Independent 6906/Dac
Posted by neildubya on December 3rd, 2008
Excellent as ever from Dac but I’m not sure about 1d and 21.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | (TEACHER TRACKS)*,CH – CHARACTER SKETCH. |
| 9 | MOO’S,E |
| 10 | M,OMEN,TO,US |
| 11 | (TIES USA)* – AT ISSUE. |
| 12 | DR,OP’S,IN |
| 13 | ACTION – double def. |
| 14 | BAT,T(I)EST |
| 17 | TURN T,AIL |
| 19 | WELL,IE – as in “give it some wellie!”. |
| 22 | COMMEN(CE)D – I initially thought this was a container and contents type clue: a word for “begun” outside CE or CH. |
| 23 | READ,MIT – the University is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. |
| 24 | S(AL)TATION – in biology this means an abrupt evolutionary change. |
| 25 | TEASE – sounds like “teas”. |
| 26 | EARLY RETIREMENT – “Early to bed and early to rise, make a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years. |
| Down | |
| 1 | COMBATANT – don’t understand this one: “soldier” is the def and CO is “commander” but I can’t see how “flagrant disregard for lost” fits in. |
| 2 | hidden in “protAGONISTs” – a muscle which contracts while another relaxes. New to me, but got it when I had a couple of letters filled in. |
| 3 | (PRIVATE OR NHS AYE)* – AVERSION THERAPY. I liked the definition here: “Off-putting treatment”. |
| 4 | TAMPER – sounds like “Tampa”. |
| 5 | REME,DIAL – “engineers” is usually RE but here it’s REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers), a corps in the British Army. |
| 6 | KING OF THE CASTLE – I think I’ve heard “noise” used to refer to someone important but I couldn’t find it in the COED or Chambers Online. Maybe it’s in Chambers proper? |
| 7 | TOO,I in (SET)* – TOOTSIE. |
| 8 | H,NOSY (going up) – HYSON, new to me, a type of green tea. Easy enough to get from the wordplay. |
| 15 | TREATMENT – double definition. |
| 16 | WILDLIFE – not really sure about this one but if “Wild life” was pure wordplay it would give FILE. |
| 18 | RAMBLER – someone who rambles and a climbing plant, usually a rose. |
| 20 | LI(MEAD)E |
| 21 | BRUNEI – can’t account for UN here: “Sultanate, eastern one, coming under British control”. Also not sure what “control” is doing. |
| 22 | C,AS,TE[-st] |
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:21 am
Hi Neil
Re 1dn: B[L]ATANT could = flagrant – but can ‘L’ be an abbreviation for ‘lost’?
6dn: the expression is usually ‘big noise’, which is in Chambers.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
L for lost could be as in games Won, Lost or Drawn.
21D I think is EI (eastern one) under B for British and RUN for control.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
1d ‘L’ = ‘lost’ is confirmed in COED but not Chambers or Collins.
December 3rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
Exellent as usual from Dac, with the SW corner by far the trickiest for me. I agree with you about WILDLIFE. I also agree with Testy’s explanations, curiously BRUNEI was the first clue I understood and COMBATANT the last. L = lost is in dicts (e.g. COED) from league tables, but I’ve not seen it used very often in puzzles.
December 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I’ve learnt to forgo my usual Collins as first choice reference in favour of the COED when checking Dac puzzles.
December 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Dac is cool and the gang.