Posted by ilancaron on 30th December 2006
This was last week’s Christmas Eve puzzle so not surprisingly another seasonal theme but not cloyingly so: some toboggans, crackers, a carol, a miracle, a portent and bit too much drinking. WHITE CHRISTMAS (11A) is clued quite well. A couple of new words (LOLLOP and DIABOLO)…
Across
| 1 |
TOBOGGANS – (bags on got)* |
| 6 |
VIR[a]GO – VIRGO’s a sign of the Zodiac and a virago is a shrew (not sure what the male equivalent is… any female readers here to let us know?) |
| 9 |
POR(TEN)T |
| 10 |
M(I+R)ACLE – Xmas-themed (“camel”, “king”, “amazing event” which is presumably the nativity). I do wonder about using “flea-bitten” as an anagrind. |
| 11 |
WHITE CH(eck)+(is smart)* – WHITE is a “chess player” and WHITE CHRISTMAS is a “standard” tune indeed. Personally I like the irony of it being written by Irving Berlin in WWII. The wordplay is surprising and misleads quite nicely. |
| 13 |
LOLL+OP – New word for me: LOLLOP means to “lounge”. According to Encarta, a Britishism to boot. Even though the clue “Hang work in lounge” reads as an insertion, it’s just a charade. |
| 14 |
CRACKERS – Xmas-themed: partial double definition and cryptic definition: the kind of clue that depends on knowing (or working out – probably not very hard) the theme (or what day it was published) since it refers explicitly to “tomorrow” (Xmas day). |
| 23 |
UNA+WAR+E – And our girl-friend UNA makes another guest appearance. |
| 24 |
DIABOLO – Cryptic definition of a game with a top-like wooden thingy. Didn’t know this and had to wikitrawl. Hard clue to crack: no wordplay, so I struggled, even given D?A?O?O. |
| 25 |
KE(R.R.)Y – Non-protestant Bishops are Right Reverends. Irish counties are shorter and pithier than their English cousins. |
Down
| 1 |
TOPE – Hidden in “LighT OPEra”. I suppose Xmas-related assuming one does more than one’s fair share over the holidays. |
| 2 |
BARTHOLOMEW F+AIR – Along with “Volpone” and “The Alchemist” a “play” by Ben Jonson — somehow I knew this. Also Bart was one of Jesus’s twelve. |
| 3 |
GREAT+COAT – For some reason I always associate GREATCOATs with The Great War. |
| 5 |
SOMBRE+R+O – Pretty sure I’ve seen a similarly themed clue in the past, but I think the surface works quite well here due to the surprising parsing: “dark” is SOMBRE and piece of ribbon” is R and “round” reads as around (containment) but it isn’t. |
| 6 |
V+IR+US – Last clue for me: V[ide] for “see” escaped me for some time. |
| 8 |
OPEN SESAME – Nice way to charade each word (“tournament” and kind of “seeds”.). |
| 12 |
B(L+I+N.D. +DR)UNK – If you know your Beatles and Rocky Raccoon then this clue makes perfect sense. |
| 15 |
CHIP+(a lot)*+A – I recognized CHIPOLATA as a sausage only once the wordplay fell into place. |
| 16 |
HE+ATHENS – “Extremely” to indicate the two extreme letters of “HostilE” again. |
| 19 |
TENDER – double meaning with different etymologies which is always a good thing. |
| 21 |
I+TA(L)Y – Nice that ITALY is (almost) a Latin country. Three-letter rivers worth knowing: Exe, Cam, Dee, Ure and TAY… |
| 22 |
G+OLD – Xmas-theme: one of the gifts from the 3 wise men (along with frankincense and myrrh). |
Posted in Everyman | No Comments »
Posted by petebiddlecombe on 30th December 2006
Solving time 33:50
It’s good to be writing our first posting about a kind of puzzle I’ve looked forward to ever since I started solving cryptic crosswords. Back in the late 1970s, when there was no Independent magazine or Enigmatic Variations as an alternative to the Listener (which I wasn’t ready for anyway), Guardian Bank Holiday puzzles were a big event. One of my oldest solving memories is of a weekend with some family friends. The father, a maths lecturer at Brunel, had the puzzle on a clipboard which was passed around, and we chipped away at one of those double-grid puzzles. I miss those, and would rather see their return than the jigsaw/perimeter quote gimmick that’s been the norm recently.
