The Guardian cryptic crossword community appear to have found today’s offering fairly tricky. What do you make of 1 Across?
How do we get from ‘benign’ to BENIN (the answer).
As you may have spotted, the two words are only one letter apart, and the definition of ‘benign’ is contained within the clue (‘doing no harm’). The trick is also noticing that ‘deposing government’ is a call to get rid of the letter ‘g’. And with that, you have Benin — a country and the solution to the clue.
As we saw last week in The Spectator, words often represent single letters. Becoming familiar with these cryptic characteristics will make solving them so much easier. Here are some more tips.