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The Hindu Cryptic #13291 | Arden | 18 Across & 19 Down
Clue explained:
Channel essentially a 19 (4) CLUES:
Tops with Irish cream in coffee, they say it’s great (7)
: letter-pick, clue crossreferencing, insertion, cryptic definition, homophone Clue types
: 19 (Lattice); they say it’s great Definitions
: & AnswersRILL LATTICE
In 19 Down, we are looking for a 7-letter word that means ‘they say it’s great’.
‘They say’ is a homophone indicator — a homophone of ‘great’ is grate. So, our definition is actually ‘grate’.
‘Tops’ is a letter-pick indicator that tells us to select the first letters of ‘Irish’ and ‘cream’ — these are I and C.
A kind of coffee is LATTE.
‘In’ is an insertion indicator telling us that I and C go inside LATTE.
Altogether, that spells LATTICE, which is another word for ‘grate’!
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In 18 Across, we are looking for a 4-letter word.
Now that we have worked out the answer for 19 Down to be LATTICE, we find a synonym for it, which could be GRILLE.
‘Essentially’ is a letter-pick indicator that means for us to select all but the outermost letters of GRILLE. They are RILL.
And a RILL is our 4-letter answer meaning a kind of meandering latticework-like ‘channel’ or stream that snakes around through furrows in rocks or mountains!
