Monday 26 September 2011

No 10268, Monday 26 Sep 11, Mover

Overdose of Anagrams, 12 full and 4 partial, seems to be our new setters favourite clue type. No wonder the pseudonym  'MOVER'!!
ACROSS
1   - Crowning insult administered to the monarch? (10,4) - CORONATION OATH {CORONATION} {OATH}
10 - True, I curette wombs (5) - UTERI*
11 - Ruined person osculates wildly (4,5) - LOST CAUSE* What is person doing in the clue?
12 - Searching for what the bishop has over monarch? (7) - SEEKING {SEE}{KING}
13 - Stranger seen surrounding graduates in a group (2,5) - EN MASSE {EN {MAS}SE*}
14 - Place a legal embargo on strange poets (5) - ESTOP*
16 - Nutrition science ICI tested vigorously (9) - DIETETICS*
19 - Terry does wrong for this warcraft (9) - DESTROYER*
20 - Change edits for recurring fluctuations (5) - TIDES*
22 - The French lads' instructions (7) - LESSONS {LES}{SONS}
25 - Desired new deanery (7) - YEARNED*
27 - Opera rising in encore for conductor (9) - TOSCANINI {TOSCA}{NI<-}{NI<-}
28 - The boy working in the botanica? (5) - BASIL [DD]
29 - Valleys where there is high unemployment (9,5) - DEPRESSED AREAS [DD]
DOWN
2   - Poetaster sporadically works (9) - OPERETTAS*
3   - Pygmy antelope or tailless waterbird (5) - ORIBI {OR}{IBIs}
4   - Supposedly, eel gladly swims away (9) - ALLEGEDLY*
5   - Publish for children (5) - ISSUE [DD]
6   - Snub the press with this unusually common medical speciality (2,7) - NO COMMENT {NO COMM*}{ENT}
7   - Is next to a cracked bust (5) - ABUTS {A}{BUTS*} My COD
8   - See lush somehow lacking colour (7) - HUELESS*
9   - Initially excited sluts create conflict (6) - TUSSLE {E+SLUTS}*
15 - Page keeps lighting fires for the rectory (9) - PARSONAGE {P{ARSON}AGE}
17 - Archaeornis gets the worm? Maybe I err badly (5,4) - EARLY BIRD*
18 - A country, one said, in turmoil (9) - INDONESIA*
19 - Not neat (7) - DILUTED [E]
21 - Trafford town theologian installed in rider's seat (6) - SADDLE {SA{DD}LE}
23 - Flowers sent south to network director? (5) - SYSOP {SYSOP<-}
24 - Cuts back twists (5) - SPINS <-
26 - Road incline does not start — traffic light needed (5) - AMBER cAMBER



38 comments:

  1. Sale is a very obscure UK reference, made even harder by Manchester being referred to as Trafford. Not sure an indian audience would be aware of this town.
    Never seen posys as the plural rather than posies.
    On the plus side, I did very much like early bird.

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  2. 23 - Flowers sent south to network director? (5) - SYSOP {SYSOP<-}

    Plural of POSY is POSIES

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  3. 11 - Ruined person osculates wildly (4,5) - LOST CAUSE* What is person doing in the clue?

    From ODE : Lost cause (noun) a person or thing that can no longer hope to succeed or be changed for the better.

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  4. 24 - Cuts back twists (5) - SPINS <-

    I suppose we'll know better tomorrow, but this can equally be SNIPS. Unfortunate that the crossings don't help resolve the ambiguity.

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  5. Chambers defines 'Posy' as 'a little bunch of flowers'. No plural has been mentioned.

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  6. Bhavan @ 8:42,

    Chambers has 'lost cause' as 'a hopeless ideal or endeavour'

    As an aside, I couldn't find 'Lost case' in Chambers, is it not a recognised phrase?

