Monday Prize Crossword/28 Nov
A Crux crossword that most certainly will not cause a storm of comments here. It’s a nice enough puzzle, but it is like Cincinnus recently said to me: “You really are at one of the loneliest places @ Fifteensquared, aren’t you?”. Yes I am. And does it bother me? Not really.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BACK TO FRONT | In disorder, like soldiers returned from leave |
| Double definition | ||
| 7, 28 | TEE OFF | Rich man takes drugs to get started |
| TOFF (rich man) around EE (two E’s, each meaning ‘drug’) | ||
| 9 | RERUN | Insurer unable to cover race again |
| Hidden solution: [insu] RER UN [able] | ||
| 10 | ON THE SPOT | Where cream may go straight away |
| Cryptic definition plus, as PaulB says @1, a ‘normal’ definition | ||
| 11 | NEBULISER | Blue rinse, restyle then spray |
| (BLUE RINSE)* | ||
| 12 | ABORT | Jack or Tom’s first to pull the plug |
| AB (Jack, a sailor) OR T[om] | ||
| 13 | SEABIRD | A bride’s crazy one might follow a wake |
| (A BRIDE’S)* | ||
| 15 | YARD | Cart backs up a few feet |
| Reversal of DRAY (cart) | ||
| I am not very happy with the use of ‘up’ here, while I also think the clue is ambiguous and might lead to DRAY just as easily. | ||
| 18 | MOOT | Low investment finally up for discussion |
| MOO (low) + [investmen]T | ||
| 20 | CASCADE | Scoundrel, boxed in, falls in the river |
| CAD (scoundrel) in CASE – ‘in case’ being clued by ‘boxed in’ | ||
| 23 | IDEAS | Theories said to be mistaken about energy |
| (SAID)* around E (energy) | ||
| 24 | ALL SQUARE | Quits everything conservative |
| ALL (everything) + SQUARE (conservative) | ||
| 26 | ALUMINIUM | Alloy’s 40% metal |
| 40% of the word ‘alloy’ is AL, which represents ALUMINIUM, a metal | ||
| 27 | ISLET | Scrabble tiles spelling “inch” |
| (TILES)* | ||
| 29 | HEAVY ROLLER | One should ensure a level playingfield |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BARONESS | One’s found in pubs, a proper lady! |
| ONE’S inside BARS (pubs) | ||
| 2 | CEREBRAL | Rice, for example, entertains British intellectual |
| CEREAL (rice, for example) around BR (British) | ||
| 3 | TONAL | Some put on a lesson of sound quality |
| Hidden solution: [pu] T ON A L [esson] | ||
| 4 | FLOSSED | Fluorine untraceable, it’s said, in treated teeth |
| F (fluorine) + LOSSED (homophone of ‘lost’) | ||
| 5 | OUT-TRAY | Finished work at the office, here |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 6 | THESAURUS | The brontosaurus, half ruined, in old storehouse |
| THE [bronto] SAURUS | ||
| Initially I thought this had to be an anagram of ‘the+bronto’ or ‘the+saurus’, ruling out THESAURUS as something far too obvious. | ||
| 7 | TIPTOE | Go carefully with advice to egghead |
| TIP (advice) TO E (egghead, ie the first letter of ‘egg’) | ||
| 8 | ESTATE | A car for the Italian summer |
| ESTATE (a car) is the Italian word for ‘summer’ | ||
| Learned something today! | ||
| 14 | IRONSMITH | Master forger identified in press: a well-known name |
| IRON (press) + SMITH (a well-known name) | ||
| 16 | PARALLEL | Rainbow’s colours are all seen in pearl, strangely |
| ALL inside (PEARL)* | ||
| So, the colours of the rainbow are parallel?? | ||
| 17 | DESERTER | Did he refuse to go 1 across? |
| Someone who doesn’t want to go ‘back to front’ (1ac) – cryptic? | ||
| 19 | TSARINA | Empress’s soldiers guarding nerve gas |
| TA (soldiers, Territorial Army) around SARIN (nerve gas) | ||
| 20 | CALUMNY | Many pointless clues need editing – that’s insulting! |
| (MANY CLU[es])*, E and S being the points (East and South) to be deleted | ||
| 21 | MIKADO | Emperor Michael’s brief song and dance |
| MIK[e] (Michael’s brief ) + ADO (song and dance) | ||
| Actually it is ‘Michael’s brief, brief’, isn’t it? | ||
| 22 | REBUFF | Turn away Polish – again! |
| Double/cryptic definition | ||
| 25 | QUITO | Leave nothing as capital |
| QUIT (leave) + O (nothing) | ||
Good blog and good puzzle with some great ideas, though agree 15A probably not the tightest. 6D, well, yeah all right then. Just one thing, ON THE SPOT is cd&d.
Hi Sil – thanks for the blog.
I think 16d is ok – in a rainbow the colours are arranged in circles with a common centre. Though ‘parallel’ in geometry usually applies to straight lines, it is also used of curved lines with a common centre, so it is correct to describe the colours of the rainbow as parallel.
cf. OED (on-line edition):
[Parallel]In Geom. applied to straight lines in the same plane, or to planes, which never meet however far produced in either (or any) direction;[…] more rarely applied to curved lines or surfaces which are continuously equidistant, i.e. which have common normals at all points (e.g. concentric circles or spheres)…
Even with solvers couldn’t get the last word of 10a, 7d, 8d & 19d .
Don’t think I would ever have got estate. I know French words and some German words are fair game but where does it all end?