Coming Soon - New Premises
Posted by neildubya on 12th June 2007
The crossword solving blog currently here will soon be moving here. As they say, watch this space.
Posted in Admin | 1 Comment »
Archive for June 12th, 2007
Independent 6444/Virgilius
Posted by bensand on 12th June 2007
Always a pleasure to do a Virgilius. Not especially taxing on the obscurity of answers (although 19 was new to me) but inventive and amusing. As indicated in 16/17 there are plenty of double ls scattered through the grid. Although I’m confident about all the answers there are a couple of the short ones where the explanation of the wordplay may need improvement!
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 9 | HELLEBORE - HE’LL BORE around E |
| 10 | ALIBI - Hidden word in “triAL I BIzarrely”. When I first looked at it I surmised that this ought to be LIBIZ which in my guess would be a chess defence. After a while failing to get and mileage out of the Z or the B I shifted my hidden word a letter back! |
| 11 | ROYAL STAG - Cryptic, and very precise, definition - a royal stag being one that has at least 12 points at the top of its antlers |
| 15 | INSTANTANEOUSLY - TAN + TAN in (ISSUE ONLY)* |
| 16/17 | LEARNER DRIVERS - driving in the definition relates to driving on a golf course. The second part of the clue refers to the LLs scattered through the grid. |
| 19 | SALLY LUNN - ALLY + L in SUN + N. A kind of bun |
| Down | |
| 1 | THIRD RATER - This was my favourite clue. RATE is scold and arithmetic is the THIRD R of the educational three rs |
| 2 | ALLY - has to be ally really but I can’t make the second part fit neatly. Is it just that it’s the next four letters after 19s first letter? |
| 4 | YOUTH HOSTELLER - (THO SURELY HOTEL)* |
| 5 | BEGGARLY - (G + BY + LARGE)* |
| 6 | BEACH - B + EACH £x a head = £x each I suppose |
| 7 | SHILLYSHALLYING - A closing time pronunciation of “Silly sallying”, also made me laugh |
| 14 | AGONISTIC - (GIS ACTION)* |
| 15 | ILLUSION - ILL USIN’ about O |
| 20 | YEAR - This seems like an odd one to me. It’s a unit of time and it’s Year(n) for endlessly long. So far so good but what’s the “world revolution” doing there?! |
Posted in Independent | 18 Comments »
Guardian 24101/Shed
Posted by neildubya on 12th June 2007
Very enjoyable puzzle from Shed. As you’ll see, there were a few bits and pieces I wasn’t sure about but was still able to make educated guesses thanks to some excellent clueing.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 7 | RAMP,LING - the ling is a very useful fish for setters. Charlotte Rampling is the actor. |
| 11 | PERI,T in PROSY - I didn’t know that “fairy” = PERI so this was a bit of a guess. |
| 12 | A,RR in COT - I liked “bedded” to indicate “put [something] inside [a word for bed]“. A novel way of doing a container-and-contents clue, although I think I’ve seen variations on it elsewhere. For example, there was a Tees (Independent) puzzle recently which used “seagirt” to indicate “[something] in MED[iterranean]“. |
| 14 | I,EG in LEMAN - LEMAN is an archaic (”former” in the clue) word for sweetheart or lover, which I didn’t know so this was another guess but a fairly confident one, given the definition (”vassal”). |
| 20 | SEMEN in CAT - here’s another variation on 12A with “fertilised” indicating the “put something in” bit. |
| 23 | IF<, CU in STIFFS |
| 24 | SLEW - double definition. |
| 25 | THETIS - or THE(IST)*. Yet another guess, although I had ?H?T?S filled in. |
| 26 | TIRE< in EMUS |
| Down | |
| 1 | GAY (going up) in BA,BAA - this was pretty tough I thought. BABA YAGA is a witch from Slavic mythology. “Invert” is a now-outdated word (from pyschology) meaning “homosexual”. |
| 4,18 | DEAD GORGE in DR OPUS - not the easiest phrase to clue I imagine. Liked the surface reading. |
| 5 | LEV (going up) in STARING - yet another clue where I was sure of the definition and most of the wordplay but with one element I wasn’t confident about - in this case, LEV for “currency”. Turns out it’s the currency in Bulgaria. |
| 8 | G in GOOLE - the first time (I think) that I’ve seen this word appear in a cryptic, either as a noun or verb, as it is here. Google (the company) won’t like this as they’re not keen on “google” (the word) becoming a synonym for “search“, like “hoovering” for “vacuuming”. I’m not so sure that that’s what’s actually happening though. Surely most of us use “google” to mean “look for something in the Google search engine” (as opposed to say, Yahoo or Altavista)? |
| 13 | ALE in RESTATE |
| 16 | (CAPSTONE)* |
| 22 | R,US,SET |
Posted in Guardian | 6 Comments »
FT 12,482/Quark - chaussez les étriers
Posted by pmow on 12th June 2007
Solving time : 21 mins approx
Solving this crossword at 6pm here in San Francisco was interrupted by, of all things, a Scottish pipe and drum band playing outside my window.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1,4 | COMMON ENTRANCE probably a hard one for international solvers who weren’t brought up in the UK, being the exam that public schools use to screen applicants for academic ability |
| 10 | PROP=shore in MIRE* |
| 13 | OLD (16d is AGE). I put this in as “old age” based on ancient, but doing this blog I realize that it has to be “age old” really. This=16d=AGE 13=OLD is ancient |
| 14 | A PAY in PA (which must be an abbreviation of Panama) |
| 17 | CO in SURGE. If we want to be pedantic, carbon monoxide isn’t strictly poisonous, it just binds to haemoglobin more tightly than oxygen so eventually asphixiates |
| 21 | ENJOy I N |
| 25 | BAG, presumably, 2 mngs. But neither meaning seems precise. Book in the sense of “I bag the seat by the window”? |
| 27 | CADDIE “caddy” (for tea) |
| 28 | RUTHLESS hustlers* although “hard” seems a bit imprecise as a definition |
| 30,31 | CONTRACT BRIDGE, a bridge being a kind of rest in snooker apparently |
| Down | |
| 1 | COWS=jerseys LIP=put on S=small |
| 2 | MEA CULPA (cup a meal)* |
| 3 | OUTPLAYS cryptic def |
| 6 | NIMROD nim is a game with some interesting binary arithmetic properties. Nimrod was a skilful hunter, grandson of Noah |
| 8 | ETRIER. I eventually guessed this since I know that étrier means stirrup in French. It is a short climbers ladder. |
| 12 | CLAUSAL defn is “of less than a sentence” |
| 15 | pACT |
| 18 | END ANGER=needle (v.t.) |
| 19 | WOOD WIND. There is indeed no brass in the woodwind section of an orchestra |
| 20 | INVEIGLE (leg vein i)* I’m not sure how the “varicose” in the clue is meant to fit unless it is a second anagram indicator. But there is a “?” so we should be gentle, I suppose |
| 23 | poST AT INfirmary |
| 24 | BOWLER being a type of hat and also the person in cricket who can get a hat-trick (getting three batsmen out on three consecutive balls) |
Posted in FT | 2 Comments »