the strange affair of spring heeled jack by mark hodder

Solution is an anagram (indicated by “badly”) of DID placed in ACTED (i.e. Did badly in what thespians did, taking a lot of hits? (8)Īnswer: ADDICTED (i.e.“gold” or yellow in heraldry) and DON (i.e. Solution is C (a musical “note”) followed by OR (i.e. “grass”) once its last letter has been removed (indicated by “reduced”), like so: DO-RIC.Īnswer: CORDON (i.e. “order” – over to Chambers: “denoting one of the Greek orders of architecture distinguished by its simplicity and massive strength”). “orbit”), like so: REAL(IS)M.Īnswer: DORIC (i.e. Solution is IS “getting into” REALM (i.e. Practicality is getting into orbit? (7)Īnswer: REALISM (i.e.No easy-going quality in exam set by one head (9)Īnswer: TESTINESS (i.e.Solution is an anagram (indicated by “cobbled”) of U (i.e. Second of gumboots in template cobbled next to last (11)Īnswer: PENULTIMATE (i.e.Standing out for what could be potato worker? (11)Īnswer: PROTUBERANT (i.e.Till next time, stay safe out there kids. It’s always interesting to hear the thoughts of other solvers once they’ve set down their pens.

Thanks again for the kind words and input. If a recent Jumbo has rattled your cage then you might find my Just For Fun page of use, where you’ll find links to solutions for hundreds of the things. Below you’ll find my completed grid along with explanations of my solutions where I have them.

Can you guess what it’ll be?Īnyway, back to normal service. Now, there are over a dozen setters of the Times Jumbo Cryptic so some repeats will be unavoidable, but it’ll be interesting to see if this is a one-off or a trend. I appreciate there’ll be an element of subjectivity about these rules, but, again, I’ll try to be fair.Īpplying these rules to this week’s Jumbo, you will see there were a heck of a lot of repeats. To demonstrate rule 3), if we had BALLOON one week and BALLOONED shortly after then I’d count it as a repeat. To demonstrate rule 2), if we had BRAIN and BRAINS TRUST then I wouldn’t count this as a repeat unless they were both in the same grid. Let’s establish some rules to keep things fair:Ģ) partial repeats don’t count, unless they’re in the same grid, andģ) derivative or variant forms of the same word or phrase do count.

So instead let’s start tracking how often they (or, more likely, their software) keep hitting on the same solutions. You see, while it’s been fun ribbing Times setters for their collective bonk-on for the French, it seems they’ve either become wise to this or have gotten a good chunk of their Francophilia out of their system – at least for now. I blathered a lot about them last week, so I won’t repeat myself here, suffice to say I think it’s time for a switch in style. A relatively straightforward one this week, which is fine by me.

The strange affair of spring heeled jack by mark hodder