This is my first diary and my first entry in what I hope will become a growing and vibrant series of Sunday puzzles, with multiple entries each Sunday. More cryptics, of course, but also trivia, math, other types of word puzzles, spot the differences — anything someone in the community wants to share.
The clues below all follow the standard American rules for cryptic clues as I understand them, with perhaps a tiny bit of fudging in a few places.
The first three clues are easy. I include them to provide a good starting place for any newbies who may be trying to learn cryptics, as well as to give a quick ego boost (“I got that one in 20 seconds!”) for experienced solvers. Most of the rest range in difficulty from fairly easy to about average. The last two are a little harder.
Clue 11 is an easy clue of its type, but I would rate it above average in difficulty because it is a rarely used type of clue which I learned about only recently. I don’t think I would have been able to solve any clues of this type if I hadn’t read an explanation first, though I probably could have gotten an inkling of how these clues work by flailing at a few and then reading the answers. You may be way ahead of me, in which case this clue will be a snap. If not, you will get to try a new type of clue.
Clue 12, on the other hand, is a common, familiar type of clue, but it has other aspects that make it a little tricky. I like it a lot. (The answer is not exactly an obscure word, but nowadays it is probably used mostly in legal pleadings or other formal writing. I am a former lawyer, so it seems like a common word to me.)
1. Warning! That is not frozen water. (6)
2. I say, Lynne, would that be one of the lawyers who promoted Trump’s Big Lie? (Words in the answer are capitalized.) (3, 4).
3. Oil cartel scrambled to deal with the situation. (4)
4. Professional athlete appears in a PSA about catastrophic flooding in Texas, along with someone like Einstein or Stephen Hawking, a space scientist. (14)
5. Speak out, in turn, to get a new doctor. (6)
6. Name the volatile gas. (7)
7. Drawback to Guardian’s charge. (4)
8. You will see, in the segment which airs tomorrow, the responses of all the relevant heads of Congressional committees. (6)
9. Pummels players on the home team in the bottom of an inning. (7)
10. Endless economic downturn produced swath of overcrowded, dilapidated housing. (4)
11. Imps are all you need to build a state. (Answer is capitalized.) (11)
12. Hear, hear: “Two plus two squared” is a reference to what came before. (10)
I will try to post the answers, with detailed explanations, by the end of the day. You can post comments, questions, requests for hints, proposed answers, or your own cryptic clues below. However, if you have more than a few clues to share, I think it would be best for you to post a separate new diary, with the headline “Sunday puzzle 02/06/2022: cryptic clues 2” (or 3 or 4 . . .) so that we don’t get mixed up about whose clues a comment is referring to. And please, if you post a proposed answer, preface your comment with “SPOILER ALERT.”
Thanks for reading. Have fun!