Crosaire Puzzles
Every now and then I get talking over lunch to a distinguished Emeritus Professor at Maynooth University, Tony O’Farrell, about various things. A topic that came up recently was crossword puzzles, which reminded me that I haven’t posted much on that subject for a while. Regular readers of this blog will know that in the past I used to do a lot of crosswords, including the Guardian puzzles almost every day and Azed and Everyman in the Observer on Sundays. Since I moving to Ireland I have weaned myself off the UK newspapers so my regular crossword-solving is nowadays limited to the Times Literary Supplement and Cyclops in Private Eye. Since my TLS subscription has now lapsed, the only one I do regularly is Cyclops.
When I first arrived here almost eight years ago I had a look at the crosswords in the Irish Times. I had a go at the cryptic puzzle – called Crosaire – but didn’t find it particularly challenging (and there’s no prize competition) so never got into the habit of doing it. It’s about the same level of difficulty as Everyman, in my opinion, which I used to do mainly to limber up for Azed. I buy the Weekend Edition on paper and have an online subscription, but rarely look at the crossword.
After chatting with Tony, however, I decided to look at Crosaire again. I had a class test to supervise today so thought I would look at the puzzle that appeared in Saturday’s Weekend Edition as I still had the paper copy. The solution has already been published so I won’t be spoiling anyone’s fun!
Anyway, here is Saturday’s puzzle (obtained from the Irish Times website)
I see that the screen grab misses the clue for 23 across, which is “Say goodbye, thus perish in Australia (5)”. That’s one of the easy clues; the solution is ADIEU. Other easy ones are 18 down (BLT) and 20 across (NUCLEAR)
Overall, it’s a fairly straightforward cryptic puzzle, with conventional wordplay, but there are one or two points of interest.
The first – and this seems to be a trademark – is that the four clues around the perimeter (1 across, 8 down, 9 down and 34 across) are thematically linked. The theme is also sometimes referenced elsewhere. Obviously getting these solutions is an enormous help in completing the grid. When I looked at 1 across I immediately suspected that “Tongue” might mean a language. I then saw an anagram for RIVIERA on 8 down and the starting word “Nice” gave the game away entirely. The four perimeter clues are thus: FRENCH BULLDOG, FRENCH RIVIERA, FRENCH CUISINE and FRENCH TEACHER; 33 down also refers to the French theme.
Other than that I see that there are more ‘hidden word’ type clues than one would normally see in a UK cryptic, such as the clue for NUCLEAR mentioned above. Another one is “Dog shampoo chihuaua drinks (5)” which is “pooch”, although I am not convinced by “drinks” as the indicator!
I also had to think about 14 across “Chart shows Portugal full of Irish (4)”; I thought it had to be PLAN but couldn’t parse the rest until I found out that lán is “full” in the Irish language, hence “full of Irish” with “P” for “Portugal”. I don’t think there are many references to Irish words in Crosaire, generally.
I’m no speed merchant when it comes to crosswords, but this one took me 10 minutes to solve. If you’re interested, the full solution with notes can be found here. Maybe I’ll try to get into the habit of solving this more frequently. That might provide a little compensation for the generally woeful Opinion pieces cluttering up the newspaper. Also, with retirement on my mind, I wonder if the Irish Times – or any other newspaper – is looking for any more setters?
P.S. Crosaire was the pseudonym taken by the original setter John Derek Crozier, as a play on his own name and on the Irish word for “crossroad”. The Irish word for “crossword” is crosfhocal.
#crosaire #crosswords #irishTimes
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