Guardian 24,409/Brendan – Anyone for tennis?
Posted by Andrew on September 19th, 2008
Quite a tough one from Brendan today, I thought. I was lucky to guess the two long, cleverly cross-referenced, downs early on from some crossing letters, which was a big help, but it still took a while, with some fairly devious bits of wordplay.
Key:
dd = double definition
* = anagram
< = reverse
| Across | |||
| 9 | ELEVATION | E V in ELATION | |
| 10 | HALMA | Hidden | Halma is a board game for 2 or (in this case) 4 players |
| 11 | WAITERS | I in WATERS | |
| 12 | LUCERNE | LUC(e) ERNE | Luce is another name for the pike (fish), and Lough Erne is a lake in Northern Ireland |
| 13 | IRIS | IRIS(h) | Nice reference to Bridget Jones (of Diary fame) in the surface reading |
| 14 | DEAD-NETTLE | DEAD, NETTLE | DEAD=”Not quick”, as in “the quick and the dead” |
| 15 | ENTICED | E NT ICED | NT is “bible, partly” – nice one. |
| 17 | MASCARA | A SCAR in MA | Old lady = mother = MA |
| 19 | NORWEGIANS | (IN SNOW GEAR)* &lit | A marvellous anagram to give an &lit reading to the clue |
| 22 | LAID | dd | “How eggs are produced”, obviously; I think also hatched=laid as in hatching/laying plots |
| 23 | BLOWOUT | L in BOW OUT | The enumeration is given as (7) but Chambers has this as two words |
| 24 | REPLICA | P in RELIC + A | |
| 26 | UNION | (NO IN U)< | |
| 27 | NEPHRITIC | (IN PITCHER)* | As in kidney stones |
| Down | |||
| 1 | RED WHITE AND BLUE | A variety of cross-references here: for RED: CLARET or LENINIST, WHITE: PALE, or what is around the IRIS (in the eye); BLUE: MISSPEND or PORN, and the RW&B is a flag or standard. | |
| 2 | LENINIST | NINE< in LIST | “List” can be the border on a fabric. |
| 3 | PALE | P ALE | “Beyond the pale” |
| 4 | MISSPEND | P in MISS END | |
| 5 | UNCLAD | UNCL(e) A D | |
| 6 | CHECKERS | dd | Checkers is the American name for the game of draughts |
| 7 | CLARET | CLAR(in)ET | |
| 8 | GAME SET AND MATCH | More cross-refs: GAME: HALMA or CHECKERS, SET:INTENT or LAID, MATCH:REPLICA or UNION. And of course a reference to tennis that is intended to mislead us into thinking about courts of law. | |
| 16 | CRETONNE | O N in CENTRE* | Cretonne is “a strong, printed cotton cloth, stouter than chintz but used for very much the same purposes.” |
| 17 | MANTRAPS | MANTRA PS | MANTRAP (in the singular) appeared in Brummie’s puzzle last Friday. |
| 18 | ARABISTS | BIS in A RATS | The last one I got – I guessed the word but took a while to see the wordplay. BIS is Latin for “twice” or “a second time”, and can mean “again” in various contexts. |
| 20 | ROOKIE | ROOK I.E. | |
| 21 | INTENT | IN TENT | |
| 25 | PORN | P OR N, &lit | P and N are the “extremes” of “passion”, so “P or N” is “an extreme..” |
September 19th, 2008 at 10:59 am
An excellent blog, Andrew, for what I found a pretty tough but immensely enjoyable and ingenious puzzle. Getting the multiple clues early on usually guarantees fairly plain sailing, but, as you say, not this time.
I didn’t know ‘list’ in that sense. Other than that, nothing left to comment on!
September 19th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I don’t think the reference is to Bridget Jones so much as just to Bridget as an Irish name(or Brigid, as my aunt spells it: I always understood -dget was an anglicised spelling, though I’m sure Brendan knows best!)
September 19th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Mick – I was thinking of “Bridget, without husband” as being a vague surface reference to Bridget Jones. I know it’s not really relevant to the clue.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Sorry, I see what you mean – and that’ll be why it needs to be spelt that way.
September 19th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Terrific puzzle chock full of pennydroppers. Brendan/Virgilius is right up there with my favourite compilers.
September 19th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Great puzzle, and thanks for the very clear post on it.
I wondered if 12 across can be read two different ways, either with “lake” or “pike” as the definition, since (apparently) a lucerne hammer is a type of pike in the weapon sense. But then “mostly lake” would have to be LUC, and I don’t quite see how that would work…
September 19th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
In 4-down, “Misspend” is meant to work as a homophonic synonym of “blue” or “blew”, but isn’t the tense of the verb wrong? One blows one’s wad, doesn’t one?
September 19th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
It’s not a homophone – to “blue” money is to squander it (Chambers gives this meaning, and says it’s probably derived from “blow”).
September 19th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Very clever linkage without having just one theme, and some fantastic clues.
25dn is clearly PORN, but I can’t see how this clue works. ‘An extreme of passion’ could be P or N, and I suspect the whole thing is an &lit. Can anyone help?
September 19th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Having just typed in that request for help I see the answer: ‘an extreme of passion’ is P OR N!!
September 19th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Oops, my explanation of 25dn got missed off the blog for “technical reasons” (aka cock-up on the spreadsheet front). Now added, but your reasoning agrees with mine.
September 19th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Great, original puzzle from Brendan again. I kept chugging away at it and it all eventually fell out. Nowhere as difficult as yesterday’s Pasqual, in my view. I got 1dn reasonably quickly, and, because I had put a putative L at the end of 24ac, I thought 8dn must be something and black, following a colour theme; so this held me up for a while.