It’s been fairly hard to avoid the fact that 2009 is the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, but the fact that the actual day is Feb 12th must have passed me by as I didn’t cotton on straight away with this puzzle. It was all the more enjoyable once I did though. Certainly the best Radian puzzle I’ve done so far with some great clues.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | TREK – Odd letters of ThReE,K |
| 3 | WEREWOLF – (FLOWER[-d]EW)* |
| 10 | EXEGETE – Hidden in codEX, E.G. ETErnities – A new word to me. It’s ‘a person who interprets or expounds’, so says the big red book |
| 11 | OVATION – (TOO VAIN)* – ‘Doctor’ is always a good anagrind |
| 12 | GRENADE – (DANGER)*,E (one’s behind) |
| 13 | UROLITH – I think this in LIT in (HOUR)* – Really not a common word (unless you’ve had one!), and probably needed in order to fit the thematic answers. A urolith is ‘a calculus in the urinary tract’, which conjures up all sorts of painful mathematical images until you look up calculus and realise that it’s also ‘a stone-like concretion which forms in certain vessels or organs of the body, eg the kidney or gall bladder.’ |
| 14 | ETC – Hidden in sweET Chestnut |
| 15 | BAGS I – B,AG,IS< |
| 17 | ROOTS – Initial letters of Really Old Oak Tree’s Subterranean |
| 18 | FUNGI – F + G in UNI |
| 20 | LINED – N in LIED |
| 22 | SOD – S,DO< |
| 24 | TROLLOP – TROLLOP[-e] |
| 25 | NEW YEAR – (ANYW[-h]ERE)* – A very neat clue |
| 26 | ROMPING – M in ROPING |
| 27 | TBILISI – LIB < in (IT IS)* |
| 28 | YINGLISH – (LYING + HIS)* |
| Down | |
| 1 | THE DESCENT OF MAN – CD, and our Darwin reference |
| 2 | EWE LAMB – Hidden in jEWEL AMBush |
| 4 | EVOLUTION – NO.1 + odd letters of TrUe + LOVE, all < |
| 5 | ENAMOUR – MAN < in (EURO)* |
| 6 | ORIGIN OF SPECIES – (SOPORIFIC GENE IS)* |
| 7 | FINCHES – (IN CHEF’S)* |
| 8 | BEAGLE – B,EAGLE – Darwin’s ship |
| 9 | GENE – Ref. the actor |
| 16 | GALAPAGOS – A LAP in GAG,OS |
| 18 | FITZROY – 1 in (FORTY)*, with a Z thrown in! |
| 19 | ILL_WILL – LL in I WILL |
| 21 | DAWKINS – [-ha]D,A WK IN S |
| 23 | DARWIN – Anagram of the middle letters of faR AND WIde – And, finally, our theme man! |
Today’s Araucaria in the Guardian has a Darwin theme too – with some of the same answers – but shared with another famous person who was born on the same day.
I made my usual mistake, which I do every time, of spelling Tbilisi as Tiblisi. I corrected it after I realized 21 down must be Dawkins. You missed out 29across which I eventually worked out, after going through the letters of the alphabet, was [O]asis.
Yinglish ? What’s that -can’t find it in the online dictionary http://www.thefreedictionary.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinglish
Have to admit I’d never heard of it either!
I found it at http://www.dictionary.com and in Wikipedia, although it doesn’t say it’s a New York specific, which appears to be part of the definition in the puzzle.
Yinglish is in Collins (and Chambers). New York, I’d say, was given as an example of a US location.
I enjoyed this very much – is it uncool to say that here? The theme worked into the puzzle very well. I didn’t have a clue who Fitzroy was, but it was easy to work out from the clue and I won’t forget it now. Finches was connected with Darwin too, and Dawkins, in a way. Good stuff!