Guardian 24241: Chifonie — Know your abbreviations
Posted by jetdoc on 22nd November 2007
A pretty straightforward daily cryptic, though you did need to know a few single-letter and two-letter abbreviations (like three ‘meanings’ of D). There were several obvious, as it seemed to me, anagrams; if anyone found them less obvious, I’ll gladly explain.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | BRANDY — B = bachelor; randy = amorous |
| 4 | WELLES — ‘we’ = Guardian staff; ‘sell’ reversed. Orson Welles |
| 9 | DRAG — D = democratic; rag is a common term for a newspaper. |
| 10 | ENRAPTURED — *(Rupert Dean) |
| 11 | MISSAL — ‘miss’ with A L[atin] |
| 13 | CHAPERONE — The guardian of a young lady’s honour. ’Cha’ = tea; ‘per one’ |
| 17 | DEPRESSED — ‘press’ in ‘deed’. ‘Poverty-stricken’ is a slightly unusual definition. |
| 21 | DOWNBEAT — D = 500 (many); ‘own’; ‘beat’ |
| 22 | LABOUR — AB = sailor, in ‘lour’ |
| 24 | MAISONETTE — *(item on seat) |
| 25 | IRAN — 1 ran |
| 27 | MEAGRE — The last one I got, because I was not entirely happy with the wordplay. M[onsieur] Eagre is, I suppose, a bore as well as inadequate; but the ‘is’ doesn’t sit very comfortably. |
| Down | |
| 1 | BURNISH — ‘Burn is h[ot]’ |
| 2 | ARGUS — Argus Panoptes, guardian of the heifer-nymph Io. First letters of ‘assess Roman government under Severus’ |
| 3 | DWELLER — D = deceased; [Sam] Weller, a fictional character in The Pickwick Papers, the first novel by Charles Dickens, and allegedly the character that made Dickens famous. Weller first appeared at the White Hart in the third serialised episode. Previously, the monthly parts of the book had been doing badly, but the humour of the character transformed the book into a publishing phenomenon. |
| 5 | EXPECT — ‘ex’ = former, old; ‘pet’ = paddy (a fit of rage); C = cold |
| 6 | LAUNDRESS — ‘la undress’ |
| 7 | STERNUM — The breastbone. ‘Tern’ = foul; in ‘sum’ = reckoning |
| 16 | PROFANE — FA = footballers; in ‘prone’ = subject (presumably, ‘prone to’ = ‘subject to’, but it’s a bit iffy). ‘Foul’ is the definition, as in ‘foul language’. |
| 18 | RELIEVE — ‘Li’ = lithium; in ‘reeve’, a bailiff or steward |
| 19 | EMULATE — Definition as in: ‘(of a computer or program) to reproduce the action or function (of another computer or program)’. |
| 20 | SEANCE — CE = Church of England; supporting Sean |
| 23 | BRING — N can be used for the knight in chess; in the US Navy, a brig is a place of detention on board ship. |
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