Fifteensquared

Crossword bloggery

Archive for April 12th, 2008

Guardian 24,355 (Sat 5 Apr)/Araucaria - Mixed bag

Posted by rightback on 12th April 2008

rightback.

Solving time: 13:05

A definition/letter-mixture puzzle from Araucaria this week. Please say in the comments if you found this a welcome change or a bit of a chore.

Some definitions are given in brackets.

Music (10dn): The Trout by Schubert, which spawned the famous ‘Trout Quintet’. I have no idea if this is any good, because my Internet connection is too slow today to play the video!

Across
1 MARTINMAS - I think the definition here is ‘Day celebration’.
10 TROUT
11 FRAGONARD - if I’d known this artist my solving time would have been much quicker.
12 NATURAL (normal) - should have got both this and 10ac faster than I did.
14 UNDERGRADUATE
17 ENTERTAINMENT (diversion)
21 SWEETEN (pacify)
22 OVERACT (ham)
24 ANIMOSTIY
26 LEST (in case)
27 GLENGARRY (cap)
Down
1 MUTINOUS (rising) - my last entry.
3 INTERPRETATION (rendering) - I found this the hardest of the long answers.
4 MUFFLER - looking back, I should have got this faster; it’s pretty obvious that ‘Wonderful female’ has to contain the anagram fodder.
5 STARVED (cold) - apparently ‘to starve’ can mean ‘to die of cold’ in northern and Scottish dialects.
7 BRASSIERE (cups) - one of the few disguised definitions.
8 SIDING (not the main line)
9 MOUNTAINEERING
15 DIETETICS (science relating to food) - I actually got this wrong initially, writing in ‘dietarily’, which is a word according to Merriam-Webster, but (I now notice) doesn’t quite fit the letters in the clue.
16 STATUARY (figures) - didn’t know this was a noun.
18 RUNNING (competition)
19 ANODYNE (bland) - the surface refers to this Beatrix Potter book.
20 ASSAIL
23 ALDER

Posted in Guardian | 8 Comments »