Good evening,
Answers with parsing for 1, 3, 4 and 5 would be appreciated.
Many thanks in advance!
Cryptic Connections
In a Cryptic Connections puzzle, five cryptic crossword clues must be solved; their answers can be made from the list of letters given underneath. Once all the clues have been solved, some letters will be unused; these can be arranged to give a word or phrase that links the answers to the five clues.
1 Politician with data about soldiers (5)
2 Some terrible rot spoken about shop (5)
3 Capsule briefly unpleasant for traveller (7)
4 Launch without a perfume (5)
5 Barrow boy perhaps describes American ship (7)
A B C C E E E E E E G G I I L L M N N O O O P R R R R S S S T T T T T
I worked out that we ended up with Bottle as the connection. I think 5 might be Coaster (American ship, and it sounds like Coster, barrow boy). This could be nonsense, of course!
Thanks, Captain2 - much better, ie correct! I had not many letters left, spotted the Bottle and rushed scrambling the rest.
Matakari, I think there could be about 10 years of back prizes - you might have cupboards full of dictionaries and pens and book tokens and... (You don't really enter puzzles where you've solved only 1 clue?)