ACROSS
1 - Swap made by singular magician (6) – {S}{WITCH}
4 - Time reportedly taken by boy to find a spice (8) – (~term){TURM}{ERIC}
12 - Jack, an unprincipled person (5) – KNAVE [DD]
13 - Left a depressed NI town (9) – {PORT}{A}{DOWN} Had to google search this
14 - Extras trained by French city police force (5,7) – {TEXAS R*}{ANGERS}
18 - Former PM hides from view in Tyneside town (5,7) – {NORTH} {SHIELDS}
21 - Quick survey made by small company on passable English river (5,4) – {CO}{OK}{S} {TOUR} Wild guess, couldn't find a river named TOUR
23 - Temporary accommodation, very large, in decay (5) – {RO{OS}T}
24 - One about to marry duke in area of northern France (5) – {BRI{D}E}
25 - Typically, one gets hold of a very English newspaper (2,7) – {ON {A}{V}{E}{RAG}E}
26 - File official list (8) – REGISTER [DD]
27 - A boy is becoming a handsome young man (6) – {A}{DON}{IS}
DOWN
1 - Kudos involved, connected with first to unravel puzzle (6) – {SUDOK*}{U} I wish we got Crosswords like this!!
3 - Game in which spies sneer alarmingly (7,8) – CHINESE WHISPERS* Great party game
5 - Perfect state (5) – UTTER [DD]
6 - Fellow counsel, Ferdinand, merely fudged (2,7,6) – MY LEARNED FRIEND*
7 - Reprimanded, salesman travelled constantly (8) – {REP}{ROVED}
8 - Settler on island collected by horse (8) – {COL{ON}{IS}T}
9 - Sloppy friends turned up to race (8) – {SLAP<-}{DASH}
15 - Something eaten brought up, we hear, after whiskey (3,5) – {RYE} {BREAD}(~bred)
16 - Fire engulfing new pub and food outlet (5,3) – {S{N}ACK} {BAR}
17 - Smartening up man getting married in Ghana's capital (8) – {GROOM}{IN}{G}
19 - Prepare major for field (6) – {DO}{MAIN}
20 - Quickly disposing of note causing emotional tension (6) – (
22 - Invigorating air round area (5) – {O}{ZONE}
MY LEARNED FRIEND ADONIS, who is not a KNAVE {and who has VOLUNTEER(ed) EMERALD LANCE(s) today}, and his BRI-D-E have REGISTER(ed) for a COOKS TOUR of Kolkatta(!), PORTADOWN and NORTH SHIELDS with RANGERS, ON AVERAGE RO-OS-T(s) on TURMERIC coloured RYE BREAD, SWITCH(es) DOG VIOLET(s) from LAPEL(s), avoids UTTER STRESS caused by SLAPDASH GROOMING IN GOAL, plays CHINESE WHISPERS about SUDOKU in COLONISE(d) OZONE SNACK BAR DOMAINS.
ReplyDeleteDeepak
ReplyDeleteRe your desideratum under Clue 1dn, I thought that the part of papers on which some crosswords appear could still be used for purpose intended.
20dn I provided the anno in the Orkut community The Hindu Crossword Solutions, guessing it could pose a problem. Mistress Quickly is a Shakespearean character.
ReplyDelete@Chaturvasi,
ReplyDeleteBut there is no indicator to think of a Shakespearean character
EVERYMAN is any day better than our every day girl !
ReplyDelete21a English river is STOUR. So Anno is CO-OK-STOUR
20D Quickly=FAST, disposing note= -FA, but still incomplete
Agree with CV & Col. Though no indication, capital Q could stand for name, hence MISTRESS minus note MI=STRESS
ReplyDeleteRe your image for the 4dn solution.
ReplyDelete"Arisina kuttana" (pounding of turmeric) is an important ritual soon after a wedding is fixed in the Kannada Madhva community.
On an auspicious day, women are invited to the household and they gather in a knot and one after the other takes turns in pounding turmeric pieces to powder. The powder, stored carefully, is subsequently used at the wedding ceremony.
In olden days most households used to have the mortar and pestle. Now families living in flats borrow it from older families.
Only after this ritual do they take first steps in making purchases/arrangements for the wedding such as fixing the venue, hiring cooks, etc.
Of course other communities too will have the same function and there must be a name in the vernacular.
Up north I think it's called 'Haldi ka rasam' Haldi being Turmeric and Rasam being ritual and not the 'Mulligatawny soup' from the South
ReplyDeleteHi everyone
ReplyDeleteAm in a hurry to rush to Udupi for a function in a friend's family. Yet could not resist the temptation of posting here, since the Col's 8:50 comment interested me.
@ Deepak, re Haldi ka rasam: The latter word, although written as 'rasam' in Devnagri script, is. as I opine, pronounced as 'rasm'. Pronouncing it as 'rasam' (yummy !) may give it a cuisine context.
'Mulligatawny': I am sure a majority of our friends here are aware that this word owes its origin to Tamil 'Milaku+tanni' (green pepper and water)
@Richard,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction, yes it is pronounced as Rasm and not Rasam.
@COL and Richard,
ReplyDelete'haath peela karna' or 'making hands yellow' is a familiar and perhaps old fashioned Hindi expression for getting a girl married off. Must be a reference to this haldi ka rasm. Rasm is a common Urdu word for 'ritual'. That reminds me of a nice Lata song from the 70's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYA1kEPt_cc&NR=1
I wrote Chinese checkers instead of Chinese whispers and got lost. Chinese Whispers is a new term for me, not given in standard dictionaries
ReplyDelete2 Dn: why 'with it'?
ReplyDeleteThe clues which bug me most are the ones I manage to crack because of crossing letters.
So Happy Mother's Day to those of us who belong to that privileged group.
LNS
ReplyDelete'with it', which means 'following current trends in popular taste', gives us IN (fashionable, up-to-date), while 'aim' (n.) gives GOAL, the def. being 'between the posts'.
@CV: I get it. 'With it' may suggest 'in', I was still left scratching my head on the 'goal' part. I then resorted to the second last refuge of every solving scoundrel - just guess using available letters :)
ReplyDeleteFrom the above comments, I observe, there are no sudoku fans - I do only 5 star rated sudoku of Hindu
ReplyDelete@ Col: Good illustration for 1d. One can double on the job.
ReplyDelete