Fifteensquared

Never knowingly undersolved.

Archive for October 21st, 2007

Independent on Sunday 922 by Quixote

Posted by nmsindy on 21st October 2007

nmsindy.

Reasonably straightforward puzzle, I found. Solving time: 17 mins

Will concentrate on a few of what seemed the trickier clues, happy to explain others if asked.

ACROSS

24 THE E MP IRE Refers to the film “The Empire Strikes Back” You = thee MP = Mounted Police (ie on horseback) ire = anger

26 CRANNIES cf grannies

DOWN

2 DI (A PA SO) N Foundation-stop of an organ din = dreadful noise

7 (l)ENDING

8 ALL THE KING’S MEN ref Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme shell = eggshell

15 MILL(IN)ER Sienna Miller, actress

21 AN (GEL) A ‘Ana’ more commonly seen in advanced crosswords

Posted in Independent | No Comments »

Azed 1846

Posted by linxit on 21st October 2007

linxit.

Solving time about 35 mins, with Chambers and Bradford’s.

Across
1 DOG’S BREAKFAST - “Men generally” = DOGS, rest = BREAK, dissipatedly = FAST (apparently).
10 ISOBRONT (to robins)* - a contour line on a weather map showing storm clouds.
13 M.O.,P.E.
14 GINGLYMI - hidden in “swinGINGLY MItred”. One of those where it looks like it has to be a hidden word clue, but nothing in there looks like a real word. In the end I made my best guess and looked it up.
15 S(CL)AVE(d) - I’m not sure about the cryptic grammar of this one - “class kept in” = CL inside SAVED, from which we must remove D.
16 CUL(L)ET
18 M(I,SGON)E - NOGS I rev inside ME
20 MO,TORY - unusual word, I think it’s in the same sense as ROTATORY for creating rotation.
21 L(A)UNCH
24 SPI(RAN)T - I had trouble finding this when checking it in Chambers, as I assumed it would be off of spire, but it has its own entry on the previous page.
27 SA,NEST
29 R(OTT)ER - OTT inside ERR*
30 POULT(ry),ICE - as I first thought, but I just checked again as I didn’t like ICE=frozen, and it’s actually POULT,ICE(d).
31 OISE - a guess from ?ISE and the fact that O is an abbreviation of Ohio. Can’t work out the rest of it.
32 MADRAS,S,A - one of the many spellings of a Muslim college.
33 DISEMPLOY(MEN)T - MEN inside (poets dimly)*

Down
1 DIM,SUM
2 G(OP,LATIN)UM - GUM = cheat was a new one for me.
3 BR,A(V)URA
4 ROGER - i.e. Roger Bacon, and it’s also a word for a goose (which I didn’t know before). I thought much ruder thoughts at first…
5 ENIGMATICAL (gin ice a malt)*
6 KAGU - hidden in “snacK A GUll”
7 FALL,GUY
8 SAMEN (names*) - Scottish for same, as is ilk.
9 TWIT - double definition
11 SOCK,O - sock³ in Chambers, a ploughshare.
12 MYLONITISE (I Elton is my)* - I thought the surface was a bit stretched here.
17 FOREL,I.E.
19 SA(V,OUR)Y
22 CHESS - can also be a deck plank.
23 HE(RE)AT
25 P(A)OL,I - A inside I LOP rev.
26 C,REDO
27 SPUD - dups rev (a Shakespearean word meaning to open)
28 STUM - first letters of “Steroid Toning Up Muscle”

Posted in Azed | 3 Comments »