Fifteensquared

Never knowingly undersolved.

Archive for December 9th, 2007

Guardian Genius Puzzle 53 / Locum One man’s homophone….

Posted by tilsit on 9th December 2007

tilsit.

Solving time: 24 minutes.

 One I tackled while in hospital.  Although it wasn’t the most satisfying of puzzles, it held me while I worked out whether each of the homophone double answers could be worse than the previous one.  The preamble called them “exact or cheeky”; I could think of alternative names for them, most would be unprintable here.

The Guardian suffers from a problem with the Genius in that if it’s too hard, people complain, so finding “easier” advanced puzzles must be difficult.  For me, this just didn’t work, although there were one or two nice clues.

 THEMED ANSWERS

 5,8   HARASS + TOTAL (ARISTOTLE)  Presumably “cheeky”

9,29 SYLLABUB + LACK  (CILLA BLACK) Presumably “cheeky” -  I just don’t get this clue.   B -Bubbly Liverpool Lass is the definition.   If it was supposed to be a stammer that would make it  C-CILLA B-BLACK  To be without =  Lack   Is “syllabub” a “milk punch”?

23,1 KAPPA CEILIDH  (CAPERCAILLIE)  “Exact” homophone  This works OK

32,26 ANGLE EIDER (HANG GLIDER)  “Cheeky”  Clue doesn’t really read.

33,16 BACKER GNARL  (BACCHANAL) “Exact” 

3,10  IDLE EYES (IDOLISE)  “Cheeky”

24,20 AUSTERE PATH (OSTEOPATH) “Cheeky”

ACROSS

11  ILLS      (H)ILLS

12 SNACK   N inside SACK - What say you of this?  “Bagged” to mean put inside sack.

13 SPEY      P inside SEY  Not sure how  SEY = large part of eg Galloway

18 ANTIPODES   Anagram of DESPERATION minue ER (Queen)

20 PROCREATE  Anagram of PRATE inside CORE

25  TORC   O inside the odd letters of T h R a C e  -  liked this clue.

27  IBIS    I  +  BIS (twice in music)

31  SPRAINED   RAIN inside SPED

34  EN MASSE   Anagram of MAN inside ESSE 

 DOWN

1   CUTTING    Two defs.

2  INTEL   Anagram of NET inside IT

3  HOSANNA     SO reversed inside HANNA(H)

5  HELLCAT   .  Presume it’s LL (Lines) inside  HECAT (a witch from MacBeth) - not keen on the container indicator.

6 RYAL   Hidden answer

7 STUMPED UP    MP inside anagram of SUET PUD

14  CLARY      R inside CLAY

15 SPOKE    P inside  SOKE - an old name for part of Peterborough

17 APOCRYPHA  Anagram of PAPARCHY (not a word in Chambers!) plus O (half of OT)  Nice  clue.

19  NUT    The N.U.T. is the Teachers’ Union.

21  ALIENOR    Purists might find the “in” surplus to requirements

22  EPERDUE  anagram of PRUDE inside E E - clever

28  BOGUS   GO rev inside BUS

30  BARM     BAR + M

Posted in Guardian | 4 Comments »

Azed 1853: Liberté, Egalité, Sororité

Posted by jetdoc on 9th December 2007

jetdoc.

A mixed bag of clues from Azed this week — some that were pretty easy, and a few that held me up for a while. I had to think hard about 31a, and I’m still not sure about 27a and 9d.

I seem to have typed ‘hidden in’ several times while blogging this, though I see it’s just four times — is that more than we’d expect of that type of clue in one puzzle?

We were warned on the Crossword Centre’s message board about a misprint that invalidated a compound anagram. So I was afraid I would fail to spot it, and I worried that it might be in 30a. But I think (I hope!) it’s in 25d.

My favourite clue in this one is 30a, because I like the way the definition is incorporated into the wordplay.

