Alan Connor finds royal baby excitement and tasteful procedures in his pick of the week's best – and most purging – cryptic clues
The news in clues
Today, if you have anything resembling a human heart, you will feel immense pity for the most scrutinised baby in the history of mankind. But spare a thought also for his or great grandmother. When the monarch recently told a schoolchild of her great-grandmother-to-be concerns ("I would very much like it to arrive – I am going on holiday"), someone in the Telegraph setting team was clearly moved enough to reflect her majesty's thoughts in clue form. Friday's puzzle put this to the solver …
21ac Queen at the end of pregnancy will beworrying a great deal (6,7)
… though the answer also took in the other sense of "queen" (an adult female cat, in Collins) for the answer HAVING KITTENS. No suggestion that the royal arrival will be any species other than human was, I am quite certain, intended.
Latter patter
Nowadays, when the dictionaries welcome new words, there is usually a packet of computer-related terms. Most of them are coined by users or relate to social activity: FLASH MOB, DEFRIEND, BASHTAG and so on. The more sly among the setters, though, sometimes use words that have been coined by coders and engineers, which can have letters in unusual places and don't make themselves immediately apparent. So it was with Morph in Thursday's Independent …
25d Politician, say, producing file (4)
… with a plausible surface suggesting Ed Miliband recovering his PMQ notes from a loo but which in fact was looking for the answer MPEG.
It's a term that is not only technical, but also an acronym derived from bureaucracy (Moving Picture Experts Group), which makes it one of those lovely words that don't come to mind when you're trying to make something trip off your tongue. If you know a word goes M_E_ and you're running through the options for the second letter, P is not going to be your first choice.
At least MPEG is pronounced in a way that everyone can agree is sensible: "emm-pegg". You can't say the same even for gif, not since the creator of that image format, Steven Wilhite, tried to claim that if he invented it, he can tell us how to say it, and that how to say it is "jiff". Happily, language doesn't work that way and the gif remains a "giff" in the mouths of everyone except Mr Wilhite and his votaries.
Other computing terms have competing pronunciations: "oh ess ex" versus "oh ess ten", say, and "lee nooks" versus "line uks". Which brings us to this week's challenge, the second terse technical term in a row. Reader, how would you clue MYSQL? (And for those of you who use the wonderful open-source database, do you prefer "my sequel" or "my ess queue ell"?)
Clueing competition
Thanks for your clues for XBOX. For such a short answer, there were some cheeringly detailed surfaces.
Yungylek evoked election night in America with "Used to play on a screen in Times Square" while Journeyman7 sounded exhortative in "Cross! Attack! This isn't a game boy!" and MaleficOpus conjured a chilling image of a puzzleless Thunderer in "Times Crossword cut – wrong result from billionaire's company".
This week's "that's really pushing it" device is from Baskingturtle, using "Mwah! Mwah!" for "kiss on both cheeks" in the words of an actor's insufficiently supportive relative: "Fantastic play there! Except the middle bit. Bravo! Mwah! Mwah!"
The runners-up are JollySwagman's snappy, jukeboxy "Used to play Kiss hit" and Ambush's touching "Console old boy, upset between kisses"; the winner is steveran's devious and Brief Encounter-esque "Play takes place on this platform, as kiss is planted next to buffet".
Kudos to Steve – please leave this week's entries and your pick of the broadsheet cryptics below.
Clue of the week
I've seen some lurid, all-too-visual clues for a certain five-letter word in my time, so when Bonxie went all highbrow…
7d René Magritte'sbehind purge (5)
… with a hidden answer of ENEMA, the effect was refreshing. Cleansing, even.