1 - Rough-and-ready method by Tom's dictum? (4,2,5) - RULE OF THUMB
9 - They pull undergarments (7) - DRAWERS [DD]
10 - One boy back with another at the far end of ledge to remove covering (7) - {DIS<-}{ROB}{E}
11 - To a specified time peacekeepers get oil (5) - {UN}{TIL} TIL is Sesame but TIL by itself cannot mean OIL.
12 - PTA cheery about a perfect example (9) - ARCHETYPE*
13 - Give a dirty look to some of the bellowers (5) - LOWER [T]
15 - Shame! Dhonis veered off! Quarter of an hour lost! (9) - {DISHON*}{
18 - They keep shops smartened in a certain manner (9) - TRADESMEN*
21 - Company raised rejected rodent (5) - {COY}{PU<-}
24 - Caused injury by removing top with weapons (5) -
26 - Act with college head following ‘stop' order on a kind of research (7) - {POST*}{DO}{C}
27 - One who depletes to fall in the German case (7) - {D{RAIN}ER}
28 - His pic Colin morphed is inside the PC (7,4) - SILICON CHIP*
DOWN
1 - Communist to ponder over alien fish (3,6) - {RED} {MULL}{ET}
3 - Bigger than big (9) - OVERLARGE [E]
4 - One who would wax eloquent over models, presumably (7) - TUSSAUD [CD]
5 - And the German, to sock pieces away, moves out (7) - {UND}{OCKS*}
6 - Criticise and wildly stab at one finally (5) - {BAST*}{E}
7 - Plump pudding (4-4) - ROLY-POLY [DD]
8 - First of samples, before it's withered (4) - {S}{ERE}
14 - By-no-means a strong vice (8) - WEAKNESS [CD]
16 - Canoeing — a sport for another time (4,5) - {ONCE {A}GAIN*}
17 - It brings you to where you began the journey (5,4) - ROUND TRIP [CD]
19 - Wonderful wise men raise a large amount (7) - {MAGI}{CAL<-}
20 - Itinerant, sane, leaders of Indian culture (7) - {NOMAD}{I}{C}
22 - Yes, in Germany, primarily puerile English quip (4) - {JA}{P}{E}
23 - Ditches fifty poems (5) - {L}{ODES}
25 - Insect hovers around Pole for a period (5) - {MO{N}TH}
Good morning. I liked 20D - Itinerant, sane, leaders of Indian culture - {NOMAD}{I}{C}
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLearned a couple of new words today - Jape, Coypu, seer et cetera.
ReplyDelete13A: Never seen the word "lower" used in that context.
Liked 24A and 25D... Nice clues.
Hi folks
ReplyDeleteHad a look at the newspaper late, after a morning trip out. Found a few quite tricky.
9A and 9A - good ones.
11A - To a specified time peacekeepers get oil (5) - {UN}{TIL} TIL is Sesame but TIL by itself cannot mean OIL.
I am tempted to quote a professor of mine in college, who was a multlinguist. Sesame has been an age-old raw material for oil in India. Therefore the Sanskrit word tailam or Hindi tel is derived from it. Besides, sesame or til is also called eLL or eLLu in some south Indian languages. So ELL plus neyi (oil or ghee) is eNNai or eNNe which is oil in some languages. Fascinating, isn't it?
13A - Give a dirty look to some of the bellowers (5) - LOWER [T]
Recalled a discussion here some time ago, on how the hubbies can run the risk of getting dirty looks for being engrossed with crosswords and computers early in the morning. :-)
15A - Shame! Dhonis veered off! Quarter of an hour lost! (9) - {DISHON*}{hOUR}
Coming at a time when Team India has been shamed and MSD's captaincy is threatened !
18A - Liked this.
28A - nice anagram.
2D - Less than less (5) - LEAST [E]
3D - Bigger than big (9) - OVERLARGE [E]
These coming one after the other - characteristic Gridman.
4D - One who would wax eloquent over models, presumably (7) - TUSSAUD [CD] - cute !
Liked a few others also. A few new words as well. Learning all the time !
15A - Shame! Dhonis veered off! Quarter of an hour lost! (9) - {DISHON*}{hOUR}
ReplyDeleteRichard
I am glad that you brought this up.
Indeed Gridman must have had the proper name in his mind when he wrote it.
He must have had Dhoni's when he initially wrote the clue but at the last minute he must have checked himself and instead put in Dhonis so that no aspersion is cast on any of our hallowed cricketers.
My contention is that even if he had had used Dhoni's he could still argue that he meant only the boat and that the D takes a capital in its own right as the first letter of a second sentence.
If the reader thought that it referred to the cricketer, it was their fault.
As it is, without any subterfuge, you have had the scenario of some late-night party!
10A:
ReplyDeleteDoes anybody else have problems with clues involving proper nouns? Well I'm not really able to appreciate such clues. They seem kinda vague and loose.
@ CV: I would have had no complaints even if it was a direct reference to the hall..., I beg your pardon, the harrowed cricketers. I was only amused by the coincidence.
ReplyDeleteBTW, in Kannada also, doNi is boat, with a soft 'd'.
If Dhoni's had indeed been used, Dhoni's would have expanded to 'Dhoni has' so that it meant "Dhoni has veered off".
ReplyDeleteVJ
ReplyDeleteOK, Recast the clue as:
Young Sidney back with young Robin at the far end of ledge to remove covering (7)
Re World T20. I enjoyed the second semifinal match better than the final. How thrilling it was!
ReplyDeleteYou must have seen the glee of the Pak players as Oz wickets fell. For some 80 per cent of playtime, the match was in their favour but later things turned dramatically! How many sixers in one over as the target was chased!
