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Archive for July 27th, 2007

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Independent 6483/Phi

Posted by Colin Blackburn on 27th July 2007

Colin Blackburn.

Good quality puzzle from Phi with a handful of great anagrams. One clue has left me foxed. I think the grid was pangrammatic too.

Across
8 DIPSOMANIA — (I SIP ON MAD)* + A — this is an excellent anagram &lit.
11 ALLIANCE — A in ALL IN + CE — exhausted = all in.
12 ECO-LABEL — E+COLA+BEL(t) — nice neologism and partial &lit.
15 BUTTERFLY KISS — cryptic def? — is there more to this
20 INTIFADA — (AND IF IT)* + A — another excellent anagram. The Intifada is the Palestinian uprising, the whole clue providing an augmented definition.
22 DEATHBED — cryptic def. — very nice cryptic definition.
25 KILOGRAMME — (EMMA OK GIRL)* — and another good anagram leading to the less common spelling of kg.
Down
4 LOLLOP — LL in LOOP — a lovely word!
5 PAGANINI — PAGAN+IN+I — …and another. Paganini was a great
violinist as well as a composer.
6 DISCOURSED — DISC+OURS+ED
9 PEARL OF WISDOM — (MOPED’S AIRFLOW)* — I didn’t know that gnome meant a pithy and sententious saying, I do now.
13 CYBERNETIC — BERNE in (CITY+C)< — Oddly Igor Aleksander, the father of cybernetics, had a letter published in the Independent yesterday.
16 TELETHON — ELE(ven) in ? — I’m lost on this one. I can see half of ELEVEN and H(our) but not much else of the word play.
TE(am) + H in LET ON — thanks to Niall and Will.
17 YATTERED — (infantr)Y + (b)ATTERED — not a word I knew but it seems to fit.
24 PUNY — PUN+Y — great surface to close the puzzle.

Posted in Independent | 4 Comments »

Inquisitor 29 - Occupation by Phi

Posted by petebiddlecombe on 27th July 2007

petebiddlecombe.

Solving time 18:13

A very easy puzzle for me, partly because the theme tied into one of my interests. In eight theme answers, a letter had to be removed before jumbling, and the removed letters in order “identify what occupation the resulting entries have in common”. The other 32 clues were straightforward, with only about a quarter leading to “Chambers words”, so it didn’t take long to spot thematic answer / entry pairs like INCISORS / ?OSSI?I and DRIVER / ?ERDI, leading to theme answers Rossini and Verdi, both composers. The other six composers followed pretty quickly - from the checked letters in other unclued entries rather than from the thematic clues. I solved most of these after the event, though one still puzzles me. For those less acquainted with modern classical composers, Arnold, Ligeti and Reich were probably tricky thematic answers. For other clues, I’ve only listed the ones with the most obscure answers - ask about others in comments if they have you baffled. Defs in double quotes for these are copyright Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd: The Chambers Dictionary 2003.  (I’m being lazy and pasting from the CD-Rom version).

Thematic
C I,N,C(I’S)ORS / Rossini
O L(A,RD)OON / (Malcolm) Arnold
M LEG IT,I,M / (Gyorgy) Ligeti
P CIP=pic rev.,HER / (Steve) Reich
O A R(M(uc)H)OLE / Mahler
S SHANDY (ref. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy) / Haydn
E {this is the one I don’t understand} / Scarlatti
R D,RIVER / Verdi
Across
11 TAL(EA.)E a talea is a “recurring rhythmic pattern in isorhythmic medieval motets”.
12 LOSE,Y - Joseph L, best known for The Go-Between (1971)
26 NGONI (hidden word) - “Nguni n (pl Ngu’ni or Ngu’nis) a member of a group of Bantu-speaking peoples living in southern and eastern Africa, incl the Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swazi; the languages spoken by these people. Also Ngoni.”
33 CEDRELA = cleared* “a tropical genus of Meliaceae, allied to mahogany.”
Down
2 A,ESC. - a rune, represented in Old English by the ae ligature, and sounding like the a in cat. aesc was also ash, the tree.
3 STEGODON - GO=attempt,DO=clobber in NETS rev. An extinct creature related to the mastodon and elephant
29 GET(A)S - Japanese wooden sandals
30 LERE - one of various spellings of an archaic word for ‘to teach’ or ‘a lesson’
32 P(IL(l))I - pilus = Lat. for a hair, and this is the plural. The word that explains carpet ‘pile’, and various -pilate words

