Fifteensquared

All your clue are belong to us

Archive for July 25th, 2008

Independent 6,794/Math - KAPOW!

Posted by Ali on 25th July 2008

Ali.

So now we know why Phi was ousted from his usual Friday slot. Today sees the release of the much-advertised new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, and the completed grid here has a number of references to title, cast, etc. Lead actors Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger have names which can be nicely dealt with across multiple clues. (Gary) Oldman gets a nod too, but Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart understandably don’t get a look-in!

Across
1 DARK - D,ARK - Not one for the strict Ximeneans out there, with “3,500″ mixing part of the wordplay and the definition (which is in itself referring to another answer), but I think that this was nicely misleading
3 BRUNETTE - RUN in BETTE - “It’s not fair” is a nice definition
9 CARTLOAD - Hidden reversal in useD AOL TRACking
11 HEATH - E in HATH
12 LEDGER - L,EDGE,R
14 VALE - V,ALE - “cryptically tee-total” presumably being “versus ale”. Possibly also a reference to Kim Basinger’s character in the Tim Burton Batman movie
16 CHRISTIAN - (HIS TIN CAR)* - “One believes” and “boy” do double duty as the definition here
20 BALE - HIdden in herBAL Esssence
21 BATMAN - ATM in BAN - Our theme!
22/25 BRUCE LEE - (CRUEL)* in BEE - BRUCE is of course 21’s real first name
24 OLD MAN
25 LADYSHIP - (DISHY LAP)*
 
Down
1 DEATHWATCH - DEATH,WATCH
2 RAT RACE - RA,TRACE
5 NAKEDER - (RED KEN A)*
6 TRICEPS - TRICE,P.S
8 GOTHAM - GOTH (one who wears black!),AM - The fictional home to our themed hero
13 PSALTERIES - (LET’S PRAISE)*
19 NOBODY - NO,BODY - A cipher is also a non-entity or thing of little value
20 BRUISER - I in BR USER (an old train traveller!)
23 ALOE - Alternate letters in fAlLs OvEr

Posted in Independent | 3 Comments »

Guardian, 24450/Gordius

Posted by mhl on 25th July 2008

mhl.

I found this a pretty tough puzzle for my first posting here. There were lots of interesting and satisfying clues, though, and several words that were new to me.

Across
8 CO-INHERE: or COIN HERE
9 COLON: COLON(Y)
10 [Omitted according to the site's policy]
11 WASHING DAY: A Spoonerism of “dashing way” (although the pronunciation of “ashing” is different in the two versions…)
12 STACKS: Double definition, as in piles of food or the chimneys on a steamship Thanks to Andrew for correcting this: it’s TACK = “food” in SS (”on board”)
14 VALERIAN: A great clue: Valerian was a Roman emperor and the rest is: VALE = “goodbye” + (RAIN)*
15 ARRAIGN: A + homophone of “rain”
17 ASTEISM: a hidden word that took me ages to spot, meaning polite or genteel irony
20 BARONAGE: “A list or book of barons”, according to Chambers, or a BAR ON AGE
22 MOTION: Double definition: the poet laureate, Andrew Motion and the subject of a debate
23 SELLAFIELD: or to SELL A FIELD
24 RITE: homophone of “right”
25 DRIFT: DR + (FIT)*
26 [A simple anagram omitted according to the site's policy.]
Down
1 COMPUTER: “Put income right” is PUT in COME + R
2 GNAT: The Tang dynasty reversed
3 BEDWAS: Bedwas or BED + WAS
4 PENSIVE: Gordius’s tools are PENS, and “Gordius has” is I’VE
5 ACHILLES: Achilles’s mother dipped him in the Styx when he was a baby. The subsidiary part is CHILL in (SEA)*
6 ALF GARNETT: Alf Garnett is the reactionary fellow. I think the subsidiary part is ET (extra-terrestrial, or “incomer from elsewhere”) in (FLAGRANT)*
7 INDABA: “Conference” is the Indaba and the subsidiary is: IN with A BAD reversed
13 CHAROLLAIS: CHA IS around (”served with”) ROLL A. This was the toughest clue for me: Charollais is a breed of sheep (and cattle, although more commonly spelled with a single ‘L’ - see the comments below.)
16 GRAFFITO: A lovely clue: the reference is to the writing on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast and RAF = “flyers” FIT = “able” in GO
18 SCOUTHER: “college servant” = SCOUT (in Oxford) + HER. I hadn’t heard of “to scouther” meaning “to toast” before…
19 BENEFIT: BET holding (FINE)*
21 AGENDA: Nice clue: A + homophone of “gender”
22 MODIFY: The “setter, perhaps” that’s brought up is FIDO, with MY = “setter’s” about
24 ROAD: A road is a “way”, and a homophone of “rowed” (not “rode” as I thought at first…)

Posted in Guardian | 20 Comments »

FINANCIAL TIMES 12,829 by VIKING

Posted by Gaufrid on 25th July 2008

Gaufrid.

Not quite as difficult as Wednesday’s CINEPHILE but some slightly tricky wordplay in places particularly, for me, 16d. However, once I had worked this out I had to smile at its cleverness.

