Independent 8007/Dac
Posted by John on June 13th, 2012
Rather a hard Dac today, I thought. The clues are as always clever and pleasing, but in one or two cases they require an unusually long stretch before you see what is happening. At times here I’m not totally confident I’ve seen it all.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | A L{i}F{t} RED — Bordeaux being a red wine |
| 4 | EDUCATOR — Cato in (rude)rev. |
| 9 | CANAPE — (a pecan)* |
| 10 | OVERTURN — (voter)* urn — one of the meanings of ‘urn’ is ‘ballot box’ |
| 12 | T(R 1 COL)OUR |
| 13 | LITHO — (h toil)* |
| 14 | GO THE DISTANCE — (tonight ceased)* |
| 17 | COMPREHENSION — co m (her)rev in pension — I think it’s that com is not apparently an abbreviation for company and M0, M1, M2 etc are in Chambers as categories of money supply in the UK, and pension is simply provision rather than financial provision — how otherwise can one explain the ‘m’? |
| 21 | FIN(D{iver})S |
| 23 | WARRANTER — I think a ‘war ranter’ is someone who shouts out in battle |
| 24 | OU(THOU)SE |
| 25 | GIBBON — (nob big)rev. — this took me a while since it seemed that the ‘on’ in the clue was the ‘on’ of ‘gibbon’ and that a gibb was a back view of a head, but evidently no |
| 26 | DREAMERS — (rearmed)* |
| 27 | AMI(E)N’S — long after Idi Amin is forgotten as a despotic ruler who caused much suffering, he will be remembered in crossword-land because his name is so useful to setters |
| Down | |
| 1 | A{wfu}L C OTT |
| 2 | FUNKING — a top comedian might be regarded as a fun king |
| 3 | EX P LOITER — here a milkman is someone who milks or exploits |
| 5 | DI(VERSION)ARY |
| 6 | CORAL — carol with its second and fourth letters transposed — def ‘It seems like rock’ |
| 7 | T(AUNT)ON |
| 8 | RANSOME D{raft} — referring to the writer Arthur Ransome |
| 11 | NONE THE WISER — (nine others we)* — def ‘in the dark still’ |
| 15 | TRI(BALI’S)M — order as in put in order |
| 16 | SCAFFOLD — 2 defs |
| 18 | MAN(ATE)E |
| 19 | NO. TABLE |
| 20 | PRUN{e} U/S |
June 13th, 2012 at 9:16 am
Thank you, John. Having been roughed up by Arachne in Another Place earlier, I feel even more battered and bruised after attempting this Dac. Perhaps my brain isn’t in gear today, but I found this hard. Clues like those for WARRANTER, FUNKING, and AMIENS are not like Dac as rule: they’re all fair, but normally he’ll lead you more clearly to the answer on a Wednesday.
I think COMPREHENSION is fine: a reversal of HER, as you say in COM for ‘company’ and PENSION. We need to think dot.com for the ‘company’ bit, I fancy.
And thanks to the setter for me having Lily the Pink going round in my head for the rest of the day …
June 13th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
I thought it was a harder than usual Dac today but very enjoyable. Thanks to setter and blogger
June 13th, 2012 at 2:57 pm
Many thanks, John, and Dac. I thought this was a fine puzzle with a lot of misleading trickery tho not particularly hard in the end.
I particularly liked FUNKING (I was looking for a comedian’s name for a long time), DIVERSIONARY, NONE THE WISER and EXPLOITER. I agree with K’s D that com probably comes from the internet abbrev for a commercial company.
June 13th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
It’s in Collins as an abbrev for an internet domain name.
June 13th, 2012 at 9:00 pm
For about 5 minutes I stared at this without being able to get a single answer. Eventually, I got a couple and it fell into place fairly steadily but the SE corner resisted for quite a long time, although putting comprehending instead of comprehension did slow things up a fair bit.
I thought some of the clues like 27 and 16 were very difficult to get without some letters in them. I’d never heard of Scaffold the group: I think technically they were called The Scaffold, so maybe that’s why the clue needs a question mark.
June 13th, 2012 at 10:43 pm
Good grief what’s going on? Dac seems to be getting harder each week and this was a tough nut to crack, perhaps Dac is aiming for a promotion to the Thursday slot.
After doing the blog for the FT prize tomorrow (which was rather easy I admit), this came as a shock as to the brain effort required, felt at times like it was a Bannsider/Dac collaboration.
Still was all fair, cheers Dac and John – not quite the easy ride you were expecting methinks.
June 13th, 2012 at 10:52 pm
Certainly very hard. For a long time, all I had was the top right corner, but after coming back to it for something like the third time I got a few more with some e-help, but still couldn’t complete it.
June 14th, 2012 at 1:09 am
I agree about the difficulty, many thanks for the blog! Still struggling to see how MANATEE is formed from ‘Large swimmer worried, being in shock’ though…what am I missing?
June 14th, 2012 at 7:46 am
We agree with the level of difficulty. Too tired last night when we finished to comment!
Max@8 – MANATEE is ATE(worried) in MANE (shock, as in a shock of hair). The ‘being in’ indicates that it wraps around. Hope this helps.
July 4th, 2012 at 4:37 am
26A John has left out the S (Socialist leader) after Rearmed*.