I just finished a crossword, with themed clues entitled “New Wrinkles”. Here are the themed clues I understand:
BINGLESS = Mixed Blessing
STEG = Gets Around
WE RATS = Troubled Waters
LRIG = A bit of All Right
But for the life of me, I cannot figure out the trick behind the other two:
ARRIVES HERE = Comes Across
GHANA = Nationwide
I solved with the “down clues” and checked the answer - but I still don’t get the trick. Can one of you help? Thanks!
It seems like the puzzle was poorly made. Answers should be actual words and meaningful phrases, even in cryptic crosswords. None of the four which are easily understood pass that test.
My guess for ARRIVES HERE is that the clue is meant to be read as “Comes Across [the pond or ocean or sea]”. Someone who comes across a body of water arrives here from the place they set off from. If I’m right, I don’t think it’s a good clue/answer combination.
I’ve got nothing for GHANA = Nationwide. Googling shows that Nationwide is an insurance group in Ghana, but that isn’t a cryptic clue and would be a terrible clue regardless.
Not much to add I’m afraid, I assume “arrives here” is just another way of saying “comes” and it is an “across” clue, hence “comes across”. Still not a great clue IMHO, but I’m more used to British cryptics.
As to the Ghana one, Ghana is the “g” in “14 k of g in a f p d” but apart from that I can’t help you :).
Thanks for these encouraging words! I really puzzled about these - and I agree, they are not great clues.
What was the source of the crossword? If it was from a major, reputable source, like the New York Times, then I would trust it to make sense and meet a certain standard of quality (and there might well be a discussion or explanation of it somewhere online). If it’s from an obscure source, all bets are off.
I don’t know the source - it is from a bound book of crosswords that I bought at Barnes and Noble several years ago. This is the second to the last puzzle, and I tore off the cover and earlier puzzles as I completed them. Most have been excellent. The title of this particular crossword is “New Wrinkles” by Manny Nosowsky.
I found the puzzle with a Google search. I assumed that the capitalized words you gave were the answers and the mixed-case words were the clues, but it’s the opposite. Given that, I think Dead Cat may be right about “ARRIVES HERE - Comes across”. I still don’t have any clue about GHANA but at least now I can think about it from the right perspective. I’ll do the puzzle when I get a chance to see if that helps figure it out. Manny Nosowsky is a respected puzzle maker so I’m guessing there’s a reasonable explanation for the clue.
Yeah, with the additional information provided, I found it too.
I suspected that GHANA had been printed in an especially wide typeface, but it doesn’t appear that way. But it’s possible that the puzzle was originally published elsewhere and was printed that way then, but when it was reprinted, the all-important typesetting wasn’t preserved.
That’s got to be it. It could have been any country but a country with a short name would be used to fit in the confines of the clue list.
I think we’ve got it. Both those make sense and fit with the rest of the puzzle. Whew!!! Again, thanks.
I agree (and I also misunderstood the order of the clues/answers as per Gus), though I think for the answer “Nationwide” a better clue would be “C o u n t r y” - having said that, if the typesetting does hold the key I suppose it’s fairly obvious anyway.
The answers are actual words. Some of the clues are not, which is not unusual nor unfair.
And “Turkey” would have been a better clue than “Ghana”, geographically speaking. That would have made sense.
mmm
It was a misunderstanding on my part. I thought that the all-caps words were the answers, not the clues.