Fifteensquared

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Archive for June 1st, 2007

Independent 6435/Bannsider - Sergeant Pepper’s 40!

Posted by bensand on 1st June 2007

bensand.

I remembered slightly late in the day that it was my blog today and dashed out for the paper. I’m not sure Bannsider sits well with having had a few drinks at lunchtime! Some compilers maybe but Bannsider uses very tricky wordplay and there’s definitely scope here for people to enlighten me about what’s going on. It’s a fine crossword for sure but a bit of a struggle for me today!

The long clue was Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, released 40 years ago today. I had a few letters for this and was musing on egg peppers lovely hearts something something before inspiration struck.

Across
1 SGT PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND -
(CAPES STRENGTHENED PROBABLY PULLS)* Phew!
10 DOOLALLY - IDLE is DO O (nothing) one starting to drive is L, ALLY is friend, crazy is DOOLALLY
11 BICARB - BI(CAR)B
13 MISPRINT - MI SPRINT. My last answer. I’d been fixated on something unnecessarily complicated with changing L to S so R TO N or something like that. Relieved when the penny dropped.
16 GEORGE HARRISON - (GO HERE)* in GARRISON
19 THICKSET - the “thick set” being far from the “top form”
22 INCOMERS - I assume … works with the letters and definition but I can’t get the wordplay. Looks like it ought to be R for return and INCOMES for relatives, clothing for outside. Except I can’t think of a way of INCOMES meaning relatives
25 THE BEATLES - THE(M) + BE AT + LES(SON)
 
Down
2 GNOMISH - (MOSHING)* I’ve not seen fans as an anagram indicator before but it works for me
3 PIETA - PI + ETA - Advent being just arrival here so ETA = estimated time of arrival
4 PRY - (STO)P (YOU)R (RUNN)Y. Beautiful surface.
5 ENDEMIC - END + E + MIC The MIC is from mice who’ve chased after the farmer’s wife and had their tails chopped off.
7 DIATRIBES - (IS RED A BIT)*
7 TRYSTED - TRY = trial, STED = OFSTED with OF shifted. This took a while and I’m not keen on the surface but maybe I’m just not reading it right. I can’t really see what “When” is adding and “shifts of school inspectors” seems awkward to me.
15 ATROCIOUS - every second letter from “MASTER COACH I DO CURSE”, the longest of this kind of clue I’ve seen I think.
16,23 GETTING BETTER - three indications. Getting = Irritating, Better = Punter, Rallying for the whole thing and also a track from SPLHCB
17 ARTISTE - (P)ART(Y) + (TIES)* I was fooled by the surface and kept trying to think of terms for bouncers but outsiders away is an instruction to operate on party and turn is the end of the definition. Very nice.
18 NAIVETE - siNAI VETEran. Tricky definition, “not being spotted”. I can sort of see that this works with naivete being simple / pure (?) but only sort of!
21 MOTET - MO + TET Easy enough to solve but I hadn’t known before that Tet was the Vietnamese New Year
21 BEE - definition of “workers together” and B (BEE) is the last letter of JOB

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Guardian 24,092/Quantum

Posted by loonapick on 1st June 2007

loonapick.

This puzzle is dominated by four long down entries. Once you have solved them, the rest of the answers become much easier to fathom out. It was generally fair, and there are some very good surfaces among the clues. Possibly due to the restricted options available to the setter once he had the four long down answers in place, some of the words used are not common (eg DOWERS, TITI, TRECENTO, LYCOPODIUM), but that’s part of the fun of cruciverbalism - the opportuntiy to extend one’s vocabulary.

One gripe - some of the definitions are a bit loose, and some are not terribly cryptic.

ACROSS

8 TRECENTO - (centre)* + TO - the fourteenth century, especially pertinent to Italian art and literature (eg Giotto, Dante, Boccaccio)

11 SCAVENGE - (gven case)* - I wonder if SCAVENGE and “conduct search” are close enough in meaning?

12 TIT-I - a TITI being a South American monkey

13 INFELICITY - IN-(city life)*

15 (f)ETCHING

18 FRIENDSHIP - (perish find)*

20 BAR-RACKS

22 DOWERS - (E words)* - as far as I can tell, a dower is like a dowry or a jointure - I can’t see how that equates to “talents”

DOWN

1 PROPRIETORIALLY - a not very cryptic definition

2 SCOTTISH TERRIER

3 UNA + S-SIGNED

4 FOBS OFF - not much to say about the past three clues, fair but pretty easy.

6 MAKE A CLEAN SWEEP - (we see a PE man lack)*

7 PLIGHT ONE’S TROTH - another not very cryptic defintiion

14 LYCOPODIUM - (co duo imply)* - personally, I’m not a great fan of anagrams which include abbreviations in this way.

17 CHASERS - (scares)* about H

21 CREW - homophone of CREWE

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Inquisitor 21 / Phi - Spooner strikes back

Posted by petebiddlecombe on 1st June 2007

petebiddlecombe.

Solving time: 36 minutes

A simple but original gimmick and fairly easy clues to non-theme words combined to make this a quick but still entertaining solve. Experience of Azed’s Spoonerism puzzles also helped to speed things up.

Calling the two sets of ‘back-Spoonerism’ answers A and B respectively, we have:

A
1D TOT COPE => TOP COAT
6 CARP SHARD => CARD SHARP
14 NOTE FLUES => NOSE FLUTE
22 HEART HAD => HARD HAT
B
10 WIND BREAK => WICK BRAINED
17 MADNESS => MASS NED
26 SINFUL => SILL FUN
36 HATPEG => HAG PET
Across
18 ALTESSE = (see salt)* - If there had been misprint clues too, we might have got “sea salt”!
24 GUAR = source of gum,ANA = gossip
37 KISMET - not so easy here - I don’t understand the wordplay, except that it includes KIT = equipment - any offers?
 
Down
3 A,Co.,L - bridge bidding system named after a road in Hampstead.
8 (d)ANTON
9 (w)EDGED
21 SNEB = bens<= - same thing as ’snub’
25 (b)UN(BAR)K
27 LA(z)ING - R. D. Laing - who was very big in the 1970s. The picture in his Wikipedia entry shows him reading the Ashley book of Knots, which I remember my parents owning in that decade.
29 S(TUM)M - kinky behaviour being S & M (Sadism & Masochism). Cue the Edmund Akenhead quote from Brian Greer’s Times xwd book: “Setters are of course sadists (though in the nicest possible way) and since all solvers appear to be masochists this leads to a rather beautiful relationship.”
33 GAP = pag(e)<=

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