Fifteensquared

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Archive for October 26th, 2007

independent 6561 / Phi An F’ing Puzzle

Posted by tilsit on 26th October 2007

tilsit.

Solving Time:  26 minutes

Lots of F’s around in today’s Phi puzzle (including four block
shapes in the corners of the grid).  The usual mix of cryptic defs
and good sound clue construction which we havecome to expect from Phi.

Not sure about 25 across, if you can offer a better explanation,
 I’d be happy to hear.
ACROSS  (* = ANAGRAM /  CD = CRYPTIC DEFINITION  /  Rev = REVERSAL)

1   FISTICUFFS  FIST IS with CUFF (Manacle) inside.
8   LARCENOUS  COUNSEL* around AR(T) (endless skill).
9   GURU  U + RUG (Rev)
10  MINIMA  Took me back to Maths at school.  MINIM
   (Note) + A. 
11  FALSTAFF  FALS(E) (Not entirely fake) + TAFF - I assume
   FLUELLEN was a Welsh chap.
13  PLEASE  P (Prince) + LEASE
14  FLASHMAN  The archetypal bully.  F + LASH = MAN(Y)
19  FLUFFY  FLU + FF (Following) + Y
21  FREE FALL  REEF inside FALL
23  FRASER  ERAS* inside FR
25  FLAG  Bit puzzled by this clue.  Can’t see
   what else it can be, but a flag shouldn’t
   grow on a flag.  Unless flag is being used as
   a paving stone?
26  OPEN SKIES  KEEPS ON IS*
27  FRIENDLESS  Took me a while to see this too. FRI (could be)
   ENDLESS waiting for Saturday.

DOWN
1  FREEMASON  FORENAMES*
2  SLOW   SOW (Broadcast) with L inside
3  INSTALLS  IN + STALLS
4  URGES  (S)URGES
5  FIREARM  EAR inside FIRM
6  FLAMEPROOF  FLAME (Abusively email) + O in PROF.
12 FANCY DRESS  CD
15 SCLEROSIS  ISLE + CROSS*
16 FEEL GOOD  EEL + G (Finally “appearing”) in FOOD
18 FUELLER  FULLER with E inside
20 FOSSIL  OF (REV) + S + SIL(L)
 

Posted in Independent | 2 Comments »

Independent 6556/Monk (20-10-07)

Posted by neildubya on 26th October 2007

neildubya.

I think I made very heavy weather of this as, looking back at the answers now, there’s not too much there that should have given me problems; the notable exceptions being 12A and 26A. Once I filled the grid I did a quick scan to look for a Nina and, finding nothing obvious, assumed that there wasn’t one. However, I’ve solved enough Monk puzzles to know this would be unusual so I looked a bit harder and sure enough, there it was: running diagonally from top left to bottom right, and bottom left to top right is the phrase: SECRET STAIRCASE.

Across
9 E in LATHER
10 MO in ANGST - the first letter I filled in for this clue was G and from that point on I couldn’t shake off the idea that the definition was “a little more” and the answer SMIDGEN, despite the fact that I couldn’t make the wordplay fit. Daft, really.
11 [s]ENTRY - I managed to make this one unneccessarily hard, for some reason.
12 HEN in PA,CITE - “mineral layer” requires some (as another blogger has put it) “lifting and separating”.
13 Y-FRONTS - sounds like “wife runts”.
14 MIS[-s]US,fEaRs
16 last letters of “comE ouT witH” - a letter in the form of a crossed d, still used in modern Icelandic.
17 A C[lin]T,E[astwoo]D
20 hidden reversed in “veSSEL BIRds”
22 SHIRTLESS - nice cryptic def, which relies on a deceptive use of “better” (i.e. someone who bets)
24 [pr]OCREA[te] - took a chance on this as I didn’t know the word. Very easy wordplay though.
26 IRIDISE - the last to go in for me and the toughest clue of the puzzle I think. The full clue is “Make rainbow-coloured flag, finally packed in a cube”: flag is IRIS and “finally packed in a cube” means “take the last letter [of IRIS] and put it in DIE”. IRIDISE means “to cover with iridium”, which is often called rainbow because of the varying colour of its compounds.
 
