CRYPTO CLUES CXXXII

GAMES Magazine

January/February, 1982

Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon

 

The key to solving a cryptic clue is to find the dividing point between the definition and the wordplay. Sometimes this point is hard to find in the context of the clue. For example, given the clue, Run around a gypsy's deck of cards: This is a container clue. The answer is TAROT - which is a gypsy's deck of cards, but the wordplay is that TROT - which means run - is around the letter A. So the clue should be parsed as Run around A - a gypsy's deck of cards (T A ROT).

1. Stay with Mother in control (container) 

2. A hormone can make you a heavenly body (two words)

3. First off, begins pies (beheadment)

4. Sounds like one who preserves taste (homophone)

5. Distances drays moved (anagram)

6. Lively bird eating cracked nut (container)

 

7. Reasoning with skinny monarch (two words)

 

8. Alienates new sergeants (anagram)

 

9. Canine eating metal is overly attentive (container)

10. America speaks (two meanings)

 

Answers:

 

1. REMAIN (RE MA IN)

2. ASTEROID

3. TARTS 

4. SAVOR

5.  YARDS

6. JAUNTY (JA UNT Y)

7. THINKING (THIN KING)

8. ESTRANGES

9. DOTING (DO TIN G)

10. STATES