Crossword roundup: cold Turkish delight

In the sample clues below, the links take you to explainers from our beginners’ series. The setter’s name often links to an interview with him or her, in case you feel like getting to know these people better.

The news in clues

Hello again. If you haven’t yet solved last week’s puzzle from Pasquale, I recommend doing so now. Those that did solve it will have relished this pair of consecutive clues …

25ac I need job done … (3,5)
[ wordplay: anagram (‘done’ as in rendered, cooked, treated etc) of INEEDJOB ]

26ac … to eclipse my predecessor (5)
[ wordplay: double definition ]

… yielding this row:

And so that chapter is over. It’s a contrast to the departure of Theresa May, in that this time, the successor’s surname offers crossword setters less potential for amusing puerile remarks but the successor himself offers less potential for dread.

Meanwhile, the annotated solution is now available for a recent audacious prize puzzle from Paul: the one that went “Capital of Norway twice … capital of France twice” and so on. If you’re a weekday solver who enjoyed sussing the tomfoolery Paul had in mind, the same kind of thing is deployed in those weekend puzzles without black squares.

They can be utterly absorbing. If you currently fancy absorption, it’s offered by the Listener in the Saturday Times and the Inquisitor in the same day’s Independent; Enigmatic Variations in the Sunday Telegraph and Mephisto in the same day’s Times – and of course, from these pages, the Observer’s Azed and the monthly online Genius. I’ve been doing a lot more of these in the past 10 months. If you have thoughts, guidance or favourites, please share. This is a subject we will return to.

Puzzling elsewhere

Today’s recommendation is our first that is not online. It’s also not indoors. If there’s a child in your household unit, there might be a Treasure Trail that could be a daily exercise this term; the creators have recently updated their Covid guidance. If you have enjoyed – or created – alfresco or online puzzles, let us know.

And our latest offering of Healing Music Recorded in 2020-21 to Accompany a Solve or Even Listen to is one we’ll presently and tactfully reposition at the end of the playlist because it alludes directly to what we’ve been calling This but which, unlike Baaba Maal’s appearance, is in a language most of us speak.

It’s a performance of Waving Through the Window, from the host of the podcast that is often the highlight of my locked-down day, Jake Yapp’s news-comedy-invective-comfort-music-community hybrid Not Today, Thank You.

Latter patter

Here’s a clue from Pan in the quiptic, the Guardian’s puzzle “for beginners …” (of whom there are many) “… and those in a hurry” (enough said, nowadays).

11ac Unsympathetic country offering unpleasant cure for addiction (4,6)
[ wordplay: synonym for ‘unsympathetic’; name of a country ]
[ definition: unpleasant cure for addiction ]

Many of us may be trying to go COLD TURKEY on bad habits in January and perhaps wondering why we use that phrase. As is often the way, there’s a clear, neat and satisfying explanation – the skin of narcotics-addicts during withdrawal – which is unhelpfully undermined by previous mentions, such as Merriam-Webster’s …

1910 usage where the speaker lost $5,000 cold turkey, in the sense of losing it outright.

More interesting – perhaps – is my own awareness of two things: a) that I can’t say whether turkey, the bird, is named after Turkey the country and yet b), that I know that I’ve recently read a lot about the subject.

I don’t think that turkey/Turkey is something we’ve discussed in these pages. Until recently, I would have turned confidently to my own memory for an answer. I can be a little more specific about how recently: an afternoon of some lockdown (or possibly a tier I wouldn’t try to enumerate) during which I put together a For Beginners piece. After I’d clicked on READY TO PUBLISH, I vividly recalled a clue that really had to be included, and after a little scrabbling, found it … in a virtually identical For Beginners piece on the same subject that I’d published shortly before Lockdown One.

I’ve asked around and I’m by no means alone in this discombobulation. Our minds are not as they were. My empathy if your memory is also warped; my envy and admiration if it doesn’t seem to be. Either way, the subject of our next challenge is a foodstuff that needed some explanation in Edwin Drood.

Did Dickens ever get round to finishing that story? I forget. In any case, it’s the subject of our next challenge. Reader, how would you clue TURKISH DELIGHT?

Cluing competition

Many thanks for your clues for BRIEF. I enormously enjoyed all the cheese-based imagery and will try my best to eat all the dishes mentioned. Of the double/triple definitions, my favourite was Albery’s “Solicitor’s concise job description”. And the audacity award must go to Zedible for the preposterous “Instruc?”

The runners-up are Montano’s grimly topical “Inform FBI re disorder” and PeterMooreFuller’s “Beethoven’s first oddly ruined by F sharp” (from which I have imperiously removed a “–”); the winner is Porcia’s charming “Quick look in Chambers for this one!”

Kludos to Porcia: please leave entries for this fortnight’s competition – and any of your picks from the broadsheet cryptics – below.

Clue of the Fortnight

Over at the Telegraph, a twist on a staple. Setters are prone to using “that is” in a clue to indicate IE in an answer. This unnamed setter spells it out in full …

15ac Learner being kept in that is least likely to make an effort (6)
[ wordplay: abbrev. for ‘learner’ inside (‘being kept in’) Latin phrase for ‘that is’ ]
[ L inside ID EST ]
[ definition: least likely to make an effort ]

… proving themselves to be far from the IDLEST.

• The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop and is partly but not predominantly cryptic

• Here is a collection of all our explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs

• The country came before the bird, for what it’s worth