Monday Prize Crossword/Dec 16
My last blog of 2013 and yes, surprise surprise, a Dante!
On the day this blog goes online I’m outside the UK (yes, do have a guess 🙂 ). And so, dear all, it is not possible for me to reply to comments before new year’s eve.
Happy New Year!
Definitions are underlined wherever possible and/or appropriate.
| Across | ||
| 1 | PATIENCE | Waiting without complaint for a game (8) |
| Double definition | ||
| 5 | SPENDS | Pays out for odds and ends (6) |
| SP (odds, Starting Price) + ENDS | ||
| How a simple clue can be utterly elegant! | ||
| 9 | ASSEMBLE | Group together competent to contain return of disorder (8) |
| ABLE (competent) around SSEM (reversal (‘return’) of MESS (disorder)) | ||
| 10 | SOCCER | Possibly score a hundred in popular game (6) |
| (SCORE)* around C (a hundred) | ||
| I am not a great fan of using “in” this way but setters do it. | ||
| 12 | EXACT | It’s nice to enforce payment (5) |
| Double definition | ||
| 13 | PALE GREEN | Fence given new colour (4,5) |
| PALE (fence) + GREEN (new) | ||
| 14 | LEGATO | Breaks a leg, has to play on without pause (6) |
| (A LEG)* + TO | ||
| 16 | REMOVED | Having made a withdrawal, go into the red (7) |
| MOVE (go) inside RED | ||
| 19 | OCTOPUS | A short month to work one finds, in the main (7) |
| OCT[ober] + OPUS (work) | ||
| 21 | CANDLE | It declines to afford illumination (6) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 23 | PHILATELY | Injured hip not long ago, in pursuit (9) |
| (HIP)* + LATELY (not long ago) | ||
| 25 | LINER | Vessel found in the kitchen bin? (5) |
| Double definition | ||
| 26 | EUCLID | With a new clue I’d get this mathematician (6) |
| (CLUE I’D)* | ||
| 27 | INITIATE | Start to teach (8) |
| Double definition | ||
| 28 | ENRAGE | Wild anger to a point is still anger (6) |
| (ANGER)* + E (a point, East) | ||
| 29 | BETRAYAL | Double-crossing woman taking on two men (8) |
| BET (woman, Bet she is 🙂 ) + RAY (man #1) + AL (man #2) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | PLANED | Took off and levelled out (6) |
| Double definition | ||
| Not sure whether “took off” is the same as “planed”. | ||
| 2 | TESTAMENT | Trial meant to determine will (9) |
| TEST (trial) + (MEANT)* | ||
| Not sure either whether I like the anagram indicator here. | ||
| 3 | EMMET | Worker encountered me coming up first (5) |
| EM (reversal (‘coming up’) of ME) preceding MET (encountered) | ||
| The worker in this clue is an ant. | ||
| 4 | CALYPSO | Song many play badly in this way (7) |
| C (many, 100) + (PLAY)* + SO (in this way) | ||
| I always thought calypso was a dance but heigh-ho it is a song too. And it also was one for John Denver in the 70s. | ||
| 6 | PLOUGHMAN | Share pusher (9) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 7 | NICHE | Hospital situated in pleasant nook (5) |
| H (hospital) inside NICE (pleasant) | ||
| 8 | SERENADE | The evening air? (8) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| A clue in the same category as “Sea air?” for ‘shanty’ which we recently at this place (or perhaps another). | ||
| 11 | SLUR | But it’s no aspersion on the score (4) |
| Double/Cryptic definition | ||
| ‘Slur’ can mean ‘smooth play’(in music, hence ‘on the score’) in which case it is certainly not something that is not smooth (an ‘aspersion’) – well, something like that. Musically speaking (sounds like a contradictio in terminis) Dante could have linked this clue to 14ac (LEGATO). | ||
| 15 | APPEALING | Asking out? (9) |
| Cryptic/Double definition | ||
| Just make of it what you want. | ||
| 17 | VOLUNTARY | Famous trumpet piece? Not impressed (9) |
| Double definition | ||
| The dictionaries talk more about organs than about trumpets. | ||
| 18 | COMPLETE | About fifty vie to be perfect (8) |
| COMPETE (vie) around L (fifty) | ||
| 20 | SEER | He’s not blind to the future (4) |
| Double/Cryptic definition | ||
| 21 | CAYENNE | Foreign money invested in sugar crop and pepper (7) |
| YEN (foreign money) inside CANE (sugar crop) | ||
| 22 | ORDEAL | Test gold before transaction (6) |
| OR (gold) + DEAL (transaction) | ||
| 24 | INCUR | Fall into part of the main current (5) |
| Hidden solution (‘part of’): [ma]IN CUR[rent] | ||
| 25 | LATER | Afterwards? Dead right! (5) |
| LATE (dead) + R (right) | ||
Thanks, Sil & Dante.
19a: Not really a fan of “one finds in the main” as the definition here.
23a: Probably my favorite clue, with alternative definitions of “pursuit” creating some misdirection.
1d: “Planed” could mean “took off” in the sense of using a plane to smooth a piece of wood (which results in wood being “taken off”).
2d: I share your dissatisfaction with the anagram indicator.
15d: I think this is a reference to an “appeal” in cricket (Chambers: “4 a request made to the umpire from the fielding side to declare that a batsman is out”).
17d: This almost certainly is a reference to this work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Denmark%27s_March (aka the Trumpet Voluntary).