Posted by neildubya on 2nd November 2007
| Across |
| 1 |
hidden reversed in “BritiSH CASt” - Hans SACHS is a character in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and, I was surprised to discover, an actual real life person. |
| 4 |
KEW,IS in LIE - I really should have got KEW quicker than I did, given that I only 15 minutes away from it. |
| 8/10 |
(ENSURE ACCIDENTAL VICTIM)* - CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. I wasn’t looking forward to working out an anagram of that length so it was lucky that I stumbled on the answer with a few letters filled in. |
| 18 |
YES in E,TRAIN |
| 19 |
[-t]EAK in CRY - took me a while to work out what was going on here and I nearly filled in “croaky” until I realised it wouldn’t work with “failing to open wood”. |
| 21/24 |
POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION - always a relief to get really big answers filled in early on. |
| 25 |
A,USE in NOUS |
| 26 |
TRESS - almost filled in “steam” (because of head of steam, pressure etc) but held back until I got a couple of crossing letters. Had to think again when I had ????S. Quite a clever &lit clue: “What’s head lost from emotional pressure?” |
| |
| Down |
| 2 |
CERTITUDE - with all the crossing letters in place I filled the answer in because it was the only thing I could see that fit. Just worked out that “moral behaviour” is “rectitude” so you just have to flip the first three letters. |
| 3 |
SAUCE - the “next answer” (4D) is LOST CAUSE, which you could also write as (CAUSE)*. |
| 5 |
KO,AN - this was new to me but easy to get from the wordplay. I’ll let Wikipedia explain it and mention that a famous KOAN concerns the sound of one hand clapping. |
| 9 |
I,LT in MONKEYS,NES[-t] - MILTON KEYNES. Almost got into a pickle with this one as I thought I was looking for an anagram of “brat’s home” minus the “t”. |
| 14 |
SUET,I in ONUS |
| 16 |
(I BET SAILS)* - STABILISE. |
| 20 |
[-n]ATIVE (reversed) |
| 22 |
I,NAP,T - the last one I filled in, mainly because I thought I was suppposed to be looking for a word for consignment with the last letter missing. |
| 23 |
F,IDO |
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Posted by John on 2nd November 2007
Solving time : 22 minutes. This is a fairly quick time for me, which is probably why I quite enjoyed this. I wonder about some of the assessments under the tab “Setters” above. Tees the other day set the most difficult Indy crossword I’ve ever done and he’s “medium”. Chifonie is “hard”. Perhaps these were just exceptional days.
| Across |
| 1 |
LO(GI)CAL. |
| 5 |
TARN IS H. I wasn’t comfortable with “showing discolouration” or simply “discolouration” for “tarnish” until I discovered that “tarnish” can also be a noun. |
| 9 |
2 mngs., one of which is a bit doubtful, I thought, until I looked a bit harder and saw that it’s P(I)LOT. |
| 10 |
DEP ENDING. |
| 11 |
TEA(PLAN TE)R. T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). Tear = career in the fast-moving sense. |
| 14 |
P(A TERN)OSTER. A paternoster is, among other things, a type of lift. |
| 18 |
HIP PO CRATES. The Italian banker is nearly always the river Po. |
| 25 |
ROVER entered IN TT, introvert adj. The past tense use of “entered” here is I know frowned on in some quarters. |
| 26 |
INSE[C]T. |
| 27 |
(AS WENDY)*. Is endways the same thing as upright? It looks to me as if Chifonie intended the question mark to refer to “endways” but the surface wouldn’t allow it, although “As Wendy, could be, upright?” would get round this problem easily, so perhaps I’m wrong all along and endways is a perfectly good synonym of upright. |
| 28 |
HO(NEST)Y. |
| |
| Down |
| 1 |
I reckoned this was probably (PAL HIT)*, and was vaguely aware of the word Lapith, but had to look it up. |
| 2 |
GAL rev., WAY. I don’t like these “in Ireland” types of definition. |
| 3 |
(PROTECT LAD)*, good if obvious definition. |
| 5 |
TOPS (CRETE)*. |
| 7 |
So far as I can see IN IT I ATE. Not sure about Within this = in it. |
| 8 |
HIGH W IRE. It took me some time to justify high = piping, but I suppose one sense of piping is “thin and high-pitched”. Another of those definitions that seems grammatically inadequate. |
| 13 |
POSSE’S SION. |
| 15 |
TAR(DINES)S. |
| 16 |
CHAST(IS)E. “Indecent” has to be seen as “in decent”, something that not all Ximeneans like. |
| 17 |
SP(ROUT)ED. |
| 20 |
G ENTRY. I’m not sure about G for force. According to Chambers it is a constant of gravitation, the factor linking force with mass and distance. It doesn’t seem to mention G-force (as in aeronautics), which is perhaps OK and what Chifonie means. |
| 23 |
MATCH as in something you strike. Good double def. |
| 24 |
GO(Y)A. |
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Posted by neildubya on 2nd November 2007
| Across |
| 8 |
PEN,PUS,HER - I don’t understand what “Caribbean estate” is and how it links to PEN, if at all. |
| 9 |
NO,TED - “observed” is the definition, the rest of the clue is another way of saying that the death of TED Hughes resulted in Andrew Motion becoming Poet Laureate (”Poetry in Motion”). |
| 10 |
hidden in “reUBEN Died” |
| 11 |