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  7. @Colonel, just saw that the Chambers Thesaurus has "hopeless person" as a synonym for "lost cause"

    I'm not sure if I'm familiar with "lost case" but don't find it in Chambers or ODE

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  8. Its a pity about the anagrams today because some without those were quite good - coronation oath, seeking, toscanini

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  9. While new setters are welcome, it would be good if they have sufficient experience of setting crosswords before they get an opportunity in TH.

    The best place for a crossword like this is a personal blog of the setter and not the national newspaper. A bad puzzle and adverse comments would be discouraging for both the protege and the patron.

    Crosswords like these taint the image of the feature. I wish the compiler takes a break, practises hard, gets more experience and reenters as a setter. No hard feelings :)

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  10. BTW I have to take a 3-month break from crosswords starting today. Off to the US for a back-breaking procedure called 'training' :((

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  11. I'd be more familiar with "hopeless case" rather than lost case.

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  12. Bhavan @ 8:55,
    I have heard 'lost case or gone case' used quite often to describe a 'scatterbrain' or someone who is 'beyond recovery'.
    Chambers has 'goner' to define the above.

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  13. Not sure I agree about the new setter's ability.
    I would much rather have a surfeit of 1 type of clue than a mixture of equally bad ones.
    My only real gripe is posys - and am actually wondering if this is an accepted archaic plural - I seem to vaguely remember seeing it in old poetry.
    So, to conclude - I am nit asking mover to move on!

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  14. Sudalamani @ 8:59,

    Training does not mean 24 hrs of backbreaking? I am sure you can take a daily break from training to tackle Crosswords. You can use the 6 NJ days & 7 Manna days to train really hard without taking the break.

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  15. Agree with David in regards to setter's capability.

    Except for the volume, there is nothing wrong in the construction of the clues with plausible surfaces.

    @Colonel, I've heard of hopeless case (again meaning lost cause), but not lost case.

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  16. "when in thy cheeks, faire doble posys
    French lilys meet with English roses"

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  17. I knew I was likely to be misunderstood. I have not talked about 'ability' but about 'experience'. A commenter here published a crossie last week which was pretty similar to this one.

    Surely one can differentiate this crossword from that of an experienced setter like Gridman and Sankalak. It is just my personal opinion that it takes time to blossom into a good setter.

    @Col: The timings will go awry Col. Surely we have to sit in office till 1930. Anyway let me try to at least solve easier ones like Gridman and Sankalak :)

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  18. Re the V vs W discussion:

    MOVER, not MOWER.

    Incidentally, if you happen to see the characters painted on Indian railway bogies (on the ends facing the next bogie), they usually start with W and in Hindi this probably forms the longest string of characters for an English letter:

    Da-b-l-yu

    btw, W is the code for vestibuled coach.

    WGSCN most commonly seen is vestibuled self generating second class 3 tier.

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  19. Kishore@ 9.34-
    How do you get these Rly.abbreviations? How does 'self generating' become GS,if you can enlighten me?

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  20. Posy would be for flowers and S for sent?

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  21. Although its odd for an across clue, "rising" in 27A was easy enough to understand the reversal, but:

    23 Flowers sent south to network director? (5) - SYSOP {SYSOP<-}

    How does this actually work? I can't understand the reversal indicator "sent south". For a down clue, sent up or north would mean reversal?

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  22. I just remembered the best debut puzzle that I solved in TH: this one by Spiffytrix.

    We can always say different setters have styles, but if someone happens to have indirect anagrams in his debut publication, you can safely say he has not learnt the rudiments of the trade itself, let alone develop a style.

    To be honest, I am an ardent solver and a wannabe setter, but am pretty sure my debut xwd will be something similar to this puzzle. People like Spiffy, Cryptonyte or Buzzer or Scin'or would have surely got some good experience before their TH debut, else they can't be so refined as they are. Sadly that does not seem to be the case with this setter.

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  23. Sudalamani,

    I am not moved by this setter*. Nor am I shaken. Hope the next batch will make the setter better.

