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Archive for May 8th, 2007

Independent 6414/Virgilius - 10A-y

Posted by neildubya on 8th May 2007

neildubya.

Another very entertaining puzzle from Virgilius. No theme that I could see, unless it’s very subtle or I’m very slow today. Either is equally possible.

Across
1 SECOND INCOM(e),MAN,D
9 (GOOD LINER)* - spent some time thinking I was looking for an anagram of HAS G(ood) LINER.
11 OOPS - “bands” are HOOPS and you’d probably drop the “h” if you were a Cockney.
12 LIKE BILLY-O - “As father of kids” for LIKE BILLY is excellent.
15 hidden in “stabLES SEEmingly”
18 ARNE in ER - as in “nice little earner”. The composer is this chap.
19 S (QUEEN)*,CE - excellent surface reading…
21 LAND,I in (SOUTH)* - …as is this one.
23 CRAM< - I don’t think I’d heard of MARC so this was a guess.
25 DAILI(es)< - another good one.
Down
1 SIGN OF THE ZODIAC - “two are in libraries” is the key here as “libraries” contains LIBRA and ARIES. Very clever.
2 PEN, in CANOE,R
3 NOON - which is when the afternoon starts. “Off? Au contraire” could be expressed as “No, on”.
4 hidden in “withIN IT I ALSo”
6 CH in MAINE,GUN
8 D,IS,COVERED CHECK - I haven’t played chess in years but I just about remembered this term.
13 SIDE SADDLE - the occasional cryptic def here and there is fine by me.
17 reverse hidden in “PunjaBI HAS MEMorably” - fantastic clue. Reads really well and who would have thought you could clue it as a hidden word?
20 (ART I DO)*
22 I in THE,F - good &lit clue.
24 odd letters of “BeRlInEr”

Posted in Independent | 5 Comments »

Guardian 24,071/Brendan - “almost” easy

Posted by loonapick on 8th May 2007

loonapick.

  In my mind, while solving this puzzle, I was thinking that this preamble would say how easy this crossword was, then I came across a word I didn’t know, but was able to guess from the wordplay, so I suppose “easy” is not the appropriate word. I had never heard the word SWARAJIST before, but for those interetsted in India’s history, this may have been an easy enough word.  

ACROSS 

1          AWAKENING - A W(A-KEN)ING - most houses I have lived in don’t have wings, so the pedant in me may have expected some qualification of the word “house” in the clue (grand house, say) 

9          GET YOUR BEARINGS - the only answer that fits, but I’m not sure if there is anything particularly cryptic about the clue, but then I am probably missing something? 

10         TENT - that ubiquitous wine of Crosswordland, cleverly clued here. 

14         STATEROOM - STATE + (<=moor) 

16         APPAL - homophone of A PAUL 

18         TOTALISER - (is a lotter)* - the Totaliser (or Tote) is a form of betting on horse-racing which takes the sum of all money bet and divides it among the winners. 

21         AGOG - the even letters of “hAnG tOuGh” (ie ignoring the odds) 

25         IN ALL DIRECTIONS - INA(LL-DIRE)CTION’S 

26         TWEED - as in the river Tweed, forming part of the border between England and Scotland.  Fresh in my mind as I was playing cricket in the Borders on Saturday. 

27            ISINGLASS - IS IN GLASS = “partly fills schooner” possibly a bit loose?  

DOWN 

1          ANGST - (b)ANG (i)S (i)T 

4          INRO - in MoulIN ROuge” - a lacquered Japanese box for medicines, perfumes etc. 

5          GUESTIMATE - GUEST-1-MATE 

6          PERVERSELY - (reserve)* in PLY 

8          DESTROYER - (restored y)* where Y is the last letter of “navy” 

13        TORTELLINI - TOR(TELL)IN(o)-1 - Torino being the Italian name for Turin, of course. 

14        SWARAJIST - S(WAR-A-J-IS)T - a political party in India which advocated self-government, or a supporter of same 

17            PROFANE - PRO-FANE - a fane is an obscure word for a temple, from the Latin fanum, a place dedicated to a deity. 

22         GASES - laughing gas or tear gas 

23         DELI - homophone of DELHI

Posted in Guardian | 2 Comments »