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Galleon cargo crossword4/9/2023 We attacked them and found ourselves seriously challenged, even though we knew that they had to give us emeralds, iron ware, diamonds, tin trays, cinnamon (that was the tough one CAMO around INN + N), firewood, amethysts, road rails, topazes, pig lead, Tyne coal and moidores (as they did, in that order). ![]() I loved this solve and was mixing a sweet G and T to celebrate when I realized that we hadn’t even glanced at the ‘ Thematic‘ clues. Bier auf Wein, das Lass’ sein’ (First beer, then wine, you’re fine: first wine then beer, oh dear!) Cheers anyway, Hedge-sparrow. around D = SUDS, another slang word for beer, and, of course, I know what coasters are used for! So here’s Hedge-sparrow mixing the wine and beer – and ‘sweet white wine’ from some Ninevehan Quinquereme – worse and worse! There’s a German saying for that isn’t there? ‘Wein auf Bier, das rat’ ich dir. All my initial scan through the clues had produced was ‘Departs, overcome by suspect brewskis (4)’ At first we suspected that the SKIS of BREWSKIS was going to be one of the consecutive jumbles but an urban dictionary told me that BREWSKIS is slang for BEERS, so the clue was probably most appropriate, leading to SUS. Yes, by then we were back-solving as we knew what we were looking for: peacocks, ivory, cedarwood, sandalwood, apes and sweet white wine.ĭid I say ‘Sweet white wine’? That was a lucky find (anagrammed to ‘when we tweet is it’) as Hedge-sparrow had me seriously worried with regard to renewal of his membership of the Listener Setters’ Toping Outfit. When we had worked out the six ‘consecutive jumbles’ from the down clues, we had a third neatly grouped rather exotic cargo for the QUINQUEREME. The solution to ERNE made it clear, too, that we should ignore Masefield’s spelling of AMYTHYSTS.Īfter completing our solve, an hour or so later, I used different colours to highlight the contents of the GALLEON and of the dirty British COASTER as we were delighted to find that those cargoes were grouped. There was a moment’s panic when we saw that Masefield misspelled his ship QUINQUIREME, but, of course the compiler and editors had foreseen that issue and told us that we had to adopt the Chambers spelling of the word we put below the grid. A lucky guess put the GALLEON and COASTER in the right places and we realised what the jumbles we had been highlighting had to lead to. Slotting those evocative words into the unclued lights was great fun and in a few minutes, the grid was full. Good grief!ĭirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,īutting through the Channel in the mad March days,įirewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays. I also came up with the alternative nautical Title: “Salty jib and binnacle?” which might have applied to the galleon at least, based on an anagram of all 58 unchecked letters less “CARGOES”, JOHN MASEFIELD OM, POET LAUREATE. Superbly constructed grid and a really enjoyable puzzle overall – thanks Hedge-sparrow! Easy to check but especially 5d with its unchecked middle letter looks like a possible cell where one might slip up.Įnough of my nonsense. There were at least a couple of words where I paused this week to double-check I had the appropriate definition that matched the wordplay – 5d’s SPIAL vs SPYAL and 23d’s AMEER vs EMEER. It also seems to be confident in its definitions about the numbers of banks of oars in most of them but seems to lose its nerve slightly with quadriremes – have a look for yourself and see if you agree. ![]() Returning to quinqueremes, many of you will know that Chambers features bi-remes, tri-remes and quadri-remes as well but quinque- is as far as it goes. Seeing those lines above gets me wondering if Hedge-sparrow also considered ‘dirty’ as a potential alternative anagram indicator? If ‘British coaster’ was now the anagram fodder then perhaps ‘His Basic Retort’ might have described Masefield’s third verse after the opulence of the first two? There must be better. And with a ship and an Arcadia feel to it too – pretty neat. “Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,īutting through the Channel in the mad March days,…”
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