This was a fairly easy example, maybe too easy - I spotted the exact theme (characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream) when MOTH and COBWEB looked like possible answers at 41 and 42, and “stage set” in the preamble made it fairly transparent. (Always assuming you had a preamble - the paper version did, but yet again the Guardian’s crossword website left it out until they patched it up. You would think by now that they’d be able to get this stuff right.) There are arguably more characters in MND, but these are the ones in Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within a play, who are played by other characters. And if you’re wondering about Philostrate at 16, he (or maybe she?) appears in the “additional passages” at the end of the play in my complete Shakespeare, though not in the Dramatis Personae.
There are various things I could quibble about in the clues, but I’m not going to mention them in detail. And I’m keeping my Shakespeare handy just in case he does the same with Twelfth Night for the New Year puzzle.
| Across |
| 1 |
R(O,SEB)UGS |
| 14 |
TON,SURE |
| 15 |
THE S.E. U.S. |
| 16 |
PHI,LOST,RATE |
| 17 |
Hippoly,T.A. Outrageous fun like Large beastly = Hippoly is the good side of Araucarian unorthodoxy. |
| 18 |
(p)ORGY |
| 21 |
(pyr)AMID |
| 25 |
(F)LUTE - flute and lute both being instruments. I’m sure others pondered PIANO. |
| 29 |
STAR(VE(nom))LING |
| 34 |
GRIDIRON - on which St Lawrence was famously(?) martyred. |
| 37 |
C.(ORG(y))I. |
| 41 |
MOT,H Mot =Fr. for word, as in “bon mot”. |
| 42 |
COB,WEB - Cob nut = hazelnut |
| 47 |
DEMETRIUS - anag. |
| 49 |
TH(REES)EATER - Martin Rees is the current Astronomer Royal, it turns out. |
| 51 |
TIT,(m)ANIA |
| 51 |
AT(a)LANTA |
| |
| Down |
| 1 |
RUST(ic),P,ROOF |
| 4 |
GO TO THE WALL - ref. the play within a play, where Pyramus and Thisbe are on opposite sides of a wall, which is played by one of the mechanicals. That’s what I remember, anyway. |
| 6 |
EX-UBER-ANT - I’m sure another Guardian setter has used this one |
| 7 |
ST.,ETHOS,COPE |
| 8 |
BATH PLUG - ref. the expression about the baby and the bathwater, though as it involves throwing, I don’t think a plug was involved. |
| 12 |
UN(H)ARMED |
| 22 |
MONS (WW1 battle),TER(ror) ref. “My mistress with a monster is in love” - said by Puck about Titania and Bottom |
| 23 |
SER(VAN)T - as Puck was to Oberon |
| 24 |
B(UL(t))LOCK |
| 29 |
SE(L)LBY,DATES |
| 30 |
NOR THIS LAND |
| 32 |
CON(FED)E,RACY |
| 35 |
DE(C)ATH,LON(don) |
| 36 |
RO,BOR,ANT = a strengthener, presumably from same ultimate root as “robust” |
| 38 |
INKER(man),ASER=ears* - Inkerman was a Crimean war battle |
| 39 |
DO(MI=I’m<=)NATE |
| 46 |
HELENA (Montana) |
| 48 |
MITRE - 2 mngs - at least the second clue I’ve seen recently where the Bishop of Southwark might be grateful for the longish “lead times” for crosswords. |
Posted in Guardian | 6 Comments »
Posted by neildubya on 30th December 2006
Slightly trickier than usual offering from Phi, with an appropriate mini-theme.
| Across |
| 1 |
S,WIPED |
| 5/10 |
THE FIRST NO,EL |
| 9 |
N in DISCO,TENT |
| 12 |
B,I,RE,ME - new to me but I’d come across TRIREME and the wordplay is straightfoward enough. |
| 15 |
(BREAD)*,ARE |
| 23 |
A,N<, SC(i)ENCE - tricky clue to parse and reasonably tricky word too. |
| 25 |
BAS(i)S |
| 26 |
TREAT, T ROPY< - surface reading seemed a bit strained here, “Handle tense poor backsliding…” |
| 27 |
“sin”, (MY SON)* |
| 28 |
hidden reversed in In ItalY LIRE Eventually |
|
|
|
|
| |
| Down |
| 4 |
DUN,BAR - I spent some time trying to put INN in a three-letter Scottish town to get a word for “dingy”. |
| 6 |
TABLE in EAS(y) |
| 8 |
(MAIN STORE)* - clue reads very smoothly. |
| 14 |
AR in (VERY SAD)* - timely clue, given the soon-to-be-released Rocky movie. |
| 16 |
STEM in (PRIDE)* |
| 20 |
SETS in T,E |
| 22 |
P(r)ESTO |
Posted in Independent | No Comments »