Independent 6426 by Virgilius – Much ado about Nothing- Nothing
Posted by nmsindy on May 22nd, 2007
Another amazing themed puzzle by this masterly setter. Every across answer contains two successive Os – except for the first and last, which contain another flourish – in the top one the clue contains “contents of book” i.e. its middle letters oo and the final across entry is SCORELESS DRAWS i.e. 0-0s. All this achieved with the downs being everyday words.
Solving time: 18 mins, with the theme evident fairly early on.
ACROSS
1 LICENSED TO KILL James Bond
12 ROOM crazY Moor reversed. Othello, the Moor, Shakespeare play.
14 OVERT O (ring) OK (fair)
19 LA GO ON
21 FOOLSCAP Before metric sizes came in, this was the rough equivalent of A4, though it was bigger. Draft initially refers to D being written on a dunce’s cap.
25 SHOO(t)S
28 SCORELESS DRAWS
DOWN
2 IS O TOPE
4 SNAP SHOT Still = photo
6 ON THE BOIL
7 IRON OUT Not a expert in golf, but I think you’d use a driver for the first (tee) shot, then an iron for the second.
8 LEPER A very pleasingly worded hidden.
9 CHAR COAL “charr” “cole”
18 POT (HOOK) S First reading suggested the other way around, but it’s quite OK.
20 GAL(l) I LEO “Scientist giving a lot of annoyance to one pope” An excellent @lit
22 CHOCTAW Double definition – the first referring to skating.
24 MAINS “Manes” Shocks of hair.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Another corker from the boy Virgilius. I think I twigged the theme after half a dozen or so across clues. I got 1A almost straight away from the definition and enumeration but couldn’t work out what the wordplay meant so thanks for explaining that.
Hats off, again.
May 22nd, 2007 at 2:40 pm
What was the clue for 1A? (reading these notes obviously 007 is another OO… but I’d be curious as to the actual clue).
May 22nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm
“Like Bond, as indicated by contents of book” (8,2,4)
May 22nd, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Yes, it’s the OO (or should that be 00?) status that allows for all the murdering.
014 – to which the answer is traditionally ‘double agent’ – would, presumably, only be licensed to half-kill us.
May 22nd, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Thanks for that clarification, Paul B. As one not too deeply into the Bond books and films, I’d a niggling suspicion something like that was involved.