Monday 17 May 2010

No 9844, Monday 17 May 10, Gridman

ACROSS
1   - By order, behead no stupid person (8) - BONEHEAD*
5   - Creep on dam, do! (6) - {WEIR}{DO}
9   - Standard a couple of females at home have for what paper may be coated with (8) - {PAR}{A}{FF}{IN}
10 - What one did on the doormat pretty much is plain (6) - STEPPEd
12 - Strip of wood is almost bluish-grey (4) - SLATe
13 - Thinner bit of raga included in composition of inept tune (10) - {TU{R}PENTINE*}
15 - Help get comfy at bedtime (4,2) - TUCK IN [CD]

17 - A piece of the action in golf? (5) - DIVOT [CD]

20 - Wrongdoer abandons soft part of target (5) - sINNER
21 - Managed to be back on tier that's of little breadth (6) - {NAR<-}{ROW}
24 - Rep felt cup is broken and becomes tense (10) - PLUPERFECT*
27 - Enemy surrounding large ice sheet (4) - F{L}OE
 29 - Kind of dismissal suffered by foreign one taking part in conducted tour (3,3) - {R{UN} OUT*}
30 - Without a crew, deprived of strength of mind (8) - UNMANNED [DD]
31 - Company of players to gather, we hear (6) - TROUPE(~troop)
32 - Rummage broken lunettes (8) - UNSETTLE*
DOWN
1   - Give the skip to a kind of surgical procedure (6) - BYPASS [DD]
2   - Just condition met by young boy (6) - {NORM}{AL}
3   - Sound set provided in Hampi's outer limits (4) - {H{IF}I}
4   - What you might say as you leave in France (5) - ADIEU [E]
6   - Consumed bit of what neta eagerly passed back (5) - EATEN [T<-]
7   - Respite for church official covering public relations unit (8) - {RE{PR}{I}EVE}
8   - You can't make one without breaking an egg (8) - OMELETTE [CD]
11 - Footloose writer in Californian town recalled beginner(6) - {O{PEn}NER<-}
14 - Say “I'm happy” as a Siamese might (4) - PURR [CD]

16 - Ruler, one replaced by you, said to have endless fun in martial art (4,2) - {K(-i+u)UNG} {FUn}
17 - Abandon an ornament (4) - DROP [DD]
18 - Discourage girl's rip-it posture (8) - {DIS}{PIRIT*}
19 - Hint that disparate union is about to wind up (8) - {INNU{END}O*}
22 - Scheme by the alien for a heavenly body (6) - {PLAN}{ET}
23 - Dog, with its tail docked but possessing a bit of dependability, for church official (6) - BEAg{D}LE 
25 - Provide oriental bit of wit (5) - {E}{QUIP}
26 - About unknown clergyman (5) - {C}{ANON}
28 - Feeling of malice in chacha telling (4) - HATE [T]

37 comments:

  1. Hi folks

    Quite a refreshing start to the Gridman assembly line. Enjoyed solving pretty fast.

    SLAT and WEIRDO flashed at once because of recent appearance of SLATE and WEIR.

    9A - Liked this.

    10A - Nice pun on 'plain'.

    17A - DIVOT - @ Deepak, many golfing terms blasting in these days.

    24A - Again, a nice pun on 'tense' and a nice anagram.

    29A - Good clue.

    30A - UNMANNED - anno of the latter half not clear. Yet to check the blog anno.

    3D - Nice clue. 'Sound' likely to give a homophonic idea. I guess in modern usage, the hyphen in HI-FI is dropped although it is the abbreviation of a hyphenated word HIGH-FIDELITY.

    14D - Anno not clear. Will check the blog entry.

    16D - Liked this.

    23D - Best of the day, according to me. DOG's tail in BEAGLE dropped and a bit of DEPENDABILITY inserted, giving us BEADLE.

    I thought regular clues relating to Christianity and the Bible were only part of MM's crosswords. Gridman has three today. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. 14D - Say “I'm happy” as a Siamese might (4) - PURR [CD]

    I beg your pardon. I took it as PAIR, because of the Siamese (twin) reference.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deepak
    I like the pictures that you select and insert more than the solutions themselves!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Further to CV's point, I wonder where you find the time to fish out all these pictures !