The Pakistanis on the sidelines, who were jubilant in early part of the game, were now stunned and looked at each other unbelievingly. I think supporters of the Aus team were not that boisterous, were they?
CV, that was nice.
ReplyDeleteMy point is, proper nouns are fine as long as they're well defined.
I wonder why women have not objected to the Womens T20 world cup being played simultaneously, thereby the absence of TV telecast.
ReplyDeleteI see no harm in use of proper nouns if used sparingly, even though the variations available are limitless, but generally I have seen that the names used are common ones and not tongue twisters.
Just curious to know. Is dhoni a Tamil word for boat? (No, I am not dragging in MSD's captaincy of Chennai Superkings! :-))
ReplyDeleteCan someone tell me if there is any etymological connection between dhoni or doni with DHOW, the lateen-rigged coastal Arab sailing vessel with one or two masts? Dhow owes its origin to Arabic dawa
Deepak 12:36
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with you. The fixtures should have been held at different times.
In passing reference, I quote a friend: Cricket is essentially a women's game, what with maidens, slips, fine legs, long legs....
Is it a silly point? Hope our solver sisters here won't take offence.
Menfolk won't. Because every one of them, in their prime time, may have tried bowling a maiden over in any case.
In malayalam also 'Thoni' (pronounced as I have written it) means boat
ReplyDeleteDhoni is very much a Tamil word. It is in a Tamil dictionary that I have in my library. It is not in any of the three or four dictionaries of Indian words in English that I have (the latter do have dhobi and dhoti). However, its use in an English crossword might be defended (or so it seems) as Wikipedia has a long entry on the word.
ReplyDeleteI can spell the word in Tamil but I am not sure whether it is pronounced dhoni or thoni (as in Malayalam) for the Tamil dictionary is useless when it comes to pronunciation. .
Richard
ReplyDeleteYes, cricket is essentially a women's game but... but... they are never stumped.
Thanks, C_Vasi, for the kind acknowledgement!!!lol
ReplyDelete@CV: DONEY, DHONY is listed in the Hobson Jobson dictionary ('A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo Indian Words and Phrases"). The word is also listed in the Madras Tamil Lexicon.
ReplyDeleteThanks, LNS.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the word is not in Hanklyn-Janklin or A stranger's rumble-tumble guide to some words, customs and quiddities, Indian and Indo-British by Nigel B. Hankin (which I had looked up).
This author finds a mention in Hugh Purcell's After the Raj, a book that I am reading at present.
LNS
ReplyDeleteWhat is Madras Tamil Lexicon? In hard copy or online?
The word is not in English-Tamil Dictionary pub. by Univ. of Madras, 1992 - which when I bought from the Varsity bldg. a couple of years ago was in a highly shop-soiled condition!
ReplyDeleteBeing unaware of any other meaning of "Dhoni" than the cricketer's name, I had assumed that "Dhonis" was a typo for the "Dhoni's".
ReplyDeleteDoni: The word has an entry in Merriam Webster. Seems like it's a Tamil word. It's possible that the word could have been borrowed by the Arabs (considering that it was being used for trading purposes)
ReplyDelete-----
Merriam-Webster (1913)
DoniDo"ni (?), n. [Tamil t�nī.] (Naut.) A clumsy craft, having one mast with a long sail, used for trading purposes on the coasts of Coromandel and Ceylon. [Written also dhony, doney, and done.] Balfour.
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@CV: Here you go:
ReplyDeletehttp://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.0:1:812.hobson
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/showrest_?conc.6.1.65268.0.47.tamillex
Nice, erudite discussion on dhoni. I was taken in by the wordplay and based on the capitalization, instantly assumed it to refer to Dhoni the cricketer and then later reasoned it to be the sailboat reference due to the lack of an apostrophe..
ReplyDeleteBe that as it may, I agree it may be difficult for most non Tamil or maybe non-Bengalis as well to have heard of dhoni, however spelled. But, a cultural reference here and there is ok - I recall Yojana and Tau popping in earlier.
It is one of those things like rhyming slangs used in UK crosswords - there is no real authoritative source to base it on. LNS (Thank you) gave a really nice reference to the Chicago link - did not know of its existence. But, boy, Hobson-Jobson, Hanklin-Janklin? I would not know if you were pulling my leg here!!
Yesterday, I was using Firefox and noticed that I was not able to post comments. Coincidentally there were no comments for around an hour from 8:30 AM IST. Later, after I saw other comments coming up, switched to Chrome and noticed things were working as usual. Did anyone else using Firefox encounter problems?
ReplyDeleteOccasionally there have been problems in posting Comments.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if it has anything to do with the browser: is the problem with Blogger?
For instance, the other day (don't remember if it was yesterday) there was this indication 2 Comments but at intervals when we clicked on it nothing was visible. The problem resolved itself after some time. I didn't change my browser.
Giridhar, I'm using Firefox and no trouble here. The first comment was posted only at 9:29 AM (IST). Generally, it's either Richard or Kishore that post most of the comments during the first hour. On this particular day, Richard was late and Kishore's nowhere to be seen. So the blog was kinda quiet.
ReplyDeleteThanks CV and VJ for the feedback. I am still having a problem with Firefox. After I type in a comment in the box (Post a comment) and then log in to post it, I am brought back to the comments page, but I am neither logged in, nor is what I typed in in the comments box there any more. Perhaps some settings in my Firefox installation may be causing the problem. I will take a look.
ReplyDeleteI have faced similar problems in posting the past three days, esp., in the mornings. Now I know I have had company. Can't decide if it was the Firefox failing or Blogger breakdown.
ReplyDeleteIn the past two days - after I typed out a message in the text box and pressed 'send', I sometimes got an error message.
ReplyDeleteIn the process the message was lost.
So I had had to retype the whole thing.
Obviously the problem is with Blogger.