Independent 7695/Dac

by

As always a lovely crossword from Dac. I solved it online and didn’t time myself, but there seemed to be nothing of any great difficulty here: it all went in very smoothly, something that is not always true for this solver, even with Dac.

Across
7 ACH(ILL)ES
9 A M ORAL — not ethical in the sense that it is outside the domain of morality rather than being unethical
10 FaR EAsT — I’m not completely comfortable here, since Chambers says that a frat is a fraternity and that a fraternity is a North American college association, not a single member of that fraternity. But perhaps other dictionaries give the single sense.
11 WHOLESALER — “hole sailor”, the definition being ‘Merchant’ — very good clue, even by Dac’s standards
12 DELPHI — (I’d help)*, with rebuild the anagram indicator that follows the anagrist, fine in my opinion but not I think everyone’s
13 ISRAELIS — (Serial is)*
15 BROUGHT TO MIND — 2 defs
17 GRUESOME — “grew some”, the ‘sounding’ referring to the bit that precedes it
19 S{alad} CREAM
21 CAMEL’S HAIR — (male’s)* in chair
23 lasT ASSignment
24 COMM{a} ON — referring to the Comma (or is it comma? I’m never sure) butterfly
25 KEEL OVER — keel over (i.e. reversed) is leek, a vegetable
 
Down
1 SCARFE — ({terribl}e frac{a}s)rev.
2 DICTAPHONE — (I noted chap)* — I hadn’t heard this word being used for a while, but it’s going strong (over 5 million hits on Google) and has become a generic word like hoover
3 CL{ass} OWNING
4 CAREER — care (re)rev. — career in the sense ‘the car careered down the hill’
5 TO S.A. — this dog
6 GAME BIRD — ({C}ambridge)*
8 SHOT IN THE DARK — 2 defs, one literal, one metaphorical
14 E MiG RATION — MiG
15 BAR B ADOS
16 OB SERVER
18 confrontatiON IS ROmeo — hidden rev. — Orsino from Twelfth Night
20 AU STEN
22 {J}EMMY

7 comments on “Independent 7695/Dac”

  1. Re 10 – Is the printed version different today? Online the clue is “US student group in Far East, oddly”, with “US student group” the uncontroversial definition. Hang on – you did it online too! Didn’t you notice “group”? Or maybe they’ve corrected it since you did it.

  2. Thanks John, and Dac for another enjoyable puzzle.

    Re 10A FRAT, I think it works if one considers the definition as “US student group”.

    My favourites were 11A WHOLESALER, a double homophone, 25A KEELOVER, one of those clue-like answers, and 21A CAMEL’S HAIR, the anagrind being woven into the clue.

  3. Thanks, John, and Dac. Some great clues here, some already mentioned, eg WHOLESALER, GRUESOME, CAMELS HAIR, CLOWNING, but all excellent.

  4. Delightful Wednesday fare from Dac, as always. All went in steadily, with my favourites being pretty much the same as nms.

    Thanks for blogging, John.

  5. Yes, agreed. Another excellent puzzle from the Independent. As mentioned above I don’t think there’s any controversy about the FRAT, and this was in any case a nice one. My fave or COD too was CAMEL’S HAIR. As for ‘I’d help rebuild’ etc, I think Dac considers the anargam fodder as either two words or a string of letters to justify the plural usage. It doesn’t need to be ‘rebuilds’. There you are, going to the Crossword Centre mesage board occasionally can actually help!!!

  6. Thanks John. This was quite a gentle stroll except that, not knowing anything about dogs and knowing that South Africa can be SA or ZA, I went for Toza.

    I like the clue for Clowning and I was glad that the ancient city was not Ur for a change. Anyone raised on salad cream in the post-war period will know that it bears more resemblance to shaving cream than mayonnaise but the dictionary supports Dac’s definition.

Comments are closed.