Posted by Colin Blackburn on 6th December 2006
Solving time : 20 minutes
A good quality puzzle, as usual, from Dac. The puzzle had what felt like a preponderance of proper names in the answers, the wordplay and a few clues: artists, musicians, places…
| Across |
| 9 |
DWELLER — d+Weller — Paul Weller was the singer in The Jam. Dac must be about the same age as me! |
| 10 |
NASTIER — (retsina)* — If you play Scrabble then retsina is a good rack to aim to have as it anagrams nicely with lots of other letters. |
| 13 |
OPAQUE — op+a que— I haven’t checked the French here but I assume that’s = a que |
| 18 |
LEFTIE — l(e+FT)ie — FT is Financial Times, this clue got me for a while as I read socialist (red, Che, etc.) as part of the word play. |
| 23 |
EXAMINE — Ex(a min(k))e — I have assumed the animal is a mink, I don’t think there are any others. |
| 25 |
LAKES — (B)lakes — Nice surface using Wordsworth to give the Lakes (the Lake District) and tie with poet. |
| 26 |
NOTORIOUS — A Hitchcock film. Not a great double definition but then not a great word to have to clue either. |
|
| Down |
| 1 |
BADE — Bade(r) — Douglas Bader. |
| 2 |
SMETANA — s(met)ana — From The Jam to Smetana, Dac seems very well-listened |
| 3 |
MULTITUDE OF SINS — A very nice cryptic definition. |
| 4 |
TARZAN — “tas”+an |
| 5 |
LANDSEER — English artist specialising in animals, the lions in Trafalgar Square are his. |
| 8 |
PARIS GREEN — paris(h) green — I’ve not heard of the stuff but the word play is straightforward. |
| 12 |
MOTHERWELL — A Scottish town and a possible positive answer to a question about one’s mum. |
| 15 |
FRAULEIN — I thought this the weakest clue of the puzzle, a fairly obvious cryptic definition. |
| 19 |
TIEPOLO — tie+polo — Another artist. |
Posted in Independent | 3 Comments »
Posted by rightback on 6th December 2006
Solving time: 20 mins (1 missing)
I found the bottom left half harder than the top right, but had almost finished after 10 mins. I then spent another 10 trying unsuccessfully to make something of 7dn. This puzzle requires a switch into ‘Guardian mode’, which means expecting spurious link words (e.g. ‘of’ in 13ac and 16ac, ‘put down’ in 21ac), incomplete definitions (e.g. ‘on the Tyne’ for ‘town on the Tyne’ at 1ac, ‘in Italy’ for ‘city in Italy’ at 20ac, ‘on bicycle’ for ‘thing on bicycle’ at 10ac, ‘Chaucer’ for ‘work by Chaucer’ at 7d) and tense anomalies (’didn’t’ in the clue to 20ac, ‘LIED OWN’ for ‘admit to fiction’ at 23ac), and accepting clues with no plausible surface meaning (e.g. 9/14ac, 16ac, 23ac, 25ac, 5dn, 8dn).
* = anagram.
| Across |
| 1 |
HALTWHISTLE - a town on the Tyne. I don’t think this clue makes sense - a referee could let play continue by not blowing his whistle, but not by ‘halting’ it once he’d started. Luckily this place name rang a vague bell or I would probably have entered ‘Holdwhistle’, which would at least satisfy the wordplay. |
| 9,14 |
AD + MIR (= station in space) + ALOFT + HE + FLEET (= Fleet Prison) - appointments to this rank, equivalent to Field Marshal and Marshal of the Royal Air Force, have now ceased. Fleet Prison was new to me but I solved this from the enumeration and ‘officer’. |
| 11 |
DES + DEMON + A - Desdemona was murdered by Othello. |
| 12 |
“ROCHE“ |
| 16 |
ULT[imo] (last month) around A (the first), all inside REGION - but what on earth does the surface (“Last month, about the first, in area of law” (10)) mean? |
| 20 |
TURIN - Alan Turing is probably the most famous of the Bletchley codebreakers during World War II and helped to break the codes used by the German Enigma machines. |
| 21 |
T + ROUSSEAU - I think this refers to Jean-Jacques the philosopher and Thèodore the painter. |
| 23 |
LIED + OWN (admit) (?) - the clue to this is “Admit to fiction one won’t when dead?” (3, 4). I can’t satisfactorily explain the definition or wordplay - surely you would lie down if dead? |
| 24 |
DERONDA (hidden) - this must refer to Daniel Deronda, a novel by George Eliot (new to me), but as far as I can see there is nothing in the clue (“Name for one to embroider on Daniel’s shirt” (7)) to indicate that the answer is hidden. |
| 25 |
S(E + ARCH)LIGHT - but how could a ’spanner… seek discoveries’? |
| Down |
| 1 |
HARDENS around (DOME SNAG)* - this week’s guest publication. A good clue, alluding to the Millennium Dome (though perhaps ‘dome’ in the clue should have a capital?). |
| 2 |
LARGE[sse] |
| 3 |
WALD (German for ‘wood’) + OR + F - the famous hotel in New York City, home of the salad of the same name. The bracketing in the clue is another Guardianism: for the cryptic reading to work properly, they should close after ‘German’. |
| 5 |
TEN (number) + E + RIFE (in numbers) - ‘Canary’ meaning ‘Canary Island’. |
| 6 |
(HAZLITT BEEN BEEN)* - Lizzy from Pride and Prejudice. |
| 7 |
I think the answer to this must be ‘Pardoner’s Tale‘, which is not the title of Chaucer’s ‘The Pardoner’s Tale’. The clue is “Chaucer’s friend discussing Queen’s old hat” (9, 4). With ‘-A-D-N-R- T-L-’, I tried to find a seven-letter word -A-DING meaning ‘discussing’ to which I could add R (Queen) + O (old) + TILE (hat), but to no avail. The best explanation I can come up with is PARD (= ‘pardner’ = friend?) + ON (discussing) + ER (Queen) + STALE (old hat), with ‘Chaucer(’s)’ (unsatisfactorily) meaning ‘a work by Chaucer’. |
| 8 |
ARCH + HIT + EC (city) + T (the first) + URAL |
| 15 |
COR inside (ANGEL)* - I didn’t know this name but guessed it correctly: Lady Glencora appears in Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels. |
| 18 |
O + VOID + A + L |
| 22 |
SH (silence) + RUG (warmer) |
Posted in Guardian | 10 Comments »