Guardian 23941/Brummie
Posted by Colin Blackburn on 5th December 2006
Around 20 minutes. A fairly straightforward puzzle for me with a few long anagrams providing a good start and very fair clues.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | SINGLE FIGURES — This got me for a while as I looked for (CD’s sales stats)* before accepting the paucity of vowels would make an awkward anagram. In the end it is a double definition with the second being slightly joking. I’m still firmly rooted in the era when a single was made out of vinyl. |
| 11 | ADIEU — Adie + (f)u(n) — Kate Adie has recently retired as a TV journalist. The definition, ’so long’, is nicely deceptive in the surface reading. |
| 21 | WRYNECKED — (Deny wreck)* — I knew the bird, the wryneck, and so saw this straight away although I didn’t realise that the bird’s name was derived from its habit of twisting its head around when surprised. |
| 23 | MOTET — Mo(t)et — Some people consider Moet to be the first word in champagne, I’ll stick to a decent Cava. |
| 25 | BARNSTORM — bar+ns+to+r(oo)m — Poles here is the classic N+S but plays nicely with rod, though I’m not sure what the performance is of exactly. |
| 26 | DOUBLE-JOINTED — double+joint+ed — the crosswordese of journalist = ed(itor) often crops up when a past tense or adjective like this is required. |
| Down | |
| 3 | GRIMM — grim+m — The brothers are the writers of many a disturbing fairy story. |
| 4 | EDENTAL — Eden+tal(e) — This one came very quickly as I had come across edentate recently in another puzzle. Eden was a British PM. |
| 5 | IN SHORT — in short(s) — This clue would work a little better in the summer when I might be in shorts for cycling! The rambler isn’t a walker but someone who goes on a bit and so is unlikely to start a sentence with, “In short, …” |
| 7 | EXIST — (s)exist — The trick here is that the definition is simply ‘Be’. |
| 8 | TRIPLE-CROWNED — (world recepti(o)n)* — Apparently the Pope’s tiara (that’s what it says in Chambers) has three crowns. |
| 9 | QUADRUPLE TIME — (requiem Dal put)* — I had the T of the second word and immediately penned in TERM, reading March as a month rather than a musical form. |
| 19 | LIKABLE — li(c)kable |
| 22 | YOBBO — o+b+boy (rev) — Rough here is a rather old-fashioned noun, it’ll usually mean yob, ted, lout, etc. Stammering can lead to two forms: b-boy = LLAD (where the first letter of the defined term is repeated) or b-boy = BLAD where the first letter of the definition is kept. In the current clue no further indirection is necessary as b-boy = BBOY |
| 23 | MASON — ma(so)n — I wrote the answer in straight away but saw ‘as’ from the clue going into mon (which made no sense.) In fact as = so. |
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