Independent 6576/Virgilius
Posted by neildubya on 13th November 2007
Even when Virgilius produces a puzzle without a theme, he’s kind enough to tell you so - check out the diagonal from top left to bottom right.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 4 | S in MEMBER,HIP - was a bit unsure about this when I filled it in but the COED confirms “s” for “succeeded”. And MEMBER is actually a dictionary definition for the, well, you know. |
| 9 | TIEPIN - cryptic def. “Memento of old school” immediately suggested TIE but it was near the end of the puzzle before I worked out what the rest of the clue was doing. |
| 10 | LOVE,LACE - I knew my English degree would come in handy one day. Richard LOVELACE wrote these famous lines:
Stone walls do not a prison make, |
| 11 | RE,DEEMED - “spiritual guidance” for RE was a bit unexpected but fair and quite original. |
| 13 | POSSES,SING |
| 16 | THIN[-g] - “obsession” = THING as in “She has a bit of a thing for Brad Pitt” (to use the Chambers online dictionary example) |
| 19 | E in RITE,RATED |
| 23 | L in TATTING - the last one to go in and a guess based on the definition and crossing letters as I didn’t that “tatting” was a lace trimming. |
| 27 | C in (TRAD SCALE)* - potentially controversial bit of wordplay here: “unusually short traditional scale” for (TRAD SCALE)*. “Trad” is a very common abbreviation for “traditional” but I was surprised to see it used. I got the answer from the checking letters and worked back from there. After umm-ing and aah-ing I think it’s fair because the wordplay is clear and the trad shortening is in the dictionary. |
| Down | |
| 2 | WHITE - not really sure what’s going on here. Could be a cryptic def, with “outer” not referring to the shell. Full clue is simply “Outer part of egg”. |
| 3 | EXPRESS - don’t really get this one either although I guess it’s something to do with the Orient Express? Full clue is “Transport historically from Paris to Istanbul, say”. I guess it could be another crypic def? |
| 4 | M,IN,I,MISER |
| 5 | (IRAN MIDDLE EAST M)* - at my first look at this I thought the anagram fodder might be (IRAN AND MIDDLE E M)* but then MALADMINISTERED occurred to me and I realised that would need the S from EAST. |
| 6 | ELVIS - swap the first pair of letters in LEVIS. |
| 15 | (EAT D)* in (ANGER)* |
| 20 | hidden in “fALL HE ALways” |
| 22 | LA MER - got this quite quickly as a similar clue appeared in the Times one day last week. |
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