DA’s Vanquishing

And so this blog begins with the pinnacle of our cryptic-crossword endeavours: the taking down of one of DA’s finest.

TH and I both completed independently of each other this year’s 11th of January special. I was ably aided by the newly-converted JB, who after only a few weeks of crypticking can declare with pride that, unlike so many others who have never tasted such sought-after success, she has broken DA.

Certainly for me, and I think also for TH, this was the first time that DA had been brought to heel after many years of brave attempts, and so the record of this special event was framed thusly:

The vanquishing of DA

Sadly, the clues were lopped off to get the crossword into the frame, so just what the clue was for demitasse, the answer to 1 down, is for now lost.

I do, however, freely admit that Google did indeed come to my aid for one clue. Krafft-Ebing is the Austrian sexologist who I had never heard of and who was the answer to 24 across, and just such a reference to peripheral trivia effectively illustrates what amount of nastiness DA gets up to when compiling any one of the dastardly cryptics that grace Friday’s puzzles page. The use of Google I have no qualms in declaring is justified in these instances, and it in no way dampens the enormous satisfaction derived from DA’s vanquishing.

2 thoughts on “DA’s Vanquishing

  1. While the clue for 1 down in the April 18th 2008 DA may be lost to posterity, the same answer (“demitasse”) has bobbed up as 3 down in the fiendishly difficult September 26th.

    In this case, the clue was: Sat up in end coffee cup (9)
    and the explanation is: Sat up = tas, end = demise, so “sat up in end” = demi tas se = DEMITASSE = coffee cup.

  2. Yep, I noticed that too.

    I had no idea what a demitasse was until this crossword, and it was nice to see it reappear and remind me of a past victory while I was being brutalised by the fiendish 26th of September edition.

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