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Archive for December 11th, 2006

Independent 6288/Mordred - Fishy

Posted by rightback on 11th December 2006

rightback.

Solving time: 12:37, held up by two pairs at the end; one mistake (1dn), or perhaps two (19dn).

I think this is Mordred’s second puzzle in the Independent. Like his first, this contained lots of pretty modern references and a couple of things that overseas solvers might have struggled with. Lots of the clues contained very complex wordplay, and in several cases I wrote in the answer from the definition and had to work out the wordplay after finishing the puzzle.

The two pairs that held me up were 19dn/27ac and 12ac/1d. I’m surprised at the difficulty of part of the wordplay to 1dn (and not surprised that I got a 50/50 guess wrong, as usual), and I’m still not sure of the correct answer to 19dn.

Beginners’ tips of the day: ‘obstruction’ = LET, ‘each’ = EA, ‘pong’ = BO (body odour) (or HUM).

* = anagram.

Across
1 BASIL + ICA - Basil is Mr Fawlty in the incomparable British sitcom. I think the ICA is the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London.
5 PLAN(C)K - Max, the quantum physicist whose constant h appears from time to time.
9 NEWSGIRL - somewhere between a cryptic definition (punning on ‘latest’) and a double definition; ‘child’ seems a bit isolated at the end of the clue.
12 (GIRTH)* inside TOPE - apparently a tightrope can mean figuratively a ‘middle course between dangerous or undesirable alternatives’. I didn’t know this, or the fish TOPE (which is a type of shark) so this was a bit of a guess, but the anagram part was fairly clear so I had -IGHTRO-E, meaning that ‘pope’ didn’t look realistic for the fish (and neither does ’sole’ which didn’t occur to me).
13 LOT (prize won) + TO (at) - TO for ‘at’ is standard in (e.g.) The Listener but much rarer in the dailies.
14 WITCHING HOUR - cryptic definition.
18 (UP IN MALI CITY)*
21 EA (each) inside IBM - an I-beam is another word for the I-shaped cursor that appears on your computer screen.
22 BU(L + LIE)N[g] inside E.T. - complicated wordplay, though the individual elements are mostly standard fare; ‘backhander’ = BUNG is a bit harder. I was lucky to spot this from the definition and the initial ‘E’.
24 (TRAGE[d]Y)* - I think ‘D’ is ‘an earlier piece’ in the sense of an old British penny (standing for the Latin denarius).
25 B + T (middle letter of ‘captain’) inside (BESIDE)*.
26 EXUL[t]ED reversed - easy definition (especially with the enumeration and crossing ‘X’), very difficult wordplay that I worked out only after stopping the clock. ‘Crew’ is the past tense of the verb ‘to crow’, meaning to gloat or exult; ’screening’ here means ‘hiding’, though it could also mean ‘going around’ in the sense of protecting.
27 TRIP (dance) + LETS - this was one that held me up, though the wording ‘birthday’s joint’ instead of ‘birthday joint’ should have been a clue. I don’t really understand what ‘dogs’ is doing in the clue: it can be slang for ‘feet’ but I’m not sure what that adds. [Nonsense - see comments. Thanks to Peter B.]
Down
1 B.O. (pong) + NIT (egg) + O (= of, as in ‘o’clock’) - in my second display of piscatorial ignorance I’d not heard of the bonito (a Spanish word). I’m sure I’ve never seen ‘of’ indicate O in a daily crossword before, and I didn’t think this would be allowed, so decided that the definition must be ‘of big fish’ and that the answer must be an adjective, so went for ‘bonite’ in the hope that ‘nite’ was another word for ‘nit’. It isn’t.
3 [f]LIGHT - a flight is a division of an RAF squadron. F is to ‘fighter plane’ as ‘B’ is to ‘bomber’. The deceptive definition is ‘Perhaps pilot’, as in ‘pilot light’.
4 CARBON (diamond) + COP(I.E.)S
6 LIME + LIGHT (falling short) - Harry Lime seems to be a character from Graham Greene’s The Third Man. It didn’t really matter to me as I hadn’t heard of him anyway, but ‘Harry’ for LIME seems very, perhaps unfairly, vague.
8 KEY (basic) + BOARD - a ‘deal’ is ‘a fir or pine board of a standard size’.
15 IN + CO + MET + A + X (variable) - again, straightforward definition with a complex wordplay, though none of these individual elements are difficult.
16 [l]IMPING + ED (last letters of ’strode ahead’) - ‘game’ = ‘lame’ = ‘limping’ is hard, especially given the number of possibilities for sporting games. I think the word is connected to ‘gammy’.
19 MEDDLE - or is it PEDDLE? I think this clue is a double definition, with the former being better for ‘have a finger in the pie’, and the latter closer to ‘trifle’. Either way, the definitions are more or less the same root wood so this is not satisfactory. More likely is that there is some wordplay, or perhaps a better third alternative, that I am missing.
20 STASIS - double definition, the second meaning ‘cessation, arrest esp of growth’ or ‘a state of equilibrium’.
23 LET (obstruction) + UP (on the line to London) - why do people say ‘up’ to London? I always go ‘down’ from oop North, but maybe I’m just not a city slicker.