.
.

Across

1 RECESSION  RE (scripture) CESSION (homophone of session) - ‘meeting’ has to serve two purposes for this clue to work

6 HAVOC  H (first letter of harvesting) AVOC (avocado minus ado)

9 GAMIN  MAG (magazine, eg Time) reversed IN (fashionable)

10 SCINTILLA  *(I’LL SCAN IT)

11 DEAD WEIGHT  DEAD (departed) WEIGHT (homophone of wait)

12 NEDS  alternate letters of ‘aNgEl DuSt’

14 THAWING  A W (week) in THING (fact)

15 DEMOTIC  DEMO (protest) TIC (habitual response)

17 CONTEND  *(NO TEN) in CD (record) - in my day the indicator ‘record’ used to mean EP or LP. Times have changed

19 CRITICS  C (first letter of concert) *(S[a]TIRIC) - the removed ‘a’ being ‘first-class’

20 NAME  ME (one) behind N (name) A (one)

22 OVERRIDDEN  *(OR NEVER DID)

25 CORPORATE  CO (council) R (right) OP (work) reversed RATE (standard) - I don’t know which dictionary VIKING uses but ‘co’ as an abbreviation for ‘council’ does not appear in my copy of Chambers or COD (both rather old). ‘co’ for ‘company’ would have been more sound and may even have improved the surface

26 ISAAC  IS (IVR Iceland) AAC (alternate letters of Jamaica)

27 LATHE  AL (for?) reversed THE (article) - a pleasing double use of ‘turning’ but I have difficulty in justifying ‘for’ as ‘al’. Usually ‘al’ is a prefix for ‘before’. There again, I may have totally misunderstood the clue! - Please see Smiffy’s comment for the correct interpretation of the wordplay leading to ‘AL’

28 TREATMENT  *(TEAM) in TRENT (river)

Down

1 RAGED  [t]RAGED[y]

2 COME AGAIN  COME (move towards) A GAIN (secure)

3 SONGWRITER  *(TRIES WRONG) - ‘porter’ as in Cole Porter

4 ISSUING  IS (one’s) SUING (taking action)

5 NEIGHED  WEIGHED (considered) with N instead of W (changed direction at first)

6 HATE  hidden word in ‘wHAT Evil’

7 VALVE  V (velocity) in VALE (river’s location or valley)

8 CLASS ACTS  CLASS (part in school) ACTS (plays)

13 EMPIRICIST  *(IMPER[ali]ISTIC)

14 TECHNICAL  *(CHAIN) in TEC (detective) L (left)

16 THIRD-RATE  THIRD R (reading, writing and arithmetic, the three Rs) AT E (English) - it took a while for me to get the wordplay in this one

18 DEVIANT  NAIVE (simplistic) in TD ( Teachda Dala, Irish politician) all reversed

19 CORTEGE  GET (to reach) reversed in CORE (centre)

21 MERIT  dd

23 NICHT  NIGHT (end of day) with G (government) changed to C (carbon)

24 NOTE  dd - ‘do’ is a less common spelling of the musical note doh

Posted in FT | 6 Comments »

Independent 6789/Phi (19-07-08)

Posted by neildubya on 25th July 2008

neildubya.

Spot the Nina time: the top and bottom rows of unchecked letters have SHOPPING PRECINCT. Inside the grid, there’s MARKS and SPENCER, along with BOOTS and BORDERS (although I guess one or both of those two could have been happy accidents). Has anyone spotted any more shops?

A very enjoyable puzzle but I still don’t really understand 2.

Across
9 LOADS,TONE - another spelling of “lodestone”.
11 N(LIFT I)*Y - NIFTILY.
13 BO(O)TS - a “bot” is a type of malware (others are viruses and trojans) which allows a remote attacker to control a host machine.
14 H(ANY IDEA)*E - HYAENIDAE, another way of saying “hyenas”. I’d never heard of this before and it was the last one to go in so I had all the checking letters in place.
19 SU(SPEND)ED
22 SPENCER - a close-fitting jacket and one of Winston’s middle names (the other was Leonard).
23 [-c]HANDLER - I think this is a very contemporary meaning of the word as it’s not in Chambers Online or the COED. However, “PR Account Handler” does seem to be a fairly common job title - try Googling “pr handler”.
25 IMPROV(IS)E
 
Down
1 SLING,BACKS
2 HALF-HOUR - not really sure I understand this one: “30 minutes in house or old city”. “30 minutes” is the definition, and “old city” is UR but where does “house” come into it?
3 [-c]OSSIES - which I guess must be another spelling of “aussies”.
4 P[-r]OSY
5 P(BEAR)*AINED - PEA-BRAINED.
6 IN,F(RING)E - FE is the chemical symbol for iron.
14 (RICH MY DOPE)* - HYPODERMIC.
15 (SEES TREATY)* - EASY STREET.
20 SKEWER - this looks like a not-very-cryptic definition, unless I’m missing something subtle (always a possibility).
21 MINI,ON

Posted in Independent | 7 Comments »