Posted by ilancaron on 18th November 2006
Done sporadically during a very pleasant afternoon in Geneva mainly drinking wine, eating ice-cream, coffee then dinner. Followed by more drink and cakes. After about 4 glasses of wine, crosswords don’t seem very important.
More than usual share of somewhat convoluted wordplay with somewhat nonsensical surfaces (the two are correlated), e.g. 14A, 25A, 7D. One typo (11A: “farewel”). 20A and 18D were challenging Americanisms that didn’t resonate with me v. quickly. 1A is a familiar Americanism.
Across
| 1 |
H+OB+O – Hobos are American tramps. Old boys are British tramps. |
| 3 |
HUG-(M)E-TIGHT– No one has been described as “tight” probably since pre-war Agatha Christie. A “hug-me-tight” is a fitted jacket – again an Americanism. |
| 11 |
A+DIEU – Double meaning: bye in France and where you go in France once it’s really all over. |
| 14 |
PRAYING MANTIS – Remove “help” from “granny smith apple i” and then anagram. Weakish surface in order to make the complex subtraction + anagram work. |
| 20 |
ELIOT NESS– Not the first law enforcer that occurred to me: only got it because I had mentioned to someone today that they only got Al Capone for tax evasion (I’m in Switzerland so not surprising this topic came up). ELIOT = rev(“toile”). NESS is canonic crossword headland (like “Essen”, our canonic German town, has v. common letters) |
| 25 |
TANK ENGINE – I think I can say that this is Thomas the Tank Engine. Looks like TANK is clued twice as “reservoir” and part of “military machine” |
| 26 |
DON+E – Last one I filled in. I even looked up the play – when of course all I needed was the last letter of Cymbeline. |
Down
| 2 |
BO(y)+LOGNA – BO + anag(“a long”). Another Americanism I think because I don’t think Bologna sausage (pronounced and spelled “baloney” in America) is v. familiar in England. |
| 7 |
GA(IT+ER)S – Not a very sensible surface: IT common abbrev for Italy and ER is the other monarch with the same initials as the queen (the other popular abbrev is GR for the Georges). |
| 17 |
(s)EDITION – Subtraction clue made easier since “conduct inciting rebellion” leads invariably to “sedition”. |
| 18 |
T+ANGELO – Orange and grapefruit. I had to dig in to Wikipedia to uncover Angelo Dundee who was an American boxing handler. |
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Posted by petebiddlecombe on 18th November 2006
Solving time 24:41
This was a nice example of the kind of challenge that has made Araucaria probably the best-loved cryptic setter we have. The theme turns out to be a subset of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and something Sir Roger de Coverley said about them. Includes various examples of the “libertarian” practices that wind up some cryptic crossword purists, but this is one of the times when the fun of the puzzle excuses them.
| Across |
| 1 |
DUST,PAN=immortal. Ref. “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes”. “Brush with destiny” is a stroke of genius. |
| 5,25 |
HANGING,GARDENS (of Babylon) - all the wonders in the puzzle have a vague definition like “Miraculous” - fair enough as otherwise it would all have been over that bit too quickly |
| 10 |
M,Au,SOLE,UM - goldfish = Au,sole is the sort of thing that has strict Ximeneans complaining, but it made quite a nice clue here. Another wonder - the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. |
| 11 |
MO(NO POLIS,A)TION - cornering as “corner the market”, POLIS = slang for police, at first = A. |
| 13 |
AUNT = haunt with dropped H |
| 14 |
IN,HAL(A,N)T - a halt is a minor railway station |
| 17 |
DOORSTOP=rev. of pots,rood |
| 21 |
WA(TERCOLOUR=anag. of Corot rule)IST - Cotman was one |
| 23 |
I’M,MU(NI)SED |
| 26 |
NEEDLES - “fresh water” = Freshwater, IoW - more cheek with word spacing, and no capital F, which is a bit naughty. It seems possible to rework this one so that “Freash water” is the beginning of the clue, which would reduce the Ximenean blood pressure a bit. |
| |
| Down |
| 2 |
SIR JOHN(=”surgeon”),M,OR,TIMER - M=money as in all those things like M1 which economists go on about. Sir John Mortime wrote the books about Rumpole of the Bailey - not sure whether that’s how he got the knighthood though. |
| 3 |
PHAROS - anag. - where the lighthouse was |
| 4 |
NIM,ROD - Nimrod the (Biblical) hunter, as well as a nod to Nimrod the crossword setter and disciple of Araucaria. Nim is the game where the one who takes the last matchstick wins or loses. |
