Independent 7,387 by Anax (Saturday Prize Puzzle, 19/06/10)

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I had just been thinking we must be due for a Saturday Anax, and here we are. I wonder if being able to predict setters several weeks running is an early sign of having spent rather too much time on crosswords.

I must admit I couldn’t really get into this one, thought I can’t put my finger on why. Some of it was very easy and in other parts it was just very hard to see the reasoning. Thus there were a few guesses, and there will be one or two gaps in my explanations, so feel free to jump in.

*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.

Across
1 FLORA – (A ROLF)<, I guess, though the def. seems stranded in the middle of the clue.
4 LANDS END – L AND SEND.
8 STEADY ON – STEAD + YON.
9 ROOTS – R[eveal] O[ne] O[f] T[his] S[pecies].
10 TALC – [me]TAL C[oating].
12 UNECONOMIC – ON in (UN + COMIC).
13 ESCULENT – UNCLE’S* in ET.
14 COHORT – CO + (R in HOT).
15 STATUE – U in STATE.
17 CHARNECO – CHAR + ONCE*.
19 LARYNGITIS – ANGRILY* + T[r]I[e]S.
21 SUCK – S[t]UCK.
22 EXILE – (I + L) in EXE, as in an executable file, thus computer program.
23 PROHIBIT – PRO + (BI in HIT).
25 UNDERTOW – (ROUND WET)*.
26 MAYBE – (BY A)< in ME.
Down
1 FATWAHS – FAT + SHAW<.
2 OVA – roughly a hom. of “over”.
3 AS YOU WERE – (SEE OUR WAY)*.
4 LONGEST – dd.
5 NARCO – A R in NCO.
6 SHOW OF HANDS – cd.
7 NASTIER – N + (E in ASTIR).
11 COUNTRY LIFE – complete guess, something to do with “sticks”=COUNTRY and, well, it has pages at least. Sticks pages together.
14 CLASSROOM – CLAS[h] + MOORS<
16 TRADE IN – DE in TRAIN.
17 CATS-PAW – CAT + (P in SAW).
18 COCAINE – C[igarette] + O + Michael CAINE.
20 GWENT – W in GENT.
24 IVY – I[celandic] V[olcano] + hom. of “why”.

19 comments on “Independent 7,387 by Anax (Saturday Prize Puzzle, 19/06/10)”

  1. I’d love to jump in, Simon, but I only got about five clues altogether! After an easyish run of Prize puzzles, back to the normal standard with this one.

  2. Simon, I think 11d is COUNTRY SIDE (although I would have thought page = sides together, not vice-versa). Also, I normally think of “countryside” as one word

  3. Er… Put brain in gear before posting comments. Strictly speaking a side is is the same as a page so “page = sides together” doesn’t make any more sense than vice-versa. I’ll leave it to others to suggest an explanation.

  5. I thought this was a really first class puzzle with generally brilliant surfaces masking the fact that we are in the wonderful world of Anax where nothing is what it seems – top marks for deviousness. The two I had most problems with were 6 down, where I filled in SHOW OF HANDS because nothing else seemed to fit and it seemed to work with “digital” but else left me perplexed; and 11 down where I couldn’t really come to terms with COUNTRY SIDE (if that is what it is) being two words. 2 minor corrections to the blog: 12 across “une” not “un”; and a typo at 14 across (should of course read COHORT).

  6. A very devious one indeed. I struggled to complete, couldn’t fully understand the wordplay of a dozen clues and got several wrong! And call me a dope or a charlie, but I think Anax has made a hash of 18d: according to my Oxford DoE ‘blow’ is slang for cannabis, not cocaine, and surely they are made from entirely different stuff.

  7. Yes, it was new to me too, but Chambers does define ‘blow’ as US slang for cocaine, as well as British slang for cannabis.

  8. And funnily enough I didn’t even refer to the dictionary (naughty boy). My memory of BLOW=COCAINE was thanks to the old rap classic White Lines by Grandmaster Flash, which is all about cocaine and uses “blow” as a refrain in several parts of the song.

  11. so was it country life or country side (or even country file?)
    And pardon my ignorance but where were are the nurses in cohort?

  12. Solution’s not appeared yet but I think it’s COUNTRY LIFE (magazine, with ‘pages’ giving the idea). ‘Nurses’ is a v trickily misleading containment indicator. Sexy = HOT CO = Fellow as in eg copilot. Hope this helps.

  13. A very tricky one, I guessed at country file in the end as in a file of papers and a TV programme. Still don’t get what anax was after. Thought cohort was a clever use of nurses I’ve not seen before and was a chuckle audible moment.

  14. was happy with hot and co but must say i missed that sense of nurses but appreciate it now.
    I’m with flashling on the country file answer but thought anax might elucidate.
    a demain.

  15. @ redddevil

    COUNTRY LIFE indeed. “Sticks pages together” refers to the countryside often being referred to as “the sticks”; COUNTRY LIFE is a magazine whose pages are a collection of items concerning our rural bits. Not a classic CD, although COUNTRY LIFE is a classic song by 6d; other good ones are 1a, 4a, 9a, 22a, 25a, 26a, 3d and 18d.

  16. The online puzzle confirms “country life”

    Too convoluted for me – many of my answers were pure guesswork, confirmed by the “check” button without understanding why. Others, though I got them from the word-play, I’ll have to look up now – what on earth is “esculent”?

  17. ESCULENT, maybe not on the tip of everyone’s tongue but I managed to work it out from the wordplay and dicts confirm it means ‘eatable’.

  18. I struggled with this and gave up with a couple unsolved – 21, where I crossed out SUCK as I wasn’t sure enough that it matched ‘drain’, and 18 where I didn’t know about “blow”, though the rest of it now seems perfectly gettable from C?C?I?E.

  19. What really gets me is I’ve seen 6dn loads of times and it actually stopped me putting it in the grid for a while as I couldn’t see the link to the duo. Steve and Phil are good but I completely missed the songs till Anax pointed them out.

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