Posted in Independent | 5 Comments »

Guardian 23946/Rufus – silly goose

Posted by ilancaron on 11th December 2006

ilancaron.

Standard fair Rufus. A couple of containment issues below. Curious what people think about their soundness.

Across

10 (victo)R+OUGH – Last letter of Victor followed by (Hugo)*. “Poorly” is the definition
11 NEED(L)ED – The syntax “containment-indicator X Y” to indicate that Y contains X is a little forced to me. But “outside left” was nicely misleading for those of us who remember when soccer was played 2-3-5!
12 AT STAKE – nice double meaning with two quite different senses of AT STAKE: being tied up, about to be burnt and placing a bet.
13 YAL+T.A. – rev(lay=set) with “back” as reversal indicator. The Territorial Army is often pressed into service as volunteers in crypticland.
16 NOT MUCH TO LOOK AT – clever double definition of the ugliness of latter-day TV.
21 SERVE – cryptic definition of what gets a tennis game going on court.
22 S(URN)AME – Another somewhat awkward containment clue: “X Y containment-indicator” meaning “Y contains X” – don’t much like this especially since “outline” is a noun and is a bit too cryptic to indicate containment for me.
24 GEESE – must be a double definition but I feel like a silly goose myself at the moment because I don’t see the other meaning (“but capital savers”).
25 CONSTANCE – double meaning: Lake Constance is large Swiss-German lake and a woman’s name. I really wanted the answer to be Windermere but I ran out of space.

Down

1 GRANNY KNOT – Not a bad clue: whole thing is an ineffective knot thus doesn’t “really make fast” and the charade of “relative” (GRANNY) and “speed” (KNOT) is quite surprising.
5 ESCALATORS – (Seats Carol)* but the definition itself is a bit cryptic “nonstop flights”. Probably should have had a question-mark.
6 PROSPER+O – The clue has a rare Graudian typo: Shakespearian which should be Shakespearean. But maybe they’re both acceptable?
8 SH(O)E – not a bad clue: “pump” is the definition: it’s a bit hard separating it from “oxygen”.
14 AB+HORREN+CE – Canonic sailor (AB) followed by (Horner)* and canonic church (CE in England).
15 TITLE PAGES – Good clue: last one I filled in. But since the definition is a bit cryptic (“start work”) I’d have expected a perhaps or a question-mark, perhaps.
17 UNA+BATED – UNA is a frequent female visitor to the Land of Rufus.
21 SON+AT+A – rev(nos=numbers) followed by AT+A. But isn’t a SONATA a piece of music rather than a performance?
22 SAG+O – rev(gas) followed by O for “ring”. “It” is the answer.
23 AC+NE – AC is abbrev(account=bill) followed by NE for “born”. And since Bill’s a boy we use the French masculine form. To be honest though I think only the feminine form has been absorbed into English.

Posted in Guardian | 10 Comments »