    ReplyDelete
  5. 11 D Reno is a town in Nevada. There doesn't seem to be one in California, though there are Renos in some other states. However the clue was solvable even taking this into account.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Richard (as you might have realised)
    UNMANNED as in a certain kind of railway levelcrossing in India or scores of a certain kind of satellites that are hurtled into space

    ReplyDelete
  7. The pictures add a nice dimension to the solution.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks CV re UNMANNED. I have heard of such level-crossings and satellites. It is the reference to 'deprived of strength of mind' that foxed me.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Re 11d: Veer too elsewhere noted the rare mistake in a Gridman crossword. Must have slipped in different stages of checking. Indian crossword composers are handicapped (this may be construed as non-PC as someone in the Letters column of TH objects to the use of expressions such as 'lame excuse' 'limping back to normalcy' - anyway) by lack of 'test solvers' and 'crossword editor'. The onus is ON US, they may say!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Maybe Gridman believes that women cannot become nervous! Ha, ha, ha!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Fair amount of messy stuff like turpentine, paraffin etc today

    ReplyDelete
  12. Gridman arrives - a spell of cool showers after a long, hot summer.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Regarding 30A - Without a crew, deprived of strength of mind (8) - UNMANNED [DD], On hindsight I think I should have classified as CD as 'Without a crew' and 'deprived of strength of mind' mean the same. No one controlling an unmanned craft means the craft is deprived of the strength of mind

    ReplyDelete
  14. We had something more like a storm here in Bangalore last night as a result of which large parts of Bangalore were without power for the best part of the night. Hopefully that's the end of our summer for the year.

    ReplyDelete
  15. 2 - Just condition met by young boy (6) - {NORM}{AL}
    I had put as Norman , as norm is just and Norman fitted for the boy without affecting 12 AC slat.but your solution fits perfectly for the young boy also.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thanks CV & Richard,
    "A picture is worth a thousand words" is in my mind when I am searching for them

    ReplyDelete
  17. @Dr RP
    2 - Just condition met by young boy (6) - {NORM}{AL}
    This is how I see it
    Just = Definition
    condition = NORM
    met by = connector or can also be seen as a position indicator
    young boy = AL
    Just = {NORM}{AL}

    ReplyDelete
  18. LNS
    If Gridman were to read this he might think you were saying the clues for TURPENTINE and PARAFFIN were messy. He needs to be reassured that you were merely commenting on the substantive nature of the materials in question! Richard, don't start on 'substantive', 'substantial', 'sum and substance' etc! Just put in a word that came to me.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Richard
    I am relieved to find that 'substantive' does mean 'relating to substance'.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I think Gridman's a devout Christian. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a Reverend.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Gridman a devout Christian? A Reverend? lol!!!

    Let me inform you all that I am also a member of the club of admirers for the Colonel's cute and apt pictures!

    ReplyDelete
  22. He may also be a WEIRDO or a BONEHEAD with HATE in his heart. One who can never get a REPRIEVE.

    ReplyDelete
  23. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Just to get away from Gridman's personality disorders (he may have to have a few, considering some of his devious clues that we all so enjoy, :-)), I had a question about 23Dn just so I can file one more cryptic solving tip away:

    23 - Dog, with its tail docked but possessing a bit of dependability, for church official (6) - BEAg{D}LE

    Assuming here DOG = BEAGLE, then, the phrase, "with its tail docked" should only imply "BEAGL(-e)", is it not? Is it considered ok for Dog to do double duty as it does here: Dog = Beagle as well as deleting "g" from Bea(-g)le?

    Thank you

    ReplyDelete
  25. @Veer,
    You are absolutely right, I too had the same doubt, I too feel Gridman has erred here

    ReplyDelete
  26. Could it be that doG's tail, the letter G, removed from BEAGLE? I took it that way.

    ReplyDelete
  27. CV: I was gardening all day today (Sunday) just to avoid stuff like WD-40, Windex, paints and thinners. I had a great afternoon and tried THC after a break. And there it was, leaping at me, like the Revenge of Montezuma, thinner, turpentine, paraffin etc etc. :)

    ReplyDelete
  28. Richard has got it! He has read Gridman's mind!
    Dog, - BEAGLE
    with its tail - G - tail of DOG, as 'it' can go back to dog
    docked - cut from BEA[g]LE
    but possessing a bit of dependability, - placing D
    for
    church official

    ReplyDelete
  29. Richard, I doubt it. Can DOG be a "definition clue" as well as a source for letter deletion? I'm not sure.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Chaturvasi, that's a nice explanation.

    BTW, you don't like Gridman either huh? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  31. CVasi Sir: Do you happen to have examples of the reversion device that you are suggesting used in other published clues? First time I have seen it in my small experience and it is very intriguing as a device.

    ReplyDelete
  32. My comment about about Gridman was not meant to be taken literally!

    ReplyDelete
  33. Sandhya, don't know about the rest, but people living in this part of the country, Chennai that is, wouldn't even dream of taking it literally - at least not during this time of the year.

    ReplyDelete
  34. @VJ: See the Col's comment about the storm in B'lore :)

    ReplyDelete

deepakgita@gmail.com