Thursday 8 July 2010

No 9889, Thursday 08 Jul 10, Neyartha

ACROSS
1   - See printed interpretation of fate (10) - PREDESTINE*
6   - Grouse of George forced out by a bishop from the lookout point (4) - CRA(-g+b)B
10 - Spy from the east entering vacant castle with a saloon employee (9) - {BAR{KEEP<-}E}{R}
11 - Fishy note on donkey outside (5) - {A{MI}SS}
12 - Communication media for people with different native tongues (6,7) - LINGUA FRANCAS [E]
14 - Motivated host (5) - DROVE [DD]
15 - Hunt around the shopping centre for gossip (5-4) - {S{MALL}-TALK}
17 - Need spurs adjustment of strap (9) - SUSPENDER*


21 - Pines smuggled by an Eskimo (pessimist) (5) - MOPES [T]
22 - Ruler imprisoning the German doctor's errant preschooler (13) - {KIN{DER}G}{ARTNER*}
24 - It is vital that lithium be taken out from large church which closes early (5) - BASIliCa
25 - Sign up mum somehow to get the rundown (7,2) - SUMMING UP*
26 - Last page for Charlie to study (4) - S(-p+c)CAN
27 - Voter and baron cut camouflaged fir branches (10) - FRANCHISERb*
DOWN
1   - Gave a grained appearance to leather with charcoal and cement containing stones (10) - PEBBLEDASH [DD]
2   - Misguided neurosurgeon troubled when gunless (9) - ERRONEOUSgun
3   - Leader abandoning 4 to be put to death (7) - EXECUTivE
4   - Raised issue surrounding cancelled alerts (3-4) - {TIP-{OFF}S}
5   - Joy of Rani ordering vehicle to come in (7) - {NIR{VAN}A*}


7   - Revolutionary storytellers initially move to the end of the tracks (5) - (-s)RAIL<-(+s)S
8   - Hit party (4) - BASH [DD]
9   - In recital related to Easter, the mathematician is seen (6) - PASCAL (~paschal)
13 - It may have a lot of stories (10) - SKYSCRAPER [CD]
16 - Track silver accepted by mimics as perquisites (9) - {AP{PAN}{AG}ES}
18 - Left out clue Hun created for ‘an ineffectual person' (6) - EUNUCHl*
19 - Commie sent up to get hold of note on ship chest (7) - {D{RE}{SS}ER<-}
20 - Ruling group meeting Nigerian premier on diet (7) - {REGIME}{N}
21 - Architecture style said to be so good that one wants it to a greater extent (7) - MOREISH (~moorish)
22 - Buckwheat porridge's burnt remains left in Kampala's outskirts (5) - {K{ASH}A}
23 - Bird found concealed in the hibiscuses (4) - IBIS [T]



38 comments:

  1. Hi
    Liked KINDERGARTNER, S(MALL)TALK, BASI(-L)IC (-A), SUSPENDER (I thought it was used only as SUSPENDERS i.e. as a plural noun for things having 2 parts like trousers, glasses, scissors, spectacles etc.). PREDESTINE in 1 a, shades of Paul from yesterday? Can’t be CRABby or Octopussy !

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  2. Suprabhatam everyone

    Liked PREDESTINE, LINGUA FRANCAS, SMALL TALK, SUSPENDER, KINDERGARTNER, SUMMING UP, ERRONEOUS, NIRVANA, BASH, TIP-OFFS, EUNUCH, KASHA, SKYSCRAPER, REGIMEN etc.

    9D - Paschal (Easter-related) and mathematician Pascal - good homophonic clue.

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  3. Great Your money (or whatever) back policy in cartoon for 5 d, Col !

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  4. 19D - The word 'Commie', short for Communist, was perhaps popularized in India by D F Karaka, owner-editor of The Current Weekly , a popular tabloid of the 1960s and 1970s.

    R K Karanjia of Blitz and Karaka - both Parsis - had no love lost for each other. It was sheer fun to watch their battle of wits, which provided the readers with copious entertainment.

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  5. Re the cartoon at 5d. A good one! However, if a man has ignorance, he will be in bliss, so he would not go in for a meditation course in the first place.

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  6. Good morning Colonel and everyone

    A neat double definition at 14A. Liked the CD at 13D too.

