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jvector

9th May 2019, 12:15
This appeared yesterday Weds 8 May. The crossword was a lot of fun with a musical theme and lots of diversion and misdirection.
I am puzzled by the parsing of one pivotal clue, 13a: the fifteensquared analysis is below.

13 QUARTET Say 4 getting stripped off ‘offensive’? Solutions include each member of such a group with G-strings on (7)

A charade of [s]QUAR[e] (‘say, 4’) minus its outer letters (‘stripped off’) plus TET (‘offensive’ in the Vietnam war). The ‘G-strings’ are the lowest strings of a violin.

Now in the body of the crossword there were four solutions whinch embed the names of four instruments of a string quartet:

limonCELLO, VIOLted, drAMATIc, leSTRADe

... which is really clever. My query is what the final bit about G strings has to do with it, and where the 'definition' is given (if there is one - the "Solutions include..." part of the clue is not really a definition.)

Did anyone else spot something more in this cunning piece of work?

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jvector

9th May 2019, 12:17
oops typo line 10 should say VIOLAted , sorry
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brendan

9th May 2019, 12:49
Hi Jvector,

I think it's just that, among the "Solutions" to the rest of the clues, you will find a QUARTET of instruments (Cello, Viola.....) all of which have "G strings on".
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