Fifteensquared

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Archive for December 13th, 2006

Independent 6290/Dac - 2D than the average setter

Posted by neildubya on 13th December 2006

neildubya.

Quality stuff. I can only repeat something a fellow blogger said about Dac, that aspiring setters should study his clues and learn from them. His puzzles aren’t particularly tough and they don’t have any themes or grid gimmicks but his clue-writing is absolutely spot-on.

Across
1 AST(i) in WED - no collusion with the Independent crossword editor was needed to ensure that this clue appeared on the right day as Dac is “Mr Wednesday”.
4 LIGHT SUP(per) - first drink, now fags. Is Dac craving something?
10 (SHE’S MALES)* - the sort of behaviour usually related to getting 1A.
13 ER in (BOW TIE STORE)* - ref to the Wodehouse character. Word-perfect surface reading.
16 LAST CHRISTMAS - which reached number 2 in the singles chart in December 1984, pop pickers. Amazingly, this song has its own entry on Wikipedia, proving once and for all that some people have too much time on their hands.
19 ROVER in P(u)B
22 IN,A,WAR in CHE - what would crossword setters have done if the young Che had decided to continue with his medical studies rather then becoming a Marxist revolutionary and icon?
23 LIARD - hidden. I’d never heard of this. It’s not in the Concise Oxford or the online Chambers but it is in the online Collins so I guess that makes it a little obscure so a hidden clue type is the perfect device here.
25 AT,TEN,D - I liked “at ten” for “mid-morning”. Very neat.
 
Down
2 RE,TRAMS< - not a tough clue by any means but I thought this was very cleverly constructed.
3 I in (SEAS TRUE)*
8 OS in PAD,A - another new word for me. I hesitated with this as I’ve only seen PAD to mean an entire residence rather than just a bedroom. It’s in Collins as a “bed or bedroom” though. Once all the checking letters are in place, and provided you know O(ut)S(ize), it’s fairly straightforward from there.
10 SANDWICH BOARD - cryptic def and nothing to do with North London. Sandwich is, of course, a town in Kent.
15 A,SC,ENDED - something else I didn’t know: SC (scilicet) is Latin for “namely”.
16 O in LENIN,E
17 MO,OR,AGE
18 H in APACE
20 E,PACT - the final new bit of knowledge for me and the last answer I filled in, albeit not confidently. The word refers to the number of days by which the solar year exceeds the lunar year. Not an easy word but the wordplay nudges you in the right direction.

Posted in Independent | 3 Comments »

Guardian 23948/Brendan - The I’s have it!

Posted by loonapick on 13th December 2006

loonapick.

(If I were clever enough, I’d write this entry using only one vowel, but I ain’t, so here goes.)   Solving time - 7 mins

Given the restriction that the setter has imposed upon himself in creating this crossword, it is an excellent effort. He has had to use some rarer words, but that’s fine - a crossword should educate as well as entertain, and Brendan has ensured that the wordplay means that you can make a good guess at a couple of the entries, even if the answer is unfamiliar.

ACROSS

6  IRVING - refers to actor Henry Irving (1838-1905) and to songwriter Irving Berlin (1888-1989)

10 PINCH HIT - PIN CH(H)IT where H = husband.  In baseball, a pinch hitter is a substitute batter.

12 PHILIPPICS - PHILIPPI(C)’S where C = Conservative.  Philippi was the scene of a battle following the assassination of Julius Caesar (Octavian and Mark Antony defeated Brutus), and a philippic is a damning political speech (new word to me!)

13 - MISSISSIPPI - very clever, and very easy

22 - NIHILIST - another clever, but fairly easy clue, especially once you work out the “theme” of the crossword.

24 - DRIFTS - the definition here is imports, and could have been very misleading in a more difficult clue.  Import (as in importance) equates roughly to drift (as in “Get my drift”).  Not quite sure that the two are synonymous.

DOWN

1 - DIVI-DIVI - a tropical shrub that can be guessed at from the rest of the clue.

3 - BRINDISI - anagram of “bird is in” - strange is a very common anagrind, and I wonder if another indicator and leaving out “Mediterranean” might have made the clue a little more challenging.

4 - HIP HIP - not sure how “hip” equals “member” as a member is normally a protruding body part.

7 - GLITCH - G-LITCH(i) where G = good and the incomplete fruit is “litchi”.  Surface doesn’t read very well.

8 - SPLIT SHIFTS - good wordplay

14 - SKI LIFTS - S(KIL(IF)TS) where S = second.  I like second gear for S-KILTS.

Posted in Guardian | 6 Comments »