Down
1 EELS (going up),P,Y - quite why it took me so long to link “dwarf” with one of the seven is a mystery.
2 BA,(EROTIC)*,LOGICAL - another tough one. Took me a while to unpick “broadcast erotic sound”.
3 CHEYENNE - I think I got this almost straight away and twigged that “according to gossip” might indicate a homophone clue but I couldn’t come up with a way of pronouncing it that would make the clue work. Eventually “shy ann” came to mind. Excellent clue, especially the tricky “fling” for “shy”.
5 initial letters of “Bill And Ben Entertained” - this held me up for a bit as I didn’t immediately grasp what “at the primary stage” meant - although looking again now, it’s hard to see what else it could have indicated.
7 AGAIN (STRAIGHTEN)* - AGAINST THE GRAIN. “How one could cut deal, say [i.e. wood]” is the misleading definition.
8 ETH,L in ERE,D - saw ETHELRED with a few crossing letters filled in, plus the definition “who wasn’t ready” but it was only post-solving that I worked out “left, parting before” - L in ERE.
14 I in (HARASS HIM)* - MAHARISHIS.
17 M,BRO in ASIA - excellent clue and quite sneaky. “Incontinent after the break” means “in continent”. In my book, and what a shabby pamphlet that is, this is fair enough because we’re being told to split up the word and “in continent” is the only logical split. Besides which, “excellent food” is hardly a misleading definition.
19 PET,’ARD - as in, “hoist on one’s own petard”.
23 [-s]EVEN

Posted in Independent | 2 Comments »

Guardian 24,218, Quantum: 4-ing troubles

Posted by michod on 26th October 2007

michod.

It could be the toothache - I might have been more charitable if I’d waited for the co-codamol to take effect - but I found myself being rather picky today.  There are some nice touches here, but also some wordplay that seems a bit iffy, as well as a few cryptic definitions which (as is so often the case) were less well concealed to me as a solver than they must have to the setter.

ACROSS:

1. DISTANT. (T AND T IS*). Clever misdirection - I was trying to translate T in various ways. What is T and T anyway? Two stages beyond R and R?

5. COCO(a)NUT (TUN<).

10. E PAULETTE.

11. PUSH THE BOAT OUT. Two meanings, the second referring to the piss-up that might follow a university boat race.

13. (p)LACE.

14. KOHLRABI (I LARK + HOB). One of those clues that screams ‘anagram’ at you.

17. NORM ALLY. Ally (friend) is ‘at’ NORM (morn exercising), meaning next to it, which I’m not wild about. Presumably it could mean to the left or right.

 21. BROBDINGNAGIAN. The conjunction of ’swift’ and ‘race’ in the clue give it the appearance of a misleading definition, but ’Swift character’ surely leads to Gulliver’s Travels, and ‘what were the big ones called again? How do you spell it?

24. I VIED. Good misdirection - what looks like the wordplay is in fact the definition.

25. SCENERY. Unless ‘flats’ throw you, basically a straight definition.

26. NOMINAL (LION MAN*). Slightly clumsy grammar here, plus unconvincing anagram indicator - ‘is wearing’ doesn’t suggest rearrangement to me.

DOWN:

1. D(IM)E.  ‘At the centre of’ seems to be doing double duty here - IM is at the centre of the centre of MODERN. Unless that versatile ‘at’ can also mean ‘in the middle of.

2. SODIUM CARBONATE. (ABOUT SOME CAN RID). Good tricky anagram. But do you ‘rid’ dirt?

4. TEETHE. CD.

5. CHAPBOOK. I’m guessing it’s a collection of ballads.

7. NATIONALISATION. CD, where ’state’ is meant to be read in the surface as a verb. But if you read it as a noun, it’s a fairly simple non-cryptic definition.

8. THEATRICAL. (ACT THE LIAR*). Good anagram.

12. SLING BACKS. Nice concise surface, but doesn’t ‘on’ in a down clue normally mean before? Here, SLING is actually ‘on’ BACKS.

15. HARD LINE(s).

16. FLINT(l)ILY. Not many Welsh towns are words - Neath’s another.

22. ID(h)OL(y).

Posted in Guardian | 10 Comments »