Cryptic Crosswords – Solving hints #3

So today I’ll show you one easy and one difficult clue.  First the easy one – well I thought it was easy but maybe my mind is warped…:

Go on a pub crawl, to get rid of the blues? (5,3,4,3)

The use of the question mark is a warning that the clue isn’t a simple 2 parter.  The solution is “paint the town red”.  So you get rid of the colour blue and might go on a pub crawl when you paint the town red.  So while a bit convoluted, there can be no doubt that this is the right answer.

Now for the more exotic one:

US author may, reportedly (9)

This one stumped me for quite a while and I only got an inkling when I had a few letters filled in from other clues.  Again it is in 2 parts, the first part is “US author” – so the solution will be the name of an US author.  The second part is a bit cute.  “Reportedly” will often indicate that the word will sound similar to something that means “may” but will not be spelled the same.

The solution is “Hawthorne”.  He is an US author and another meaning for “may” is hawthorn.


Click here for the next post in the series.

Links to previous posts on this:
http://caroleschatter.blogspot.com/2012/01/cryptic-crosswords-solving-hints-2.html

http://caroleschatter.blogspot.com/2012/01/cryptic-crosswords-solving-hints-1.html