 2010

Posted on July 23, 2010 by AS| 23 Comments

Here’s where you can get yourself out of a spot of bother.

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Posted in DA Confusion

DA DA for the 23rd/24th of July, 2010

Posted on July 23, 2010 by AS| 9 Comments

Three cheers for a quality DA.

Yay or nay?

(No spoilers in the comments of this post until Monday)

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Posted in DA Reports

DA and the Confusions for the 16/17th of July, 2010

Posted on July 16, 2010 by AS| 24 Comments

Perplexed? Confused?

Get your DA issues sorted here.

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Posted in DA Confusion

DA for the 16/17th of July, 2010

Posted on July 16, 2010 by AS| 3 Comments

How do we rate this week’s array of sleights of hand?

(No spoilers in the comments of this post until Monday)

Update: I got two in less than two minutes, and then for the next twenty minutes or so, nothing, which is pretty much where things remained.

Given the theme and some of the answers (wop, sod’s law), I’m kinda glad I didn’t stick with it.

Further update: My cryptic research has uncovered that Finagle’s law is also a synonym of Murphy’s law and sod’s law.

Before today, I’d only heard of Murphy’s, and the hilarious Muphry’s law.

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Posted in DA Reports

An NS Query

Posted on July 15, 2010 by AS| 2 Comments

Although I know there’s a plethora of cryptics available online, whenever I want some cryptic fun I still do what’s available in The Age.

And today was NS for my cryptic hit, but I can’t for the life of me figure out the reasoning behind this one:

18 across: Note the sharp edge on the military post (8)

The answer looks like it has to be GARRISON, but other than G = note and ON = on, I can’t explain it.

Have I missed something simple and am now embarrassing myself?

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Posted in General Cryptic Talk

DA Let Down on his Crossword from the 9/10th of July, 2010

Posted on July 11, 2010 by AS| 5 Comments

A new category for a phenomenon newly discovered: the editorial mistake.

DA’s hard work has been mangled in both The Age and the SMH, and, echoing Anna Karenina, each in their own way.

8 down reads PERSONAL WEANKESS in the SMH — a delightful little pun for character flaw — that in the hands of an artless Age editor became PERSONAL WEAKNESS. I’m a Melbourne boy myself, so I was a little surprised to see what seemed to be an uncharacteristically simple DA clue. Of course, I didn’t read a DA clue, but rather a bowdlerised replica of punny extravagance.

17 across was a typical, if somewhat clunky, DA clue that was rather easy for those reading The Age — the ungrammatical article sticking out like a sore thumb in ARREST A AUDITORY DISEASE made at least part of the solution pretty obvious. SMH readers, on the other hand, must have felt quite uncomfortable trying to work out how the “corrected” version of the clue that they were presented with, ARREST AN AUDITORY DISEASE, could ever be elegantly transformed into what looked like it had to be cholera.

So for the first time that we’ve ever noticed, no one in Australia got the DA as it stood originally, and much like the scholars who compare and contrast the various editions of Shakespeare’s plays, we’ve had to reconstruct what was the master’s intentions from the sullied material at our disposal.

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Posted in DA Controversy