Independent 7456/Dac

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The usual excellent crossword from Dac. There is absolutely nothing (apart perhaps from 20dn) that I have any problem with, and all the clues have a deceptively simple and elegant surface.

Across
1 HOPELESS — referring to the pairing of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the ‘Road to …‘ films; when Crosby was on his own he was without Hope (actually he wasn’t hopeless then, probably rather better, but that’s not the point)
5 RABBIT — 2 defs
9 REST-CURE — Ur in (Crete’s)*
10 ADO RE {brothe}R
11 Buxton And, Typically, Harrogate Spa
12 ENCLOSURE — 2 defs
14 C ENTRE(STAG)E — stag is men only
18 LOVE-IN A MIST — love-in a.m. (it’s)*, the flower
21 MON(T ERR)EY — I suspected that Dac had made a mistake here, until I discovered that the Monterey that features in John Steinbeck’s novels is a quite different place from this, indeed is in a different country
22 WE B(E)R
23 GRAM MY
24 C.H. IN ATE A
25 STEPPE — (pets)rev. PE
26 A PP AREN’T
 
Down
1 HARD{y} BACK
2 POSITING — P.O. siting
3 LUC{k} AS — referring to George Lucas
4 SCREENSAVER — 2 defs, one of them whimsical
6 ANDROMEDA — (modern)* in ad, a: a = about is an abbreviation that is in Chambers but always surprises me by not being more often used by setters
7 BAR(QU)E
8 T(ERSE)R
13 CHARITY SHOP — (history)* in chap
15 RELIEF MAP — (fail{u}re MEP)*, definition simply ‘plan’, very nice clue
16 BI(MBE)TTE{r}
17 STAR PART — (trap rats)rev.
19 1 M AGES
20 INMATE — (matine{e})* — the Birdman of Alcatraz was an inmate — I’m not absolutely convinced that ‘Early end to special matinee’ is an indication to shorten matinee and then make an anagram of it; ‘Special early end to matinee’ would be OK, but perhaps Dac was favouring the surface — at any rate that’s my excuse for eventually failing on this one
22 sWAN DAily — referring to the film ‘A Fish Called Wanda’

10 comments on “Independent 7456/Dac”

  1. John, thanks for the blog.
    Thanks to Dac also for another nice puzzle.
    Favourite clue 26A, for ignoring punctuation.
    Re6D: You may be quite right about “a”=”about”, but perhaps it didn’t need to apply here. Believe the last “a” in “andromeda” is refered to by “…article” in the clue.
    Also, I note the rare use of “qu” for “queen”, from the usual “er”,”r” or even “q”, in 7D.

  2. Many thanks, John. BARQUE was the only one I couldn’t see, getting fixated with the R in ADORER being the queen reference. I’m sure it’s been done before, but I really liked STAR PART.

    Like scchua, I took the A in 6dn to be ‘article’.

    Dac never disappoints – good puzzle again today.

  3. Further general comment. Funny how a moan presumably in the right place can have the desired effect. No more flickering and i didn’t notice java updating itself but hey! Thanks sidey for http://www.crosswordsolver.info/ address but have to admit i couldn’t navigate to the reqd page, evenso the compiler looks interesting.

  4. This was a gentle exercise with not too many of Dax’s trademark abbreviations. The only one I had not seen before was Tr. for translator but, yes, it is in Chambers and Collins. I had the same problem as John not realising that Monterrey and Monterey are two diiferent places but the wordplay is quite clear.

    I liked the clue to Love-in-a-mist and I finished with Bimbette working my way through CBE, DBE, GBE, KBE, CBE and OBE to get the right order.

  5. This was a very enjoyable puzzle. I had a bit of trouble with the top left corner, mainly because I convinced myself for a while that 11 across must be gates because that was hidden in “Harrogate spa” and also the l and s towards end of 1 across did make it look like it might be an anagram of solo. My favourite clues were 18 across and 17 down.

  6. Thanks for the blog, John. As you say, an excellent puzzle, even by the exalted standards of Dac. I esp liked HOPELESS, RABBIT, ENCLOSURE, GRAMMY, CHARITY SHOP, STAR PART, INMATE.

  7. Thanks John/Dac, never come across barque before. 1ac had me going thinking about Crosby Stills Nash & Young rather than Bing until it twigged.

    Usual nice stuff from Dac, did wonder about stag=men rather than man but we did have recently a similar thing with hen (parties).

  8. Everyone’s so kind to me. Yes I was quite wrong in my parsing of 6dn and my a = about is clearly a red herring: obviously ‘about’ is needed to get ad round the outside of the anagram.

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