| 5 |
HAU(RIEN)T - uses Fr. haut=high, rien=nothing. “Haurient” seems to mean “sticking head out of water to breathe” if your coat of arms happens to include a fish. |
| 6 |
NEO(PAGA = rev. of a gap)N |
| 7 |
IN,E,VI,TABLES,HALL. “Come mighty Must!/Inevitable Shall!/In thee I trust.” is the beginning of a song in Princess Ida (Gilbert and Sullivan) - or so Google reveals. Fairly easy to work out except for “per” which doesn’t really fit the wordplay. |
| 8 |
GEM,I,NATION |
| 12 |
(p)LAN,DOWNING - Street = Downing is a bit cheeky but it’s a pretty well-known one. |
| 16 |
Co,LOSS,U.S. (of Rhodes) - another wonder clue |
| 19,20 |
LONDON BRIDGE - which Sir R de C said was better than any of the seven wonders, according to Addison in the Spectator. See “XXV. SIR ROGER AT VAUXHALL GARDENS” here. Not a quote I know, but it’s in the ODQ. |
| 22 |
ZEUS - the water here being a certain canal not far from the Great Pyramid - does Araucaria score half a wonder for this too? The last wonder - the statue of him at Olympia. |
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Posted by petebiddlecombe on 18th November 2006
I got confused about who was writing what and wrote stuff on both of last Saturday’s puzzles. So this one is a duplicate… another excuse for putting it up is that I referred to links in it in a comment yesterday.
Solving time 10:23
This little conundrum is a super example of the fun that can be had with a theme. It’s all about COUNTDOWN, whose name belongs in capital letters. I don’t know whether solvers of the syndicated Indy xwd in overseas papers got a different puzzle - if not, they could have been very baffled indeed.
So, Monopoly a couple of weeks ago, now Countdown - what game will we get next? Faites vos jeux …
| Across |
| 1 |
CO(LLI)NS - ref. Michael Collins, an Irish Revolutionary leader, but really it’s this Collins, as 15/2 says. Keep that link if you don’t know it - it’s the most useful free British dictionary on the web. |
| 5/2 |
DESMOND LYNAM - anag. the old smoothie “housewife’s favourite” who was a great pick to take over from the late 29/18. STOP PRESS: The Wikipedia entry on Countdown linked above reveals that he gives way to Des O’Connor just after Christmas. Sorry Des, but I think I prefer Des. |
| 9 |
ANNULUS - Lat. for ring. Looks as if there could be a cheekier(!) clue about another kind of ring… |
| 10 |
CHOCTAW - 2 meanings - nice to see skating terminoloy making a fairly rare appearance |
| 12 |
E,PAULETTE - the mathematical constant e is the base of natural logs. |
| 15/21 |
DICTIONARY CORNER - where Susie is indeed found, along with this week’s celeb guest. Never quite sure how much of the “we found an 8″ is down to the celeb - my guess is that Susie does about 99% of the work. One of those thematic clues that’s just a plain def once the penny has dropped |
| 19 |
TH(REEP=peer rev.)ENCE |
| 22 |
OPIUM WARS - opium often being consumed in dens (so they tell me) |
| 25/8 |
COUNT=noble, DOWNER=depressant, and the clues referred to include a countdown - THREEpence, neTWOrk, balONEy |
| 28 |
RORQUAL = type of whale - hidden word. |
| 29/18 |
RICHARD WHITELEY - the original host, who died in June 2005. |
| 28 |
B(ALONE)Y = times = (multiplied) “by”. Nice bit of cheek. |
| |
| Down |
| 1 |
CHAMBERS - cryptic def. and this, with one from the top row, makes our ‘dictionary corner’. You can search a Chambers dictionary for free on their website, but it’s their “21st Century Dictionary”, not the one used by crossword setters - they have to make money at some point! Web skinflints should probably stick to the Collins one - just trying a couple of odd words from yesterday’s Times, it had oud and restharrow, on which the Chambers site drew a blank. |
| 6 |
SPOO=oops rev.,L=lecturer |
| 7 |
OUT(STAR)ED |
| 16 |
C(UP,MARK)ED - cup marks are seen on Stone Age stones. Slightly desperate entry to let the theme words fit, but that’s easily forgiven. |
| 23 |
MOOL=loom rev.,A - ‘moola’ is yet another slang term for money. My favourite is OOF, because of the wacky derivation - see Chambers |
| 24 |
SCRUB - I think - don’t actually understand this one! |
| 25 |
C,AROL = oral with vowels swapped. Brilliant inclusion of the things she dishes up to the contestants. I wonder whether the setter spent any time trying to get VORDERMAN into the grid? - Carol Vorderman looks like interesting anagram territory. |
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