Cryptic food and drink

Wyshiepoo said:
I read somewhere that duck was short for duck egg. But that seems a bit of a stretch to me.
Click to expand...

Not made up by me - its just a long standing convention of UK cryptic crosswords. They used to be set by cricket loving men, I think. In cryptic crosswords there is a host of clues for single letters see Cracking Crosswords: Abbreviations
 
My most successful effort at writing a clue for the Azed competition crossword was cricket related. The answer was the very short word 'lob' and this was my clue.

Pollock gets extra over in.

I won't put an explanation. Not yet, anyway.
 
Morning Glory said:
Not made up by me - its just a long standing convention of UK cryptic crosswords. They used to be set by cricket loving men, I think. In cryptic crosswords there is a host of clues for single letters see Cracking Crosswords: Abbreviations
Click to expand...

Yep, get that.

You were saying that you couldn't remember why a duck was a duck in cricket.
What I'd read was that a duck's egg was sorta shaped like a 0. Therefore anyone out for 0 was out for a duck's egg.

Duck's egg got shortened to duck.
 
Morning Glory said:
Thanks.

Now this 'lob' clue - I presume its something to do with the cricketer/commentator Pollock. I also presume it has reference to some cricketing term I don't know.
Click to expand...
Yes, there have been three South African cricketers called Pollock, all related. The brothers Graeme and Peter, plus the latter's son Shaun. The last two were fast bowlers, so that's where the reference applies.

Lob is another name for the fish known as the pollock or pollack.

It's just "o" inside "lb". These (noted on that list) are cricketing abbreviations for over and leg-bye. A leg-bye is an extra, hence "gets extra over in."

So it's just a mix of wordplay suggestive of cricket, although the answer is to a different definition of the word pollock.

Having said that, there used to be such a thing as "lob bowling" in the early days of cricket, but that's just a kind of amusing aside to it all...
 
Duck59 said:
It's just "o" inside "lb". These (noted on that list) are cricketing abbreviations for over and leg-bye. A leg-bye is an extra, hence "gets extra over in."
Click to expand...

Quite ingenious! I should have known that lob is another word for pollock - but I've never come across it. The only lob I know in cooking is lobscouse which is not a fish dish.
 
Obviously nobody is solving this clue.

Here is a clue - with cryptic clues you need to find the definition. That will tell you what type of thing you are looking for in the answer. Put it this way, the definition in the clue isn't 'sheep', 'head' or 'oven'. Once you know what you are looking for you should be able to solve this simple anagram.

Here is the clue again:

Sheep's head in oven - naughty game! (7)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom