Independent 6612/Phi - not so easy as it first appeared
Posted by John on 26th December 2007
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 7 | I POD [with the I "put back"] UM |
| 8 | CHESTNUT. 8 Down is “Christmas tree”, but unless I don’t know about Christmas trees in various parts of the world, the connection with Christmas looks a bit tenuous and we end up getting a whole lot of trees. Which I suppose is fair enough: it’s Christmas, and here we are, doing a crossword in which there are lots of trees. |
| 9 | PINASTER. Although in Chambers 2003, this was only in one of my several lists of trees. |
| 11 | B(A)OB AB I think |
| 15 | USER - hidden. I think of a user as someone who uses illicit drugs, but this definition is perfectly OK. |
| 16 | M in NOEL rev. |
| 17 | ALO(N)E |
| 18 | SERVICES. Church services are particularly associated with Christmas. |
| 20 | C(RE)ASE. Cricket. |
| 21 | K GO, linked to (in this case succeeding) GIN |
| 23 | RAM BUT AN. I worked this out from the fairly easy wordplay long before I had heard of it. Not in any of my lists, but eventually confirmed by Chambers. |
| 25 | (NO rev. PIN) in HUE. What a struggle. No list suggested the answer; nor did my electronic solver; eventually I worked it out and it was again confirmed by Chambers. |
| 26 | ROTHKO - (hot ro(c)k)*. Not an artist at the forefront of my mind, but perhaps that’s just me. |
| Down | |
| 2 | MICAWBER - mica (brew)*. A Dickens reference. |
| 3 | AMETABOLIC - (amicable to)* |
| 5 | ST REAM. Leaves = sheets of paper = ream. |
| 6 | GUARDROOMS - gu(ar(my) (door)*)ms. Instead of “sticks” we could have been given “8 Downs, say”, and that would have made it even more difficult. |
| 8 | CHRISTMAS TREE - (chimes restart)*. This was so easy that I thought the whole thing was also going to be easy, but I was wrong. |
| 12 | ABSTEMIOUS - a (I must be so)*. Nice sort of anti &lit. Not sure what the word is for this type of clue. |
| 14 | CINE CAMERA - n CE rev., all in (America)*. A semi &lit I think, also very nice. |
| 19 | V I KING |
| 22 | OVID - (v I) in do rev. Ovid may well be a famous exile - he is I suppose famous and he was exiled, but although I was aware that he wrote Latin poetry I had to look him up to find out the rest. I sense that I’m missing something. |
| 24 | ANKH - an (HK rev.) |
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