Posted by neildubya on 28th November 2007
| Across |
| 4 |
SCHNAPPS - cleverly done. A drunkard might pronounce “snaps” (pictures = shots) as SCHNAPPS. The literal reading works too. |
| 10 |
D in LANG,RAVE - this was new to me but fairly easy once I stopped thinking about Lean (ie, David) as the film director. A LANDGRAVE is a count that has jurisdiction over certain territory. |
| 11 |
VIE in GENEVE - I think I vaguely knew that GENEVIEVE was a film but I couldn’t tell you anything about it. |
| 13 |
CHEST in GRANTER |
| 17 |
(SOUTHERN [-M]EDOC)* - nice anagram but it was the clue enumeration that helped me get this one. Can’t really avoid that I suppose. |
| 24 |
SWILL - the last one in for me, and I wasn’t completely convinced about it at the time although I am now. Pigs’ SWILL is made from scraps so I guess that counts as “refuse” and a SWILL is a gulp of beer or other alcohol. |
| 26 |
W,EIGHT |
| |
| Down |
| 1 |
ENG in (EAGER)* - really good clue, with a good surface: “Sign up again, eager for training to include engineering”. |
| 2 |
MAD ON,N,AS - once I’d worked out that “really into” was MAD ON, then MADONNAS had to be the answer but it took me a while after that to spot “when” for AS. |
| 3 |
KIR,OV[-er] |
| 5 |
S in (MONK DECLINED)* - wasted some time assuming that “Monk” was the definition. I kicked myself when I finally saw CONDENSED MILK as I had written out the remaining anagram fodder and MILK should have leapt out at me from that. |
| 6 |
(WEIGHT RAN)* - oddly enough, I got this (from the definition) before I got 26A. |
| 10 |
L,I,ECHT,E[-i]NSTEIN - easy enough to get from “Learner” indicating something beginning with L and the fact that we’re looking for a 13 letter place in Europe but the wordplay is not so obvious. ECHT means genuine or authentic and “clever fellow, one given promotion” means move an I in EINSTEIN up a bit. OK, it’s slightly vague but, for me at least, the wordplay confirmed the answer rather than led to it. |
| 14 |
T,ER in ROUSED |
| 19 |
W in CREEL - quite a tough clue so I’m glad I knew that CREEL is something for holding bobbins in a spinning machine. “With” for W is tricky to spot too as it’s so often used as a link word. |
Posted in Independent | 1 Comment »
Posted by ilancaron on 28th November 2007
A good puzzle to learn a few new words via clear wordplay (e.g. SATINY, ASGARD, COLUMBA). One unusual river (AMUR) and an unfamiliar actress (ANNA NEAGLE) and a couple of other more familiar dramatic characters (the BARRYMORES, SONDHEIM and IAN FLEMING).
Across
| 1 |
COLUMB[us],A - must be a St. COLUMBA. Quite a clever construction: “Finder (and loser) of America…” |
| 5 |
CON=”tory”,FAB=”cool” - my last clue: in the back of my mind is the feeling that CONFAB is a kind of chinwag. |
| 9 |
AT(LAN[d])TIC - ref. ATTIC Greek I believe (the “prestige dialect of Ancient Greece”) and not the thing needing a ladder at the top of the stairs. |
| 10 |
WINNER - two meanings I suppose: not sure what the “director” ref is though? |
| 15 |
I,AN,FLEMING - hard getting Georges Simenon off my brain given “Belgian author” but a FLEMING is our Belgian this time. |
| 20 |
ANNA N,EAGLE - ref. Kofi ANNAN (of the UN and of many eponymous coffee bars round the world) and ref. the Roman EAGLE standard (flag) I suppose. Oh, turns out she was a 30s British film actress. |
| 22 |
COLLARED DOVE - ref. River DOVE in Derbyshire. |
| 26 |
A,SGARD - rev(drags, a) - ASGARD must be on the way to Valhalla (or a synonym thereof?) |
| 27 |
SONDHEIM - (Hedonism)* — for all I know an &lit as well! Stephen SONDHEIM is a strong proponent of cryptic crosswords in the US as well. |
| 28 |
SA(TIN)Y |
| 29 |
SHY,STER=rest* - I’ve always wondered if this is a kind of anti-semitic pejorative derived from Shylock?? |
Down
| 2 |
LULU - ref. LULU of “To Sir with Love” fame and presumably an opera as well (?). Three meanings. |
| 3 |
MANN,ERLY=lyre* - ref. Thomas (or I suppose Heinrich) MANN. |
| 4 |
A,L,IKE - clever clue: “A Latin American President is just the same”. Ref. IKE Eisenhower. |
| 6 |
O,RIG,IN |
| 8 |
BARRYMORES - as Spooner would say: “MARRY BORES” |
| 11 |
VIENNA - ([fina]n[cier], naive)* |
| 13 |
FIRST-CLASS - double definition both somewhat cryptic. |
| 14 |
[w]INNER LIGHT - as in “undemanding” (LIGHT) task and I’m making a wild guess that the Quakers have a guide called… yes… the INNER LIGHT. |
| 18 |
F(ERVID=drive*)LY - someone will have to tell us why FLY is “carriage”? |
| 21 |
WARREN - two meanings: ref. WARREN Hastings, a Brit general I think. |
| 24 |
HEAT[her] - Erica is a type of heather. |
| 25 |
A,MUR=rev(rum=”remarkable”) - had to look this up: it’s a Russian river. |
Posted in Guardian | 8 Comments »
Posted by smiffy on 28th November 2007
Just when you thought that the FT blogs had become extinct…. Apologies for going AWOL last week, when short-notice travel plans scuppered my schedule again. Incidentally, the FT puzzles seem to have become freely available online (they required a site-subscription until quite recently); for anyone who desperately needs a stash of extra puzzles, the index can be found here.
Across
1 INCOM(-e),MODE -
9 D,RINK - “Place for the ice, to a degree?”. My fave clue of the day….
10 INEF,FABLE (fine)* - Whenever I encounter this word, I can’t help but think of the former colleague who once used it under the misapprehension that it meant “incapable of being effed-up”!
15 DOL,PHIN - (old)*,”fin”.
19 CA(TERE)R (tree)* - “Uprooted” strikes me as a seamlessly tempting, but technically questionable, anagrind for”tree”.
20 FORERUNNER - “four runner”, i.e a cricketer who scores his boundaries via legwork. I’m sure that it must have happened at least once, but I’m no aficionado of Wisden’s Almanack.
25 MESSENGER - cross-referring to the previous clue.
28 PROT,RUDE,S (port)* - the definition “pops” held me up on this one for a while.
Down
1 INDUS(-try) - a relatively familiar construct, but one that always seems to take me longer to spot than it ought to.
3 MAKE A STAND - double def; the “partnership” here being a cricketing one.
4 O,PINION
6 SOFA - hidden. Interesting that Quark avoids the superfluous United in “States of America”, even though it would arguably enhance the surface. Very restrained of him.
8 S,WEE,TENER (enter)*
13 PLAT DU JOUR - “One-day fare” is cute but did leave me with a nagging suspicion of deja-vu.
14 SUB,NORMA,L - the definition here is “slow”. I did look up to see whether this context was considered pejorative these days, but apparently not. Although the nounal form of subnormal does seem to be reserved exclusively for describing eejits.
18 STOP,GAP
21 TEST,Y - a no-brainer clue, but I expect that one of our regular 15^2 correspondents enjoyed the name-check!
Posted in FT | 3 Comments »