Posted in Inquisitor | 2 Comments »

Independent 6478 (21-07-07)/Nimrod - Ant-sy.

Posted by neildubya on 27th July 2007

neildubya.

Something of a novelty for me, this - a Nimrod puzzle where I understood everything (almost).  Original choice of theme too; it’s not National Anteater Day or something is it?

Across
9 EMANATE - which is MANATEE with the final E moved to the beginning; indicated in the wordplay by “circling”.
9 CURT,(tr)A(in),IN - had to check with Google that this was right before filling it in - sure enough, Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case was the last Poirot novel.
11 BODE,GAS - I knew the word but thought it was a bar of some sort.
12 EC,(HAD IN)* - this was new to me but I had E?H????, which was enough to find the answer. I guessed that “City” might be EC (the postcode for the City of London) - Chambers did the rest.
13 hidden reversed in “pecuLIAR Territory” - the reversal element is indicated by the answer at 15A.
14 W,CH in O,O,DUCK - “How much wood would a WOODCHUCK chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” Another name for the 20A.
15 MAKING A COMEBACK - a reference to Groundhog Day (I’m guessing it’s a ref to the film rather than the actual day itself, which seems to be about predicting the weather).
20 GROUNDHOG - “hound grog”, as Spooner would say.
24 hidden in the full version of ET: “extRA TERrestrial”.
25 TB in A,NEAR
26 NAHUATL - another new word but fairly easy to get from the wordplay. It was either going to be (A HUT L)*,N,A or N,A (A HUTL)* - I had N?H???? filled in so I checked the NAH… entries in Chambers (there weren’t very many).
28 DRIVE-IN - I don’t really get this. I suppose it’s a cryptic definition but I’m struggling to see why.
29 U in G,S - potentially a tough clue, for such a short word. “Practical Cat” gave it away for me because I knew that GUS was one of the cats in T.S.Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. “All may see” = U (a ref to the film classification) and “Pinafore etc” refers to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
 
Down
1 (AMBIVERT)*
2 AA,RD,V,ARK - super clue. Can you believe that my first thought when I looked at this one was “”Motor mechanics”? That’ll be RAC then - AA doesn’t appear in a word that I know of”. D’oh!
3 (LONG)* in PAIN - somehow, I knew PANGOLIN, but don’t ask me how. Probably from another crossword, as I’m unlikely ever to have used it in real-life.
5 ECCE HOMO - I know this is right but I can’t get the wordplay. The full clue is: “Religious representation, flash imitation outside church, mounted“.
6 PHI in ORC
7 hidden in “ApriL AND AUgust”
8 MAS in (h)UNK - very nicely done.
17 (GRAPHITE)* - I don’t think I’ve heard of one of these but it wasn’t too tricky to get from the wordplay.
19 (spelun)KER,L in PUNK
20 LASS in G(u)Y - I did wonder what “now” was doing in the clue but I think it’s supposed to indicate “instead of” - that is, LASS instead of U.
22 NEE,D(e)ED - NEE indicates a married woman’s maiden name.
23 G (AND SO)* - a clue that Cyclops would have been proud of. The setter I mean, not a mythological one-eyed giant.

Posted in Independent | 3 Comments »

Financial Times 12521/Falcon - Good for the ego…

Posted by neildubya on 27th July 2007

neildubya.

The easiest crossword I’ve done in quite some time leading to my first ever “clean-sweep” (I think this is a technical term meaning that you solve every clue in a puzzle in order, across then down). I didn’t time myself but I started when then bus-stop indicator was telling me my bus was 7 minutes away and I finished before it arrived.

