Independent 6668/Phi
Posted by neildubya on February 29th, 2008
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | (WAS)* in DON – Les DAWSON, my favourite comedian when I was young. |
| 10 | WING,C,HAIR |
| 11 | TO[-l]KE[-i]N – Tolkein was the first name that sprung to mind when I saw “fantasy writer” but I thought that “bumping off a couple of characters” meant taking two from the beginning or end of the clue so I dismissed it and started thinking of alternatives. |
| 13 | NOT in MOO,NOUS – MONOTONOUS doesn’t look like a word you could do an awful lot with so I think Phi has done really well here: “Dull, low intelligence, not internalised”. |
| 15 | MATE in AU,R |
| 16 | A,PEELS< – another good clue with a smooth surface reading. |
| 19 | OR in MASS – we’re used to seeing “men” indicate OR but “standard servicemen” does the job and also helps with the deception in “bog standard”. |
| 25 | PI[-p]ER |
| 29 | (EVEN)* in NERD |
| Down | |
| 1 | DOWN,O in LAD – shouldn’t the definition be “podcast, say” as a podcast in one of many types of DOWNLOAD? |
| 2 | (NEW IN)*,BAG,O |
| 5 | (O,A[-s],A,RULE)* – AUREOLA. Looks easy now but at the time I had all sorts of problems parsing this. |
| 14 | (DANE I REACT)* – DERACINATE. Not an easy anagram. |
| 17 | [-cr]EDIBILITY – another one I had problems with as I thought I was looking for a word beginning C,R followed by something meaning “lacking in confidence” |
| 21 | I,C in POLY |
| 22 | BIG (going up),BON[-e] |
| 26 | hidden in “capitaL IM Assured”. |
February 29th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I really liked “low intelligence” for MOO NOUS (I really must get more used to thinking MOO whenever I see “low”).
My only real quibble was with CREDIBILITY being clued by “confidence”, are they the same?
February 29th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Bit more difficult than usual for Phi, I thought? 12ac caused me far greater problems than it should have…
February 29th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
I had the same doubts as Testy over the equivalence of credibility and confidence. And yes an unusually difficult Phi, I thought. It took me ages to get 4A, 5D (my writing in AUREOLE didn’t help), 10A and 6D.
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:14 pm
The fact that in 11A you called him Tolkein and not Tolkien hasn’t in this case been a problem. Lots of people call him Tolkein.
Sorry to be pedantic. Just thought I’d point it out.