Fifteensquared

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Archive for October 11th, 2008

Guardian 24,511 (Sat 4 Oct)/Araucaria - Ship shape

Posted by rightback on 11th October 2008

rightback.

Solving time: 9:02

A very rapid blog this week as I’m already running extremely late! I found this much easier than some of Araucaria’s recent puzzles. There is a geometric theme running through the puzzle, including various shapes, some of which are special cases of others (e.g. a square is a special case of a rectangle).

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 QUADRILATERAL; QUA + DR + (A + TEAR*) in ILL
10 ALDERS + HOT - home of much of the British Army.
11 P + IOUS
13 RECTANGLE; “WRECK” + TANGLE
14 NOR’EAST; (TREASON)*
16 RHO + M.B. + U.S.
18 MAD DOGS; ADD in MOGS - from a song by Noel Coward.
20 SHYSTER; S (= ’society’) + HYSTER[ia]
21 SQUARE + ONE
23 CREE + P - this seems the wrong part of speech for the definition (’What are reptiles doing’).
24 E + QUIP
25 [a]FRICA’S + SEE
26 PARALLELOGRAM; PAR + ALL, + rev. of ARGO in ELM
Down
2 UNDESIRED; (NUDE)* + SIRED
3 DARTS; rev. of STRAD - a Strad, or Stradivarius, is a make of violin.
4 INHERIT; IN, + E.R. in HIT
5 AUTOCAR (hidden)
6 EXPIATORY; rev. of I.E. around X,P (= ‘10p’) + A TORY
7 A + MON + [mornin]G
8 DANCING MASTER; (MAGNETIC DARNS)* - I was lucky to spot this early on from the wordplay, which probably helped towards what felt a fastish time.
9 ASSET-STRIPPER; SET in (ASS + TRIPPER)
15 APOCRYPHA; CRY in (A POP HA[s])
17 BATTER + SEA
19 SHO(PF)UL[d]
20/12 SPECIAL CASES; (PASS ECCLESIA)* - the theme of the puzzle.
22 UVULA; (U + L) in UVA (= ‘grape’) - ‘One of you’ for ‘U’?!
23 CLANG (hidden)

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