Cryptic Crosswords – Solving hints #8

Well, you’re either hooked on cryptics by now or bored rigid by this series.  For those of you still interested, here are another 3 clues explained.

Clue      Produced for some special event, story about black piece of furniture. (10,5)

As with most clues, but not all, this is in 2 parts.  Don’t take any notice of the punctuation when you are trying to decide what the 2 parts are.  For me, the words “story about black” helped me to decide.  “About” can mean the abbreviation “c” but can also mean a word outside a letter.  Here b stands for black and if you put a word for story around it – like “tale” you get “table” which fits with being a piece of furniture.  So the second word in the answer is “table”.  So I then tried to think of a type of furniture that would also have something to do with the first half of the clue and came up with …. “occasional”.

Clue – Ten jerks in the Spanish bar (5)

“Ten” often means the Roman numeral X.  “The Spanish” will normally refer to “el”.  So x + something meaning jerks will be in “el”.  “Ex..l” –and that word will mean “bar”.  “PE” is an abbreviation for exercise which can also be called “jerks”.  This is an example of where a clue will contain a word that has more than one meaning.  You need to look for second meanings because often the less common one will be the one you need.  Thinking about “expel” which is the solution, it can also mean “bar” in the sense of “bar from”.


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Now for an easy one:

Mount out of Newmarket – nap (4)

The answer is the name of a mountain which can be found within the second part of the clue – often between 2 words.  Here, ignoring punctuation we find “etna” which is the name of a famous volcano.