    * If I was, I would have composed a limerick as done for all the new ones. And with a moniker like Mover, it would have been a gateau stride.

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  24. Yes Kishore. Let us hope the setter makes a genuine effort to improve in the meantime, instead of pretending everything is hunky-dory (like we-know-who!)...

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  25. I wish to know, why 'The Guardian' setters use many multiple word clues, but our setters prefer smaller words. This query was posed in ORKUT, but no one replied. Probably no one saw it.

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  26. Vijay,

    I don't think any of us, other than Gridman, can answer your question, he however will be able to voice his preference only.
    As regards Guardian setters, none of them comment here so we will not be able to get their response.

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  27. If you google "posys", it means circular flower
    wreaths. So technically, it may agree with 'flowers sent'.
    Hate operas and therefore couldn't get 27A!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Paddy, G stands for (with) Generator and S for Second class.

    You can get the whole lot (also freight wagon codes etc etc) at IRFCA:


    http://www.irfca.org/faq/faq-stock.html#pass

    To summarize, some of us are nuts and some of us are loco, but some of us are loco nuts.

    Don't miss the black beauties at:

    http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Steam/

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  29. Talking of railways, some of you might have been witness to a practice of swapping keys at a station where the loco does not stop. A large tennis bat like device would be held up by a person and the passing engine driver would pick it up by passing his arm through the loop. He would also throw down a similar device on the platform.

    I wonder if there are any ex railwaymen here who can guide me where to get more info on the above.

    Of course, one cannot talk of railways without remembering Dicken's The Signalman.

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  30. How does this actually work? I can't understand the reversal indicator "sent south". For a down clue, sent up or north would mean reversal?

    It's perspective, I suppose. Imagine the word POSY taking a headlong dive, the P would be at the bottom and Y at the top. :D

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  31. This is a very old system followed before the advent of electric signals.The tennis bat like ring that you describe will contain a steel in a pouch. This will be taken out and fed into a small communicating device to close a circuit which will indicate to the station master at the next train that a train is on the tracks. Remember,those days there was only a single line,which means he is not supposed to any release any train on the track from his end.In fact,he will not be able to do so once the ball is put in and locked.When he clears the line and blocks all other signals,he can release a similar ball at his nd to be given to the train at his station. I used to watch this process with awe and amazement as a school going kid.Since I was in a small town where my father was a well known advocate,I was treated as a VIP and explained about all this.Fascinating!!

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  32. Too long a process! Read "station master at the next station" in stead of what I had written.

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  33. OK, I will answer Sarvagnam's query.

    It is just a question of which grids the setters have created or picked up from somewhere.

    While some TH setters have grids with no long slots at all (I refrain from saying who), others, including some newcomers, do have a couple of grids with long slots (15-, 14-, 13- letter slots).

    If you have missed these in THC, it is perhaps because each grid has only two of them.

    If you study grids in UK newspapers you will find many of them have more than two long slots, one grid alone having two 15-letter and two other long slots (14- or 13-letters).

    Of course, I do understand you mean not just long slots but rather multi-word answers.

    Not all the long slots in THC grids may have multi-word phrases but certainly setters have used them.

    I can get all the 15-letter lights used by G but each will be all letters run together, so it's difficult to cull out phrases from the list.

    Some 9-, 8- or less-letter slots in G's grids have been phrases.

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  34. The real word play is in 'director?', meaning something to do
    direction! He could have used the dull 'administrator' instead.
    Flowers sent=posy + south=s . So technically, everything is
    in order. All setters hide in some degree of vagueness.

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  35. YS and PO are the rivers and S for south. Sent being an anind. SYSOP it becomes?

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  36. No. 'director?' indicates reversal!

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  37. Coming in late today! Took me all of 20 mins to get thru this 'Anagram' puzzle. Had to google 'Toscanini'. Interesting discussions on 23D!

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  38. Chaturvasi - thank You for clarifying.

    ReplyDelete

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