Comments on: Beelzebub 1,193

By: Simon Harris

Simon Harris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 10:10:07 +0000

Thanks, everyone. ARUN was top of my list of candidates, but I’d completely overlooked that it might be a proper noun, hence being befuddled by its absence from Chambers.

On the plus side, I think that’s a record number of comments for a Beelzebub post on my watch.

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 09:43:39 +0000

SKYCAP – didn’t notice that in the blog. You only check the parsing you’re not sure of, and I’ve flown from enough US airports to be familiar with the term.

A US railway porter is called a redcap and I assume that’s where the term comes from.

By: Beelzebub

Beelzebub — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 06:00:20 +0000

9d – spiffing they are, but the answer is more mundane: SKYCAP (in ODE not C)

6d – I thought this common enough – clearly the Arun must flow through a valley (or dell) some of the time, and if I’d given you Arundel, you’d not have blinked. (On my only visit to Arundel, I popped into a second-hand bookshop and emerged with a collection of Australian crosswords – how did they get there?)

By: Dormouse

Dormouse — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 17:41:21 +0000

I guessed those two – correctly, it would appear – from the wordplay. I’d never heard of the River Arun, but I see I could have just googled it. ANGER meaning monkey I could sort of see, but the second week in a row, if I’d just looked up the word from the clue I would have got it.

By: Brian-with-an-eye

Brian-with-an-eye — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:45:36 +0000

Oh, and I think I’ve got 29a too. ANGER is given in Chambers as a slang meaning for “monkey” and is formed by removing R from RANGER, a park officer.

By: flashling

flashling — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:44:38 +0000

(r)Anger is in Chambers Thes for monkey.

By: Brian-with-an-eye

Brian-with-an-eye — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 14:40:57 +0000

I think I can help with 9d. ARUN, which is a river in Sussex.