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Diabolically Arcane

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Cryptic Court 3

15 March, 2012

A full schedule of alleged miscreants this week, so we’d best get adjudicating. Below are seven recent UK clues, all of which warrant your magisterial eye. Beside each clue is my concern in brief. Feel free to disagree, or explore what craze the clue may be triggering.

And just because you can’t help yourselves, come up with some zingy DIY clues for any of the same answers.

  1. Liar? = BACKTRACK [A rebus clue from Paul, which lacks a definition as the rebus allows. But wondering if the mild trick merits the formula choice in the first place.]

  2. Fast track creating bitterness at work = GALLOP [Has Pasquale duffed his racing parlance? Or is ‘gallop’ a fast UK track?]

  3. Reminder about school = ETON [No big fan of this trick. Thanks to planting the spin-sign plumb centre, Cincinnus makes you wonder, is the answer note or Eton?]

  4. Sound off in pope’s office = PONTIFICATE [Times 9254 has a bob each way. To pontificate is to intone with pomp, as though decreeing law, a-la the Pontiff.]

  5. Book – book to be plain then? = BLACK BEAUTY [Love Paul, but thought this charade B-lack beauty = Black Beauty was wan.]

  6. Somehow justified excluding unhealthy diets at the peak = FUJI [New kid Philistine does a reductive anagram, but why the double signpost? Between somehow and unhealthy, one is redundant, surely.]

  7. Recipient’s old man with evil eye = PAYEE [Simple question: are you happy with evil as the anagrind? Me, I balked.]

Welcome your views, and your revitalised clues.

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Text-speak is creeping into Scrabble. Where do you sit?
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