THE BOWERY - an area in Manhattan. “Those people” is THEY but that leaves either EBOW or BOWE for “lady’s private room” - can anyone explain? [Edit: my mistake. As Beermagnet says in the comments, BOWER is the remaining bit] |
| 12 |
DO-IT-YOURSELF KIT - a ref, I think, to Kit Carson. |
| 13 |
(SPACED OUT MIND AN)* - STAND-UP COMEDIAN. |
| 16 |
(ROMANIAN BY HEART)* - ERYMANTHIAN BOAR. My first thought was that this might be something to do with childbirth but the capital L in “Labour” made me think again. Eventually, the Labours of Hercules suggested themselves and Google did the rest. |
| 19 |
LOOKS,MART |
| 20 |
GAMIC - “magic” with the M and G swapped round. |
| 21 |
N[-p]IECE - definition is tucked away in “my sister’s young [man].” |
| 22 |
COT,ILL,O in OS - very tough I thought, especially “not 100%” for ILL. |
| |
| Down |
| 1 |
A,N,GEL,IC,A |
| 2 |
SUN,DRY |
| 3 |
THE TRUMPET-MAJOR - a novel by Thomas Hardy. |
| 5 |
EEL,LORN,E - filled this in without giving it much thought. Only just seen LORN, which is an archaic term for “lost”. |
| 7 |
EDDY’S TONE ROCKS - luckily I’d heard of the EDDYSTONE ROCKS so I got this with a few checking letters filled in. “I don’t wanna dance” was a song by Eddy Grant. Here’s the full clue: “Reason why we bought I don’t wanna dance? Seeing the light would help you avoid us” - does anyone else think those two sentences don’t really belong together? |
| 8 |
POUNDS STERLING - the cleverly hidden definition is “ready to exchange”. I don’t really know why “reports of the” is needed in the clue - unless it’s to help the surface reading? |
| 14 |
hidden in “glaD RAGS TERrific” |
| 15 |
(OILMEN OR)* - IRON-MOLE. |
| 17 |
YE,OMEN |
| 18 |
NOG,GIN |
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Posted by petebiddlecombe on 2nd November 2007
Solving time: 1.5 - 2 hours - Chambers used for 25D only
There was early mention of this puzzle on Derek Harrison’s message board, which indicated that one of the green squares was misplaced. The confidence and timing of the statements indicated that the puzzle was probably fairly easy, as indeed it was. There were four thematic elements in all:
- Six unclued perimeter entries, each of which had an effect on …
- … an “adjoining” entry - these six words clued by wordplay only and all synonyms
- Letters in green squares that could be arranged to give the name of a “thematic advocate” (7,5)
- His creed/advice (which turned out to be the same thing), partly represented by the title and partly by a four-letter word in the grid
The six wordplay-only clues were the first of these to emerge, with 20 COSTARD and 11 ONION leading the field and suggesting something greengrocery (I wondered about rotting fruit and veg), but then followed by 30 BRAIN. At this point I remembered that ‘onion’ can mean your head or brain, and suspected that costard (=apple) might also do so. Later on I found 1 NAPPER, 23 NODDLE and 17 CRUMPET - all of which fairly obviously had to be jumbled given the checking letters. By this time, some of the unclued entries had been guessed too - OPIUM, then MORPHIA and MARIJUANA. So the theme had to be mind-altering drugs, and Timothy Leary was hot favourite for the advocate - confirmed easily by this stage. (The misplaced green square was the one numbered 32 - the one numbered 30 should have been green instead.) The title, NAIRO, had made me wonder about Leary’s death which I mistakenly thought had taken place ‘on air’ (anag.), but this was a red herring - in fact it took place on video but the public haven’t yet seen it. The thing to remember was “Turn on, tune in, drop out”. N(AIR)O matches the first two of these, so is there ‘drop out’ in the grid? Yes - the word PROD in the second row. The remaining drugs are BARBITONE, BENNY and CHARLIE.
| Altered Minds |
| 11 |
ON,I,O,N |
| 17 |
C=cloudy,RUM,PET |
| 20 |
C(OST=sot*)ARD |
| 30 |
B,RA(I)N |
| 1 |
N.A.,P.,PE,R - or something like this - I can’t quite see how to make “parking place, not lot” into PPE |
| 23 |
NODD(y),(f)LE(w) |
| |
| Across |
| 9 |
PRODUCE - ROD=bunch of twigs in UP rev., then C.E. |
| 10 |
RENNET = tenner rev. - a kind of apple - so probably a good thing I didn’t look it up until just now, or I might have thought it was a theme hint. |
| 13 |
ROGER,TO,N - which I’ve never heard of but assume must be near Glasgow - this is probably how the Scots feel about clues leading to Cockfosters and the like. |
| 16 |
SEEPY - P=penny in eyes* - fluid is the anag. indicator, and pots the containment one. |
| 26 |
SHELTA - ‘S = is, L in the*, A = Australian |
| 29 |
W,E (bridge partners),I.R.=Inland Revenue = “the taxman”. And wier4 in C is a Scots Guard, so to speak. |
| 31 |
PHENOL = (lone hp) rev. |
| |
| Down |
| 2 |
INN(ARD=plough)’S |
| 3 |
J,(b)EER - “joint” seems to be the first of a few hints at the theme |
| 4 |
ARIGHT - (1, G.H.) in RAT* |
| 5 |
NONESUCH - a name for a plant called black medick. In the US, the ‘medick’ part is spelled ‘medic’. So nothing to do with racism in the E.R. |
| 6 |
CU(IT.,E)R - a Scots word for ‘pamper’ |
| 15 |
T(ERRA=rare*)RIA(l) |
| 18 |
MA(EWE)ST |
| 19 |
POT.,I,ON - another theme hint |
| 25 |
T,HANK = to catch, as on a loop |
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