Posted by tilsit on 26th July 2007
Solving Time: 26 minutes
The answer to my question is contained in today’s 1 across. Another nice puzzle and, I’m
pleased to say, a great deal easier than his appearance as Pasquale in last Saturday’s
Guardian (more tomorrow!).
Posted in FT | 1 Comment »
Posted by linxit on 26th July 2007
The last time I blogged a Gordius puzzle was just a couple of weeks ago (10th July anyway), and it was memorable for a few things. I had to rush my cat to the vets, I burnt my dinner, and the puzzle was really really hard! So, I approached this with a bit of trepidation, and with good reason. It had a lot of similarities to last time too – some difficult words (e.g. 4dn, 14ac, 15dn, 16dn, 17dn, 24ac), some brilliant clues (I really liked 1ac, 6dn and 20ac, plus 26ac for the scatological anagram!), and another swipe at George Bush (15dn). Last time (5dn) he was defined as a primitive primate.
Posted in Guardian | 10 Comments »
Posted by neildubya on 26th July 2007
An excellent and thoroughly enjoyable puzzle from Math. There’s a theme too, but you don’t need to know anything about The Simpsons in order to complete the grid as all of the thematic words are separately defined. The long-awaited Simpsons movie opens tomorrow so I’m sure the timing of this puzzle was not a coincidence. I wonder if there were any solvers who finished this and were blissfully ignorant of what was going on? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Independent | 4 Comments »
Posted by Pete Maclean on 26th July 2007
Another elegant puzzle from Cincinnus that I found a bit more difficult than most of his.
Posted in FT | No Comments »
Posted by michod on 25th July 2007
Yes, as JFK said, I truly am a doughnut – I’ve been waiting for someone else to post, when all along it was me – d’oh! A nice Pauline puzzle anyway, mit einem Deutschen Thema – nine German words, all pretty familiar in English. Ten if you include DIESEL, named after inventor Rudolph Diesel, but I don’t think they call it that in Germany, so it’s really our word. A couple of indirect indications of the sort customary with this setter, flagged up with a ? in the clue.
Posted in Guardian | 10 Comments »
Posted by smiffy on 25th July 2007
Some good-humoured stuff from Cinephile. A little lighter on thematic content than I’ve come to expect from him, although he did exploit the idiosyncrasies of this FT-specific grid (effectively four separate quadrants) to fill the central intersection with a flock/cloud/colony/parliament of “flyers” (TIT/BAT/AUK/OWL).
Posted in FT | No Comments »
Posted by tilsit on 25th July 2007
Apologies for the lateness. Trip to Manchester that turned into a nightmare and nearly resulted in an overnight hospital stay.
Posted in Independent | 2 Comments »
Posted by neildubya on 24th July 2007
Across
1 COQUET
4ALNMOUTH This was my start point. It looked like an anagram, and that gave me 21 across.
10 AND OR RAN
11 IN DISC R IM IN ATE
12 PRE SIGNIFY Y setting of ” gins if”gave me the anagram, and then prey sprang to mind.
14 TYNE It was only after I put it in that I saw it came from twenTY NEarly.
16 COMB
18 FOUR LEGGED Again I got the answer before I saw the anagram of rule in the midst of fogged.
21 NOR THUMBER LAND. Being a well brought up boy I got the Norland reference quickly!
24 HEX HAM
25 SCHEDULE as in shed yule.
26 ALS T O N, also about t(ime) followed by Northumberland’s first.
Posted in Guardian | 13 Comments »
Posted by nmsindy on 24th July 2007
Even by Virgilius’ exalted standards, I thought this was really special – famous names reversed being a big part of it. The theme revealed itself gradually as the grid filled up.
Posted in Independent | 9 Comments »
Posted by tilsit on 24th July 2007
Solving Time: 14 minutes
Fairly straightforward fare with a couple of nice off-the-wall clues. Bit baffled by 24 down.
Posted in FT | 3 Comments »
Posted by bensand on 23rd July 2007
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | LOTHARIO – T + HARI in LOO |
| 10 | COMIC – COSMIC minus S (close to tears) |
| 11 | SEA URCHIN – SEA(U)RCH + IN |
| 16 | DONKEY – DON + KEY |
| 26 | ENNUI – “LENNON PUT IT” with odd letters removed |
| 27 | EVEN SO – stEVENSOn |
| 28 | MASTERLY – MAST + EARLY without the A for are. A is short for are, the metric land measure. Seems like an abbreviation that would be more at home in the advanced cryptics than the weekday crosswords to me |
| Down | |
| 2 | TAMIL – TA(M)IL |
| 6 | BARGAIN BASEMENT – Seller is homophone for cellar, this clue made me laugh although it was fairly easy |
| 7 | ASHMOLEAN – (HAS)* + MO + LEAN |
| 17 | IDENTITY – I DEITY around NT |
| 19 | DUNCAN – King from Macbeth and a dun is a horse of that colour |
| 20 | LORETTA – (ARISTOTLE)* without IS |
| 21 | TSETSE – transmitter is part of the definition so it’s SETS in T(RE)E |
Posted in Independent | 2 Comments »
Posted by ilancaron on 23rd July 2007
Quite a few cryptic definitions again this week – some are good, some less so. But that judgment all depends on your mood I suppose. When I don’t like a CD, I suspect it’s because I simply missed something or it was too “transparent”.
Posted in Guardian | 7 Comments »
Posted by neildubya on 22nd July 2007
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | BY (“buy”) CHOICE – “on the phone” is your homophone indicator. |
| 12 | NO MAN IS AN ISLAND – I think I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this quote in a crossword. “Douglas” is the capital of the Isle of Man. |
| 15 | A,VERA,G in ONE |
| 16 | RED (“read”),MULL,ET |
| 21 | EG<,(OUR CHEERY CAFF)* |
| 26 | C(heste)R,O,ELM<,CH – best clue of the puzzle. Lots of cryptic elements, all handled very smoothly in surface reading. It was a new word to me but easy to get from the wordplay. Explained here. |
| Down | |
| 2 | CHAR,MER(e) |
| 3 | G in ORAN |
| 7 | AGA SAGA – the last one to go and for a while I thought I wasn’t going to be to finish. I figured that “upside-down” indicated a palindrome but I just couldn’t think of a book that would fit. |
| 8 | (DENISE I)* – SINE DIE is one of those Latin phrases that I’ve never bothered to look up the meaning of. That said, it was a fairly easy anagram so I was reasonably confident it was right. |
| 14 | PLUS,F,OURS |
| 19 | ON in CYCLE |
| 22 | hidden in “TerritoriAL ARMy” |
Posted in Everyman | No Comments »
Posted by petebiddlecombe on 22nd July 2007
Solving time 48 mins, no Chambers until grid complete, 2 mistakes (32,33)
Posted in Azed | 1 Comment »
Posted by smiffy on 21st July 2007
Please excuse the late posting; I was not near a PC earlier in the day. This proved to be just the right flavour of puzzle for my footloose Friday, not overly challenging or time-consuming but offering a some food for thought. There seems to be a mini-theme going on, with the likes of 1a,9a,20a & 29a playing to the accountancy addicts in the FT gallery.
Incidentally, I notice that Adamant does not feature on Peter B’s freshly updated list of setters (an uber-blogger’s work is never done!), so will flag it with a comment in the appropriate thread.
Posted in FT | No Comments »