Across
1 DROW — ‘word’ backwards. Both drow and smur are Scottish words for fine misty rain (the Scots seem to have rather a lot of words for that).
4 CHEST — hidden in ‘much esteemed’. Both chest and thesaurus can mean ‘treasury’.
8 SPUE — an old form of ‘spew’. P = page; in ‘sue’, which once meant ‘court’.
11 EUPHAUSIACEAN — *(a sei aha un peu c), C being the ‘first of countless’. Rather a forced anagram, I think, though amusing. By coincidence, on the very day I am writing this, the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, is referred to in Wikipedia’s featured article.
12 LIBOR — hidden in ‘capital I borrowed’. LIBOR is the London Interbank Offered Rate. No I’m not exactly fascinated, either.
13 HORST — ‘hors’ = outside; T = bit of tartine. Horst is a block of the earth’s crust that has remained in position while the ground around it has either subsided or been folded into mountains by pressure against its solid sides.
15 INCONDITE — *(cine), including ‘on dit’ (rumour). Incondite means ‘not well put together, poorly constructed, irregular, unfinished’.
17 REED PIPE — *(deed) in ‘ripe’. A reed pipe is an organ-pipe whose tone is produced by the vibration of a reed, the pipe acting as resonator.
18 EGEST — 50% of ‘colleges’; T = time.
19 BANIA — ‘ban’ = prohibition; ‘ia’ = even-numbered letters of ‘nipa’. Bania can mean ‘a Hindu trader, esp from Gujarat; loosely, outside India, any Hindu; an Indian broker or financier’.
21 RANDOMLY — *(lord many).
24 QUERCETUM — ‘query’ minus its final letter; *(em cut). A quercetum is a collection of oak trees. I never feel quite happy with clues that use abbreviations like ’em (or …in’ instead of …ing) to make an anagram work.
26 MEANY — ‘so-and-so without warmth’ is the definition. ‘Many’ = ‘a host’; E = ‘Earl’.
27 HASTE — Sorry, but I can’t work this one out. I shall doubtless feel very silly when someone explains it.
28 ANTIQUITARIAN — To be clued by competition entrants.
29 NEEM — hidden in ‘trainee medic’. The neem tree is extraordinarily useful, yielding, among other things, a medicinal oil. Useful tip: I strongly recommend neem-based mosquito repellent, which, unlike most others, neither stinks nor rots your clothes.
30 FREER — ‘One creating liberté’ is the definition. *(et fraternité) minus the letters of ‘it tante’. Clever surface reading, though the anagram is perhaps a bit forced.
31 YONT — N = new; inside (bottled by) ‘toy’ (miniature, as in poodles and the like) reversed. ‘Yont’ is a Scottish form of ‘yon’.
Down
1 DELIVERYMAN — ‘named’ backwards (‘called up’) outside ‘livery’.
2 RUIN AGATE — I in ‘runagate’. Ruin agate, a variant of brecciated agate, is agate with irregular markings, apparently like ruins.
3 WHOOPS — double definition.
4 CARNY — double definition — ‘cunning, sly’ and ‘a person who works in a carnival’.
5 HUED — H = ‘first indication of hurricane’; *(due). If something is hued (coloured) it is not plain.
6 ESPIEGLERIE — *(piles e.g.) in [Lake] Erie. Espièglerie is roguishness or playfulness.
7 SINTERY — ‘inter’ = bury; in SY = central letters of geyser, reversed. Old Faithful is a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. ‘Sintery’ describes a deposit from hot springs.
8 SCOOP — hidden in ‘Tesco operative’.
9 PERJINK — another Scottish word, meaning ‘prim, finical’. A jink, in rugby, is a quick, deceptive turn — so it’s a sidestep that Jonny Wilkinson might make. And ‘per’ means ‘by’. But I think I must be missing something about how this clue fits together.
10 ENTREATMENT — *(art tenet men). Chambers defines entreatment as ‘the act of entreating; treatment (obs); perhaps discourse, verbal communication, or favours as objects of entreaty (Shakesp.)’.
14 SAPI-OUTAN — ‘piou’ (not quite ‘pious’) in ‘Satan’. A wild ox found in Indonesia.
16 SENSATE — ‘feeling’ is the definition. ‘Sate’ = surfeit; stuffed with ‘ens’ = being.
17 REMUEUR — M = Monsieur; in *(rue rue). Remuage is the process of turning or shaking wine bottles so that the sediment collects at the cork end for removal; a remueur is someone who carries it out.
20 AWEARY — ‘awry’ = cam (a Shakespearean word, more often spelt ‘kam’); ‘ea’ = a river often found in crosswords. ‘Aweary’ is an old word for ‘exhausted’.
22 DENIM — ‘mined’ backwards.
23 ACHAR — ‘a car’ (‘crate’ can mean a decrepit one); packed with H = hot. Achar is Indian pickle.
25 ROTE — a medieval stringed instrument. There seems to be an extra letter in the clue — *(rote scam) would give ‘most care’, not ‘most scare’.

Posted in Azed | 5 Comments »