Fifteensquared

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Archive for February 13th, 2008

Independent 6654/Dac

Posted by John on 13th February 2008

John.

As usual from Dac, very efficient pleasant clues with good surfaces.

Across
1 dropPED LARge. A well-concealed hidden, which was one of the last I did.
9 A(S)LOPE I think. I only have doubts since Chambers says the word is archaic and this is not signposted. But I don’t think they use Chambers.
10 PIECRUST, which is apparently a type of table. I didn’t know this and initially entered VISCOUNT, hoping that it might be both a type of table and a cut of meat, but it isn’t.
11 MONARCHIC - (manor)* chic, def. “Ruler’s”
13 VIN DIEsel. To indicate a hidden clue simply by an apostrophe seems to me to be at the edge of acceptability.
14 CHARTER FLIGHT - char (fret)rev. light. Excellent clue.
17 GLORIA SWANS ON. Gloria is an accompaniment to (i.e finishes) a psalm, rather than a hymn in the usual sense, but since a psalm is “a devotional song or hymn” the clue is OK, I think. Strange, as soon as I saw (6,7) the answer occurred to me, but I rejected it, because I couldn’t justify it.
21 OWN (have) UP (Appearing for trial?). Another excellent clue.
22 TOMBSTONE, which is both a memorial and the venue of the gunfight at the OK Corral
24 TRI(MET)ER, which is a line of verse. Yet another excellent clue.
26 (b)ROADSIDE
27 HEP TAD, a group of seven
 
Down
1 P(HARM)ACY. I was less than happy with “moving quickly” = “pacy”: surely, “quickly” = “pacy” and “moving quickly” = “being pacy”? But perhaps you could argue that “moving” simply indicates what we do with the word “pacy”.
2 D(Y)LAN. Old penny really, but the lovely surface would be destroyed.
3 Presumably APPAR(ently) A T, a word I only deduced from “apparatchik”
5 PRINCELY SUM
6 N(ational)E(xhibition)C(entre) KING. “From” is just about OK to mean “following”.
7 I(NUN)’D ATE (tear)S. Yet another e c.
8 G(A THE)R
15 ARGENTINA - (Tangier)* NA. And another.
16 UNTENDED, being “intended” with a different first letter
18 O P PRESS
19 AUST(ER)E(n)
20 FOSTER - 2 mngs

Posted in Independent | 7 Comments »

Guardian, 24310/Araucaria

Posted by manehi on 13th February 2008

manehi.

A toughie for my first blog - I’ll be busy most of the day so I’m posting this early. I’ve filled in the grid and everything looks more or less right, but I’m still unsure of quite a lot of the wordplay.

Solving time : 47m

Across
1 ULTRAVIOLET - (EX)ULT- RAVIOL(I) -ET; ultraviolet light is invisible.
10 MAN A TEE
11 MINE OWNER - (WOMEN IN)* ER; not sure about the last part of the clue, can anyone help?
12 CHALK - used on snooker tips, and the “opposite” of 20d
13 PERU - PERU(SE), and thus “A lot of reading”. Is Peru opposite China on the globe?
14 ROLLS ROYCE - “high quality” and (SORRY CELLO)* …is there more to this clue?
16 LIVING WAGE - a living is an ecclesiastical position, but surely one can live at (not necessarily above) the subsistence level?
22 IRASCIBLE - (BLAIR IS CE)*; “to cross” seemed a bit iffy as a definition here.
24 SKIR- RE -T; “RE” enters SKIRT = circumvent. Skirret is an edicble water plant
25 PRI- N -CES; “given new heart” meaning “given N as a heart”, rather than “given E”
26 LUDGERSHALL - LUD(ICROUS) GERSH(WIN) ALL; I’d never heard of it, but it’s in Wiltshire
 
Down
1 UNCONTROVERSIAL - UNC- ON T ROVERS -IAL: referring to Uncial script and Roy of the Rovers.
2 TANGO - TAN = “effect of sun”, GO, I’m not sure where the definition is.
3 ANT ON IO from the Merchant of Venice. I put OTHELLO, until I spotted what 1a was.
5 LO NICE RA, another name for woodbine
6 TETRASYLLABICAL - (CABS LITERALLY AT)*, the first clue I got, and a lovely anagram.
7 CLAM UP - U for university inside CLAMP
15 INFRARED - INF RARE D; infrared is at the opposite end of the spectrum to ultraviolet. I’m guessing that INF is short for inferior = “below”.
18 [edit] GRAM PUS, which can be a whale - gram is the weight and pus is matter.
23 CHINA - cryptic definition?

Posted in Guardian | 11 Comments »