Fifteensquared

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Archive for December 13th, 2007

Guardian 24,259 Paul : If it wisnae for your Wellies, where wud you be ?

Posted by stan on 13th December 2007

stan.

Apologies for lateness - wrote a whole entry this morning and lost it. Baaad IT bloke - didn’t save my work as I went along.

In the end - really quite a straight puzzle for Paul. 

Across

9 RU-I-NATION

10 TH(REEF)EET - “The film” is “The E.T”

12 Left out because we don’t publish all answers here. Hint : It’s an anagram 

 13 WEED - Trad. Crossword Fodder

14 WELLING-TON (BOOT) S - Welling as in tears welling up - a boot upfield is a punt - Ocean is Tons ? (help !)

16 Another one I’ll leave OUT in this POST

17 PA’S-SAGE

19 PEPPER-CORN : Yes, corns are painful and Pepper is a type of spray

24 COUNTER - didn’t work out the wordplay here

26 EX-CEL(L)

27 OVERT-HERE

DOWN

1 GREEN-WOOD-PECKER

2 SI-MP-L-EST : “siest(a)” wrapped around MP and L

3 Could easily say I was leaving it as an exercise for the reader, but I didn’t get it.

4 MISSPELT - anagram of 2 down

5 UNCOOL (man !)

6 Straightforward anagram left out of solution

7 O-RIEN-T-EXPRESS : Rien is French for nothing - the rest is not a Mystery, even though the book is.

8 Didn’t get it despite having all the letters - must be going wordblind

15 F(O-REST)ALL

17 PAR-O-DIED - “All lived = Zero died” is a common crossword idiom

 18 ALEWIVES = tricky anagram I thought

20 P-OUNCE

21 CAR(BONDI-OX-ID)E : Bondi as in beach. Inspiration as in Breathing.  Ahhhh!

  

Posted in Guardian | 9 Comments »

Independent 6602/Nimrod

Posted by neildubya on 13th December 2007

neildubya.

This is the first puzzle I’ve solved in what has so far been a pretty miserable week, with myself and MrsD both laid low with a virus and our 8 month old son cutting two new teeth. Not the happiest combination of events. I’m usually mystified by at least 3 or 4 clues in any given Nimrod puzzle and this was no exception, although I did manage to solve it fairly quickly.

Across
1/9 (NERVIER MOTHERS-TO-BE EYE NUN)* - THERE’S ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE.
11 KEY,STROKE - I liked the definition here: “downward movement by one in the pool”, with “pool” being a reference to a typing pool I guess.
12 DITTO - exactly the same clue as 11a.
13 (VAN WE WE)* - NEW WAVE. Not sure about the cats reference though; may be something to do with “Cool for Cats”, a soing by Squeeze, who were a NEW WAVE band? Or is that a bit obscure?
15 L in TICKER
18 CAB in MARE - don’t get the wordplay here: “Gruesome ‘horsey’ female taxi charges”. MARE is the female horse and taxi = CAB but what is “charges” doing and where’s the container indicator?
21 ALPHA PLUS - written as A+ this could be seen cryptically as “one a cross”.
23 [-d]AWN
24/25 MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS - “gathering” is the collective noun for crows; “Compilers’ Estate” is ORIENT = E, EXPRESS = State.
 
Down
1 (NOT WHAT FAKES DO)* - THE AKOND OF SWAT. Given that it’s a nonsense phrase and contains one word that isn’t a word, I wonder how you would get on with this clue if you didn’t know the Lear poem?
2 EMERY? - not sure if this is right but can’t think of anything else that works. Full clue: “What’s its effect? Polish engineers getting over year”. I took the first 4 words as the definition and “year” must be Y. “Engineers” is often RE but that leaves EM.
4 E in (NICE LOGO)* - OLIGOCENE. A long time ago.
6 OREAD? - more befuddlement here: “Descriptive of beginner classes in Literacy or Divinity”.
14 WHEREUNTO - and here: “To which healthy body is change of tenure acceptable”. “To which” is the definition but the rest is a mystery.
16 COCK-A-HOOP - “the old chap”…very Cyclops.
23 LETHE - one of the rivers of Hades, and one that induced complete forgetfulness in those that drank from it.

Posted in Independent | 13 Comments »

Independent on Sunday 930 by Quixote

Posted by nmsindy on 13th December 2007

nmsindy.

I found this quite an easy puzzle - solving time 15 mins but there’s one I do not understand.

Notes on some clues below, including that one.

Happy to explain others if asked and to have that one explained to me.

* = anagram

ACROSS

11 MAYORESS “Female dignitary, woman about to get into muddle (8)” This is the one I don’t get. From crossing letters, it has to be right, with definition probably ‘female dignitary’. The ‘muddle’ may be the ‘mess’ but I do not see how the rest works.

16 IGUANA Bringing forward the ‘i’ in Guiana.

26 DELE (gate) Tricky, my last to go in.

DOWN

1 The S(CHILL)ING test. Got it from the wordplay, verifying after.

6 BALD R (king) I (one) C (about)

15 DEC (December = this month) ORATES (a store)*

Posted in Independent | 5 Comments »

Financial Times 12,630 by Cincinnus

Posted by Pete Maclean on 13th December 2007

Pete Maclean.

This puzzle is the most difficult Cincinnus I can remember tackling, not hard across the board but very challenging in a few places. Did others find it unusually tough as well?

Across
1. CHANCE - hidden word
4. SLACKERS - S (small) + L (large) + ACKERS (Naval slang for foreign currency). I was unfamiliar with this Naval jargon.
9. ADULT - A (article) + DU (of the, French) + LT (lieutenant)
10. BRASSERIE - ER (Eastern recipe) in BRASSIE (club). A brassie, I understand, is a golf club — new to me!
11. SKINFUL -K (knucklehead) in SINFUL (wrong)
12. HUNDRED - double definition
13. CLIP - double definition
14. NEBRASKA - anagram of A BANKERS
17. MAGELLAN - anagram of LEGAL in MAN (isle)
19. ZERO - double definition
22. EXTINCT - EX (former) + T (Tory) + IN (in) + CT (court)
24. KINKING - KIN (family) + KING (royal). Another one that took me a good time to figure out.
25. DESERT RAT - anagram of RESTARTED
26. QUITO - QUIT (leave) + O (Oscar)
27. MEATLESS - anagram of SET MEALS. Yummy!
28. VERSED - VERSE (poetry) + D (hardback)

Down
1. CLASSICS - double definition.
2. ALUMINIUM - cryptic definition referring to the American “aluminum”.
3. CUT OFF - CU (copper) + TOFF (swell)
5. LEATHERJACKET - double definition
6. COSINES - COSINES[s]
7. ERROR - R (end of race) + OR (or) + RE (start and end of race) all reversed
8. STEADY - double/cryptic definition
10. BELLES LETTRES - LET (allowed) in anagram of BEST SELLERS
15. APERITIFS - anagram of A SPITFIRE
16. LONGFORD - LONG (marathon) + FOR (pro) + D (Duke). This was the most difficult clue for me. Longford is, I think, well known as an aristocratic name but still I had not heard of the Earl, actually a member of the Irish peerage.
18. GONERIL - anagram of ONE GIRL
20. SELDOM - S (singular) + DO (party) in ELM (wood)
21. UNIQUE - UNI (university) + QUE (that in France)
22. TOSCA - hidden word

Posted in FT | 2 Comments »