Fifteensquared

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Archive for January 2nd, 2007

Guardian 23963/Orlando — Let’s Dance

Posted by Colin Blackburn on 2nd January 2007

Colin Blackburn.

I did most of this puzzle within my 30 minute bus journey (the schools aren’t back yet!) However, I failed to get a couple of answers on the Eastern edge until a few minutes ago when I revisited the puzzle. I am still uncertain about one answer.

Across
1 SPRING-CLEANING — double definition — the uppercase em of May is hidden by the word’s position. A nice clue for me as we are in the process of spring cleaning, as in cleaning our water supply!
9 IRONWORKS — IRON(WORK)S — Jeremy Irons is at least one acting Irons, there may be more.
10 CRAZE — “Crays” — for some strange reason this clue eluded me, even though I new the twins in question I failed to pluralise their name and make the connection with “in vogue”.
12 METROLAND — MET+ROLAND — Met is the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. Metroland is a work by John Betjeman.
14 SCRAPE — double definition — I’m still not sure about the second definition here. A fix is a scrape. How does bark mean scrape? To me bark and scrape both mean to graze, usually my shins on the side of the bed, is that the synonym being used here?
22 AFTERGLOW — (RAF GET + OWL)* — Nice anagram and surface though WATERGOLF was the first “word” to go through my mind.
24 HYPER — double definition — however, I entered HYPE+D (spin = hype, D = doctor) until the obvious anagram at 8 down forced me to think again.
26 ARAUCARIA — double definition — the second definition being Orlando’s fellow Guardian setter.
Down
2 ROOMIER — ROOM(I)ER — roomer is a US term for a lodger.
3 NEWSFLASH — N+E+W+S+FLASH — “every way” signifies each of the four cardinal points.
5 ERSATZ — ER+SAT+Z — “last?” gives Z, ersatz is a word borrowed from German meaning false or phoney.
8 LEND ME YOUR EARS — (MERE ROUNDELAYS)* — a nice inverse anagram, ie the answer “out” gives the fodder.
15 CHA-CHA-CHA — three teas (CHA) make up the first dance.
20 APPAREL — A+PP+ARE+L — nice surface using centre of SHOPPING to give PP rather than the more usual “very quiet”.
21 ALPACA — ALP+A CA(t) — Manx cats have no tail.
23 RUMBA — RUM+BA(nd) — a second dance.

Posted in Guardian | 1 Comment »

Independent 6306/Virgilius - New Year, New Theme…

Posted by neildubya on 2nd January 2007

neildubya.

…at least I think it’s new. I certainly don’t recall ever seeing it before. It’s a nice idea although it does make things very easy for you, once you’ve got the first one of the words in each “triplet”. Good to see yet more innovation though.

Across
8 hidden twice in “earliER SEttlERS Especially” - I only spotted the first one when I solved this and spent a while wondering what “repeatedly used” was supposed to mean. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this done before.
9 (SEA A CRANE’S)* - the first thematic clue I got, although I didn’t know it was thematic at the time.
10 AVERS,E
11 (CASE)*,AREA - this was easy as I’d already got 9A and 15A and had twigged what the theme might be; this one confirmed it.
12 TR,A,VERSE - another one I got after the penny had dropped.
15 SEA< in CAR - the one that caused the penny-dropping moment, which was handy as I’d got a bit stuck elsewhere.
18 JIGS,AW - not sure about this. Is “aw” supposed to mean “understood”? A couple of online dictionaries define it as a US expression for “disapproval, commiseration or appeal”.
20 BE(R)ATE(-R) - I’ve occasionally seen lazy anagram clues where you’re only required to move one letter so fair play to Virgilius for avoiding that and instead telling us exactly what we’re supposed to do.
22 G in LINER,IE - excellent &lit clue.
25 hidden in “hoteL IN GERmany”.
27 DELIBE(S),RATE
28 LING - after 22A and 25A this one is solved for you. Took a while to realise that “-ling” creates diminutive nouns, e.g duckling.
 
Down
3 M in ACE
4 (SECURE)* - an &lit, in a way.
6 z,ETA - if you know your Greek alphabet, you’ll know that that “eta” comes after “zeta” (z).
7 A,N,GEL,A - I only realised, post-solving - that “gel” was a young, usually upper-class, woman.
16 last letters in “judgE iN caseS yoU and mE”
21 EX(C)ITED - perfect surface reading.
25 LIED - I liked this very much. A pun on “number” for song and “produced pork pies” is an excellent definition (and a reference to Cockney rhyming slang, of course).
26 (Little) NELL - a reference to the Dickens character from The Old Curiosity Shop and a twist on the “sounds like” clue - a death-”knell” is “tolled”.

Posted in Independent | 8 Comments »