Independent 7204/Virgilius

by

U.K. Prime Ministers: I think there are ten of them (Major, Eden, Canning, Aberdeen, Wilson, Derby, Melbourne, Brown, Heath, Grey), which explains 17dn. We’ve become used to Virgilius cleverly fitting them in and avoiding strange words, although I’d never heard of 20ac and only got it from the anagram.

Across
1 A TRIA{l}
4 DEMERARA — (made rare)*
9 TRI(HE’D)AL — three-faced
10 MAJOR — 2 defs
11 RIG IDLY
12 OBE(SIT)Y
13 OP PR{of}ESSORS
16 EDEN — CD referring to the Garden of Eden
19 N OR M — the two central characters of the alphabet are M and N
20 EUGENE ARAM — (agree a menu)* — well there you are
22 CAN(N)ING
23 BO(L)SH I.E.
25 BRASS — 2 defs
26 LOOK SMART — again 2 defs
27 LEANED ON — yet again 2 defs
28 ETHAN — I think it’s {m}ethan{e}, but ‘named’ seems a bit odd — perhaps it’s just to make the surface a bit better
 
Down
1 AFTERNOON — (a front one)* — nice misdirection with PM, when the puzzle is about PMs
2 RUIN {ma}G
3 ABERDEEN — (bare)* (need)rev.
4 DERBY — 2 defs
5 MELBOURNE — (one rumble)*
6 RUMMER — 2 defs
7 RE JOIN(D{oorway})ER
8 GREY — “Gray”
14 P(AREN’T)AGE
15 SQUIGGLED — (g (leg)*) in squid
17 NUMBER TEN — refers to the fact that there are ten inhabitants of Number Ten in the puzzle
18 DEC(LASS)E{mber}
21 WILSON — (slow in)*
22 CUB A — a cub is a baby bear, so Ursa Minor
23 BROWN — 2 defs, I think one of them referring to Peter Brown
24 HEAT H

7 comments on “Independent 7204/Virgilius”

  1. Thanks John.
    This one seems to be a companion piece to his (Brendan’s) recent American presidents one in the Guardian.
    Just one thing…
    I think the Rugby hero is more likely to be this Brown.

  3. Thanks for the post, John. Great stuff yet again from Virgilus. Is there a published collection of Virgilus/Brendan’s crosswords?

    I also had to guess EUGENE ARAM from the crossing letters and fodder. I think I’d only previously heard of Bulwer-Lytton in the context of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. (The “lyttony” of winners has some wonderful examples….)

  4. Yes, another great themed one from Virgilius. Counting the PMs and finding I still had two to go helped me with the tricky SE corner. Re query in 3 above, I do not think there is such a collection. Re the pseudonyms quoted, I think copyright to those puzzles would be held by two different newspapers.

  5. 26 across did for me here. I put “look sharp”, which seems (and still seems) a perfectly reasonable answer. It’s actually more familiar to me than “look smart”. Thereafter, I had no chance of getting 17 down, although I should have spotted the PM theme from Major and the rest.

  6. I confidently put “look sharp” in, but since N_M_E_ couldn’t realistically be anything other than NUMBER, and nothing P_N made sense, the P had to be wrong. It was my fault as a solver, not Virgilius’s.

Comments are closed.