{"id":692,"date":"2017-03-21T15:02:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T15:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clueclinic.com\/?p=692"},"modified":"2018-12-12T10:19:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T10:19:06","slug":"rip-colin-dexter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/21\/rip-colin-dexter\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP Colin Dexter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The death of Colin Dexter sadly means the loss of another\u00a0of the brightest lights in\u00a0the clue writing world. He won first prize\u00a0in Ximenes competitions on ten occasions, and lifted the Azed cup a remarkable thirty times. Our recent article Clues from the Woodstock Bus<\/a><\/span> contains a number of fine clues from his fellow competitors, but here are\u00a0a few\u00a0of my favourites\u00a0selected from\u00a0Colin Dexter’s\u00a0less well-known\u00a0competition clues\u00a0 (even after excluding his most famous ones there are still plenty of crackers from which to choose):<\/p>\n

<\/span>I could make Pat start to run? Yes! (7)<\/div>
YAPSTER [=’a dog”; {PAT + R(un) + YES}*, &lit., ref: Postman Pat] – AZ1165<\/div><\/div>\n
<\/span>Tip for effective cure if one\u2019s ill (10)<\/div>
NOURICE-FEE [= ‘a payment for a nurse’; {(E)ffective + CURE IF ONE}*, &lit.] – AZ552<\/div><\/div>\n
<\/span>We\u2019d be out of action if ends of cotton tangled (10)<\/div>
FANTOCCINI [=’marionettes’; {ACTION IF + C(otto)N}*, &lit.] – AZ40<\/div><\/div>\n
<\/span>Having big feet, I\u2019m an upholder of long dresses coming back into fashion (8)<\/div>
MEGAPODE [=’a large-footed bird’; (PAGE< in MODE] – X451<\/div><\/div>\n

…and finally a Printer’s Devilry clue of the highest class:<\/p>\n

<\/span>I ran into a tree first time; examiner expressed hope I\u2019d run into forest (7)<\/div>
MINARET [“…I’d run into form in a retest”]\u00a0– AZ57<\/div><\/div>\n

A\u00a0master cluesmith indeed.<\/p>\n

PS I can’t argue with Azed’s opinion that as a model of succinctness and wit (not to\u00a0mention misdirection\u00a0combined with\u00a0a lovely surface reading), Dexter’s ‘Item gran arranged family slides in?<\/span>‘ for MAGIC LANTERN (AZ1648) is superb, and it must surely rank as one of the finest &lit clues ever written.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These clues and many others by Colin Dexter can be found in the Ximenes\/Azed archives at andlit.org.uk<\/a><\/span>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The death of Colin Dexter sadly means the loss of another of the brightest lights in the clue writing world. He won first prize in Ximenes competitions on ten occasions, and lifted the Azed cup a remarkable thirty times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clueclinic.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}