Saturday 1 October 2011

No 10273, Saturday 01 Oct 11, Sankalak

Sankalak has been in great touch during this run and even towards the end he doesn't slack off. Today's crossword is another fine compilation. There are quite a few DDs and CDs, yet strangely only two anagrams.
ACROSS

1 What one may cover walking round the boundary ( 13) CIRCUMFERENCE (c&dd)
10 Stop traces of allergy getting in and becoming common ( 9)  PREVALENT PREV(AL)ENT
11 Study, in French, of a musical composition ( 5)  ÉTUDE (dd)
12 Security device in the French church initially tested inside ( 5) LATCH LA(T)CH
13 They use their influence in the line of business ( 9) LOBBYISTS (cd)

14 Criminal in a Jane Russell movie ( 6) OUTLAW (dd)
16 Short, venerable mantra invokes poison ( 5)  VENOM VEN+OM
19 Cake in a small ice-cream holder ( 5)  SCONE S+CONE
20 Diversion in cardiac surgery ( 6)  BYPASS (dd)
25 Funny one in France, he deals in big money ( 9)  FINANCIER (one in France)*
26 A card to make you laugh? ( 5)  JOKER (cd)


27 Drop cover in the borders of Elsinore ( 5) ELIDE E(LID)E
28 Old partner anxious about ivy reportedly being widespread ( 9) EXTENSIVE EX+TENS(IV ~ivy)E
29 Appoint bachelors, or masters perhaps? ( 4-9) POST-GRADUATES POST+GRADUATES. I thought this was one word? Can't find the hyphenated version in Chambers or ODE

DOWN

2 Such a crisis affects one’s sense of self ( 8)  IDENTITY (cd)
3,7 Intensive, quick training programme —not necessarily for dealing with accidents ( 5,6)  CRASH,COURSE (cd)
4 How a blessed one may inherit the earth? ( 6) MEEKLY (cd)
5 Eastern beers bear a label in consumer fare ( 8)  EATABLES E+A(TAB)LES
6 None is excluded in this ( 9)  EVERYBODY (E)
7 See 3 

8 Fifty included in a game in space craft ( 6)  APOLLO A+PO(L)LO
9 Closely packed rooms — end of peace ( 5) DENSE DENS+E
15 A singular, curious tendency to drop unknown in supremacy ( 9)  ASCENDENT A+S+(TENDENC(-y))*
17 To manipulate, he works with machines ( 8)  ENGINEER (dd)
18 Reverse shooting may bounce back on one ( 8)  BACKFIRE BACK+FIRE
21 Cover for what is silvern in cinema ( 6) SCREEN (dd)
22 Frequently it is a part of a soft enterprise ( 5)  OFTEN (T)
23 A colour seen in the iris ( 6)  INDIGO (E)

24 Made a big speech that head of Oxford assessed ( 6) ORATED O+RATED
26 After almost a month, reserves form a clique (5) JUNTA JUN(-e)+TA


24 comments:

  1. 43 hours? Was the train late or does it always take that much time?

    Well, I was feeling knotty yesterday. Today 19a reminded me of the hunger pangs caused when reading Enid Blyton: we knew not what scones were and let out imagination run wild. 17d establishes the equation: engineer=doctor.

    Another excellent one from PCJ.

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  2. I want to run a 3,7 for pilots. Any takers?

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  3. Bhavan,
    Thanks for standing in at short notice. The Internet connection here in the cantonments is super slow and as I had a function to attend at 7 there was no way I could do today's CW with the online paper appearing after 6 only.
    Kishore,
    43 hours is the scheduled running time and it was bang on time despite the long run, kudos to the Indian Railways on that aspect

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  4. VP's crossword No 3 is up at http://vpscrosswords.blogpspot.com

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  5. Sorry that should read
    http://vpscrosswords.blogspot.com

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  6. A postgraduate is one who has got the degree by studying in a regular college. A post-graduate is one who has got the degree through a correspondence course.

    Jus' kidding.

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  7. First I noticed a change in color scheme. Wondered what Deepak is up to in Rajasthan.

    Then I saw the sentence "Can't find the hyphenated version in Chambers or ODE" and wondered whether he lugged the BRB as part of his luggage.

    Only later did I realise that the blogger was our friend in AUS.

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  8. The varied pronunciation of J in 26a and d, (not forgetting the third way y), highlighting the different ways of pronouncing Jose (the Kerala/Goa way and Mex/US way) reminded me of the Mex boy who attended a ball game in the US and the crowd rose up as one to ask him : Jose, can you see,...

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  9. Deepak had to buzz the buzzer !

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  10. Scone is a very divisive word in English. How it is pronounced can indicate if you are from the south (allegedly posh) or the north (working class)
    For the south it is sc + own
    For the north it is sc + on
    I am definitely a northern guy, with the inherent short vowels. The other major indicator if class is how you pronounce "bath". The southerners say "barth"!!!

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  11. DD:How about PC's: Beat abite the hice. accent. Definitely uppermost class?

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  12. Wiki mentions this:

    "I asked the maid in dulcet tone
    To order me a buttered scone
    The silly girl has been and gone
    And ordered me a buttered scone."

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  13. Talking of pronunciation, any Robin Sherbatsky fans oot here?

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  14. @kishore
    You are right - I had forgotten about the "cut glass" accent (usually found in upper class laydeees. It is used by people who are actually too posh to Fully open their mouths when speaking - probably attributable to their stiff upper lip!

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  15. Yesterday's Jog also jogged a recent memory of SS Gairsoppa.

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  16. DD, your ref to cut glass brought back memories of a dinner we attended when my elder son was a little older than two. He was sitting by himself and was so enamoured of the cut glass goblet that he continuously went on sipping water out of it to the exclusion of food. Suddenly, we heard a sound and found that he had bitten off the lip of the goblet and bit of cut glass had dropped into the goblet.

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  17. Thank God it fell into the goblet!

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  18. Today's CW is a right royal drive on a highway without any 20A. Looking at it another way bypasses make life easier-both on road and in life!

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  19. Another good one, not as straightforward as his usual style.

    David/Kishore: speaking of accents, I used to live i London for a few years, and everyone kept calling me 'Bhalar'. always wondered where the r at the end came from

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  20. @Colonel, not a problem.

    @Kishore 9.33 : The story is dragging on for so long, audience probably don't care any more about how the meeting happened.

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  21. Thanks Colonel for providing the link.

    Another excellent one today from Sankalak. For most of the CD/DDs the answers stood out quite easily making things simpler :)

    Have one question about 18D: In some comments from CWs earlier this year, I vaguely recall a discussion about how a part of the answer typically does not appear directly in the clue. In this case, the word "back" does appear in both the clue and answer. Is this something of a grey area, or is there some rule to this?

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  22. The only rule in any CW is that there are no strict rules,
    as long as the setter is able to convey the point somehow!

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  23. Mathi,
    "Somehow" -- that's an ambiguous way to put it. A setter's "somehow" could be "the-what-now?!!" to the solver.

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  24. Agree. It always depends on the setter. Some are clear-cut clues like
    those by Sankalak or Arden. Some setters are quite vague, esp. those by NJ!

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