A typically excellent crossword from Virgilius to start the new year. The two themes — anagrams of colours and some other pairs of anagrams — are no doubt related in some very clever way, but unfortunately I can’t see how. No doubt someone will explain. This seemed unusually difficult for a Virgilius.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 5 | TRAFFIC LIGHTS — (if craft)* lights [lands] |
| 8 | CURE — the acute accent on the e goes |
| 9 | S TALE |
| 10 | FUN K |
| 11 | SHEEPDOG — Heep in (gods)rev. |
| 13 | SOUR CE |
| 14 | ALTERED COURSE — I suspect that I’m not appreciating the full richness of this clue: I think the def. is ‘went from’; 13 Down [stone] is an anagram of 19 [set on], as 13 Across [source] is of 16 [Crusoe], the latter two also being anagrams of ‘course’. But the way in which the clue is written doesn’t seem to say that these pairs are anagrams of each other… |
| 16 | CRUS(O)E |
| 18 | ONE’S BEST — (bones set)* |
| 20 | HOP 1 |
| 21 | C(H)ORE |
| 23 | LATE — (et al)rev. |
| 24 | A NEW DIRECTION — a(red wine)*ction |
| Down | |
| 1 | EAS(E MEN)T |
| 2 | {t}OFFS |
| 3 | facsiMILE |
| 4 | studenT HE FLUnked |
| 5 | TOUCH — 2 defs |
| 6 | CHANGED COLOUR — mile-lime, cure-ecru, stale-slate, sliver-silver, chore-ochre, late-teal are I think the anagrams |
| 7 | artiSAN I CLEarly — clues that begin ‘Some’ I always find unsatisfactory: they are a giveaway, and in my humble opinion ‘some xyz’ only at a stretch means ‘some of the letters of xyz’ |
| 12 | DIR(G)E |
| 13 | STONE — 2 defs, but why ‘really’? |
| 14 | AUREOLA — 0 in a (rule)* a |
| 15 | R(ABEL)A IS |
| 17 | S LIVER — I initially thought that ‘gland’ was a bit inappropriate for what seemed more an organ, but Chambers put me right: a large gland |
| 19 | SET ON — ‘on set’ with parts reversed |
| 21 | COD A |
| 22 | EACH — (ache)* |
I thought this was a classic with all the interlinking. Not sure at all but wondered if SET ON = COURSE (with dogs).
I found this trickier than I expected, but only easement really held me up. Quite an unusual word and the clue was interpretable in a number of ways.
CHANGING COURSE from S TO NE (south to north-east) and from SE TO N (south-east to north). 13A and 16 are both altered COURSEs.
Sorry, that should of course read ALTERED COURSE
That explains it, Testy, many thanks – I was never confident about my other theory, I’ll have to admit.
I didn’t work out that “if craft” was to be anagrammed, so ended up with LANDING LIGHTS, which totally messed up the top left corner for me. Doh!
And 1dn: oh! Goodness me, what a study in restraint Virgilius offers us here today.