Across
1 C in SEPTIC
5 C in I ALSO - C for “clubs” is a bit puzzling, although I’m sure this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it. It’s not in the Chambers online or the Concise OED; is it a reference to playing card suit and if so, does that mean that H,D and S are fair game for the other suits?
9 T in (HARE)*
15 TAILOR - cryptic definition. “Suit” isn’t a verb in either of the two dictionaries I have access to so I wonder if a question-mark at the end of the clue would be appropriate?
19 DOGE,A RED - I can’t help thinking that “communist” for RED is starting to look a little bit tired these days, like something out of the Cold War era.
22 I,N,TERSE,CT
23 ANGLE - “fish for fish with a line” seems a bit OTT as a definition but I guess it goes well with the “and line” bit of the clue.
24 RE in GEN
26 A,PATH,Y - nicely worded clue.
 
Down
1 SA,LAD(y),DRESSING
4 A,L in CAB,ASH - I think I knew the word but didn’t know it was a tree (I thought it was a shrub). Easy clue though, so it was a confident guess.
7 A,”RRIVAL” - a homophone clue seems an odd choice here given that the word being homophone-d (if that’s a word) is actually in the answer - in this case, RIVAL. I mean, RRIVAL only sounds like RIVAL because RR is pronounced the same as R.
10 (DRUDGE WHEN HIT)*
14 BRAND in (TERM)* - good clue but I’m a bit unsure about “describe”. It’s used to indicate that (TERM)* is a container for BRAND and it can mean “to draw or form something” but it seems to be stretching things a bit to say that (TERM)* gives “form” to BRAND. I’m happy to be persuaded on this though.
20 TIM in RAGE
21 FE,L,ON,Y - nice clue.

Posted in FT | 1 Comment »

Guardian 24,140 - Auster/Mixed bag

Posted by loonapick on 27th July 2007

loonapick.

This is the first time I have blogged an Auster puzzle. This one has a real mix of very clever and very easy clues, as well as one or two that don’t pass muster in my (pedantic?) opinion. (13ac, 17 ac, for example)

All in all, a very easy puzzle, solved in less than six minutes.

ACROSS

5 PAC(IF-I)ER

9 AIR-TIGHT

11 MIS-INFORMING (homophone of “MISS”)

13 SCAT - hidden in “heraldS CAT” - not impressed with this clue, as the word being defined is not very well hidden.

14 OFF-SHOOT - excellent clue; the surface works really well.

17 DOWNPOUR - (row pound)* - I don’t think this works because the surface implies that ROW (or an anagram of ROW) should appear in an anagram of POUND, but the answer is a mix of the two words - “involved WITH” would work, but wouldn’t read as well.

18 LEE’S - as in General Lee

20 AN-ATOMIC-ALLY - clever; I suppose “ally” and “link” could be synonyms

23 CASTOR - as in Castor and Pollux, another good clue.

24 ICEBOUND - a not terribly cryptic definition, unless I am missing some wordplay?

25 ETHYLENE - (they)*-LE-Ne.

26 EDDIE’S - too much like 18ac for me, showing a lack of imagination. The CHARLTON referred to is Aussie snooker player, Eddie CHARLTON.

DOWN

2 A(C)ID

3 AUTOMATON - (mantua too)* - unless I am mistaken, a Dalek is not an automaton. An automaton is mechanical, whereas a Dalek is a mutated live organism in a mechanical casing.

4 ARG(OS)Y - ARGY being (gray)* and OS = outsize

5 PUT INTO PRACTICE

6 CAST OFF-S(lowly)

8 EISENHOWER - (when soiree) - the anagrind is “is in full swing” - haven’t come across that one before?

12 ACCOUNT-ANT - the “the” in the clue is superfluous

15 HOL(L)Y-WOO-D - the definition would appear to be “in LA”

16 CO(MM)ERCE

Posted in Guardian | No Comments »

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