Prompters place | oak nut | with | men | going to | emergency room (4,6)
[AMEN CORNER] = [A^CORN] [contains] [MEN] [+] [E.R.]
Because AMEN CORNER is a term not widely used (in my experience) and the charade had multiple parts, I didn't think it was revealing too much to let MEN remain in the clear, and ER nearly so.
Innocents | heard | leaves (4)
[LAMBS] [homophone] = [LAMS]
Muzzily | cork A.M. call | from | awakener (5,5)
[anagram] [CORK AM CALLS] [=] [ALARM CLOCK]
Fights | to get rid of paint (7)
[SCRAPES] = [SCRAPES]
British crossword enthusiasts | are headed | to becoming the | Ante-Christ (3)
[British Crossword Enthusiasts] [initials] [=] [B.C.E.]
Ante- (before) is different from Anti- (against), and Before Common Era, is known in some circles as Before Christian Era or B.C.
British crossword enthusiasts | are headed | to becoming the | Ante-Christ (3)
[British Crossword Enthusiasts] [initials] [=] [B.C.E.]
Ante- (before) is different from Anti- (against), and Before Common Era, is known in some circles as Before Christian Era or B.C.
 LAT |  Seattle Times 7/16/14 sNYT |
Today's Cryptic clues have a surprise nestled with the beheading, charade, double definition, reversal, etc.
Two from LAT:
Famous 21st century poetess in pre-Columbian Central America (4)
Mensa is for splitting hairs (5)
Three from the Seattle Times:
Help in rocks the French want for two sides to be equal (9)
Unbalanced, Triangles of Pascal energetically reveal odds (7)
Four horsey heads afterwards back the French bid for Trinitarian equality (11)
NC: Computer problems again yesterday. *sigh*. Decided to try switching from Firefox to Chrome. Spent the day customizing Chrome to
ReplyDeletework the way I wanted, and then it started freezing up the same way Firefox had been doing. *gahk* So, I'm back on Firefox now, thinking the problem might be with my router or ISP rather than my own machine. Is a transmission speed of 54 Mbps good or bad?
Anyway, I've finally gotten to your clues from yesterday:
Adapts to loss of right-turns (7).
[R][EVOLVES]-[R]
Two girls on one knee (7).
[PAT][ELLA]
They presumably offer single-breasted garments (6).
[AMAZON]
I started out with "Wonder Woman is selling favors" as one of mine (party favors, of course), but decided to ditch it.
Frustration of hiding heart in retractable tube (7).
[RED]<[BO^OM]=[BOREDOM]
A flower from my Irish heart (6).
[MERSEY]=[M^Y]>[ERSE]
Famous 21th century poetess in pre-Columbian Central America (4) )
ReplyDeleteI was looking for a hidden clue but it’s not. This poetess was not known to me, but is clearly famous to somebody. I must be one of the great….
Clue: Still I Rise* to the non-Readers’ Digest (6)
*one of her poems.
Mensa is for splitting hairs (5)
Owen, one of your former employers, I see. Feeling a little horse, this morning, are we?
Holy Trinity, Batman! A geometry set, in ascending order of symmetry!
Help in rocks the French want for two sides to be equal (9)
Hey, you used my help. And Bourbon still rocks. Wanted (or needed) – past tense – to indicate “adding-on” the French - would have been a British-cryptic-expectation (or BCE for short).
Unbalanced, Triangles of Pascal energetically reveal odds (7)
A nice tie-in to the previous clue. Hey, we had this the other day, and I clued it. Yours may be better. Bringing a mathematician into the mix is a nice misdirection.
Four horsey heads afterwards back the French bid for Trinitarian equality (11)
Back to the horses to complete the set. I am not clear why you need “Four”, except maybe as some tie-in to the Apocalyse vis-à-vis Trinity; and “bid for” seems unnecessary, unless it misdirects to horse-racing. And equality has the same root as the answer. Otherwise elegant.
NC
In re last clue, OK, I now see why you used "Four…heads". Although there is another I/E issue as "horsey" would seem to point to E as the 4th head. The 4th head of "horses" in Latin is I. To confuse matters further, Latin "horsemen" have an I in the singular and an E in the plural. IIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!
ReplyDeleteAs to computer glitches, I doubt that speed is an issue. Did you change your web hosting service or change/upgrade your OS recently?
ReplyDeleteYou score 100% of course on my clues from yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI also tried hard to get something a little racier for Amazon, without going beyond the pale. I prefer yours.
I did wonder whether “flower” as a misdirect for “river” was used in US cryptics, but did not expect to fool you.
NC
I don't think you're parsing that final clue just right, but obviously close enough. "bid for" is just a nonce transition term to make the surface sentence read clearer. And you're right about the clue word having the same root, my bad on that.
ReplyDeleteWhen I tried looking up the poetess to verify, I misspelt her name and couldn't find her until I looked up "And Still I Rise." She was famous enough to make front page in many newspapers when she passed on just this past May.
My clues:
ReplyDeleteMarsh yeomanry lack affirmative action (6)
Reagan campaign slogan possibly led to nuclear orbiter (8)
Slicer no longer working following about-turn (7)
Great downer of sliced spuds and salt (7)
Is she a lesbian because she lacks proper direction and structure? (6)
NC
Whoops! Got that last (non-PC) backwards. It should read:
ReplyDeleteIs she a lesbian because a new direction and structure were imposed? (6)
Four I'm reasonably sure of, but the 1st one all I could come up with was really shaky.
ReplyDeleteMarsh yeomanry lack affirmative action (6)
[?anagram?][yEOMaNRY]-[ya]=[?ROMNEY?]
Reagan campaign slogan possibly led to nuclear orbiter (8)
[ELECT][RON]
Slicer no longer working following about-turn (7)
[SURGEON]-[ON][after][RE:]=[RESURGE]
Great downer of sliced spuds and salt (7)
Great {enemy plane} downer = [ACE], sliced spuds = [TATE{rs}], salt {of acetic acid} =[ACETATE]
All a bit vague, but marginally okay.
Is she a lesbian because she lacks proper direction and structure? (6)
[ISABEL]=[LESBIAN]-[N][anagram]
Any proper name should have more to identify it than just a pronoun. "Spanish queen" or "South American president" would have been enough. Otherwise kudos for a well-constructed surface sentence. Did "proper" have any significance?
Is she a lesbian because a new direction and structure were imposed? (6)
ReplyDeleteWhoops is right! No way ISABEL fits this. "new direction" says either the N is replaced by E W or S, not merely cut, or that whole idea was wrong. And there's more added after what I assumed was an anagram indicator, so that doesn't work any more either. So, rack this one up as another I have no clue on.
Owen
ReplyDeleteI wondered if ROMNEY MARSH would be too obscure. Any other definition of the wanna-be politician seemed to obvious.
Affirmative = AY. Action = Anagram. I agree this is double level since I did not give AY directly; and Romney Marsh would be obvious to Brits but not Yanks apparently.
With regards proper names, you did not complain about PAT-ELLA the other day.
With regards my ISABEL, "proper" really refers to structure => anagram pointer. So "Is she a lesbian because she lacks direction and proper structure? (6)" would have been better. The same comment applies to my "revised" clue in which I used "new" in the same place.
NC