Independent 6565/Dac — a river runs through it.
Posted by Colin Blackburn on October 31st, 2007
Usual high quality fare from Dac: excellent surfaces, good clear wordplay, and at least one I have failed to get.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | FLIGHT CREW — F+LIGHT+CREW(e) — “Those serving in air” is an excellent definition here. It naturally runs into the next word, “force”, and led me to think of (the) FEW once I had the initial F. |
| 11 | GREENGAGE — GAG in GREENE — a plum. |
| 13 | TRIDENT — I’D in TRENT — river one. |
| 15 | EMETIC — ITEM< in EC — an EMETIC is a drug causing vomiting. EC = European Community. |
| 16 | FORSOOTH — S+O+O in FORTH — river two and an excellent old word. |
| 24 | LASAGNE — SAG(e) in LANE — “country way” is LANE rather than RUSTICA as the surface might suggest. |
| 28 | STUMBLING — (MUST)* + BLING — BLING is showy jewellery. I saw the ING ending and pencilled in RING having ruled out EARRING. It took me a while to see BLING and then the obvious initial anagram. |
| 30 | ? — ST+?? or ?? in ST — “Though guided by saint, one may go downhill fast(4)” Any ideas? STEP springs to mind but I can’t justify the EP to myself. It looks like this is SLED from S+LED. |
| 31 | SAINT PETER — (TAPE ISN’T)* + ER — he was described as a rock. |
| Down | |
| 2 | IMAGINE — G in I+MAINE — fancy = IMAGINE |
| 3 | HIGHSMITH — HIGHS + “myth” — I think this refers to Patricia Highsmith though I don’t know her work. “story-telling” leads to the homophone of myth. |
| 7 | PLACEBO — PLACE+BO(y) — The definition here sort of needs the whole clue but the clue itself isn’t &lit… |
| 8 | SWEATSHIRT — (T+WEARS THIS)* &lit —…but this one is and is elegantly simple. |
| 14 | VERBALISES — BALI in VERSES — my favourite clue, just for Dac spotting Bali in there. |
| 17 | STEAMED UP — S + TEAMED UP |
| 18 | ANGELICA — ANGEL+I+CA(ke) — the definition here can only be “decoration” though it’s hard not to read “cake” as doing double duty. |
| 27 | WEAR — double def. — the third river and the one I can’t quite see from my window though I can see the tree-lined valley. |
October 31st, 2007 at 2:56 pm
I thought 30ac might be SLED.
October 31st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Thanks, that’s sounds spot on. I always forget that S can mean saint. Thus it is S+LED = “guided by saint”
October 31st, 2007 at 3:50 pm
1A – I first filled in GROUND CREW, which seems to work fine with the clue if you take the definition as “Those serving in air force”.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:33 pm
SLANG
It seems that Dac is using “large number” to clue N. Why the “large”? The surface is marginally better, I suppose, but it looks to me as if we are being unnecessarily misled.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:54 pm
n = large number A point that did occur to me too when solving. In maths n is generally an unspecified number (integer) but the concept of largeness is there in say “to the nth degree”. In support of the setter, Chambers does say “implicitly a large number (informal)”.
Excellent puzzle, as always from Dac, which I found a bit harder than normal.