    22A "doctor's" is a poor anagram indicator. Even "doctor [fodder]" will be ungrammatical over here since the rest of the wordplay is not written as an instruction to the solver. "doctor's [fodder]" has no excuse at all.

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  7. Nice puzzle. Liked most of the clues. NIRVANA, KASHA and SMALL TALK were my favorites

    I think the anno for 1D is

    {PEBBLED} {ASH} ("gave a grained appearance to leader (PEBBLED) with charcoal (ASH)..." Defn: Cement containing stones."

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  8. Kishore
    Re: SUSPENDERS. You're right about expecting the word to be in plural. That's when it means 'braces for trousers' (as in the cartoon). However, Chambers has this meaning for the singular version: a strap to support a sock or stocking.
    Maybe you have not looked up any stockinged leg.

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  9. VJ,
    The clue reads "Gave a grained appearance to leather....." and not 'leader'

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  10. yep, sorry it was a typo...

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  11. Leather surface is abraded with pebbles for texture....

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  12. Ruler imprisoning the German doctor's errant preschooler (13) - {KIN{DER}G}{ARTNER*}

    My intent was that the apostrophe be considered in the surface reading, but ignored in the cryptic parsing. I believe this is a common tool used by many compilers.

    Therefore, the anagram indicator would be 'doctors' : When someone doctors something, he meddles with it and so on and so forth.

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  13. Neyartha
    You won't believe me, I came here wondering whether the apostrophe in doctor's could be ignored - in cryptic parsing (a phrase that I didn't have in my mind, I must confess).
    But I am not sure!
    To convince me, could you cite an example from a UK crossword?
    I wish I had a dB of UK crossword clues as Shuchi seems to have: see, for example, her citing (in another context) so many clues from British puzzles.

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  14. Though I took it as "doctors" while solving the clue ("doctors" as the Anagram indicator), I wasn't really convinced.

    IMO, it's not logical to ignore the apostrophes in indicators (though it's all right in case of fodders). Apostrophized indicators are often misleading and don't serve as fair indicators.

    Well this might not mean much 'cause I'm just a rookie.

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  15. At least it's fairer than what NJ churns out in terms of CW's!!!

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  16. Hi Neyartha

    A couple of articles that talk about anagrind grammar:

    Verbal Anagrammar
    Camouflaging Anagrams

    For the KINDERGARTEN clue, the section Partial Anagrammar is also relevant.

    I don't know of any good crossword that does not follow this.

    About the apostrophe: "X's" can translate to "X is" or "X has", but it's not OK to expect it to be read as "Xs".

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  17. Oh there you go again....

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  18. Oh there you go again....

    @VJ: Didn't understand that. Can you explain?

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  19. Saw the photos of Deepak's FIAT rally. Can't help commenting on the famous red T shirt again

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  20. Shuchi, sorry that was in response to Deepak's message (11:37).

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  21. Looks like Paul psyched the German team real bad

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  22. So it's R.I.P Paul the psychic then

    So much for being a good psychic.

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  23. VJ,
    Paul had predicted that Spain would win.

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  24. Yea, and I read someplace that German fans want Paul dead.

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  25. There once was an octopus called Paul
    Who to predict results had the gall
    Now they want to kick
    This celebrity psychic
    For accurately predicting Germany's fall.

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  26. Bravo, Richard ! You already have him in the past tense. What say German team, octopus soup, anyone?

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  27. Posts going AWOL again !

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  28. @ Kishore 18:26

    I just realized there was a clash of tenses in the limerick.

    18:27 Here the count shows 27 so far and no apparent case of AWOL. Maybe it depends on servers and service providers, and place to place too. Strange are the forms of the Net effect!

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  29. My comments vanish whenever I try to use Firefox to post, though no one else seems to have come across a similar problem.

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  30. Giridhar 19:05

    I too have been posting the comments via Firefox. They are showing up exactly and accurately. I am not sure how many others will be able to see them.

    For all I know, I can't even make out if you are reading this. That is blog behaviour for you and me.

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  31. I use Firefox too and I have usually found it more reliable than IE, so I am not sure our problem is browser or blog oriented.

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  32. 6 days of relaxation from tomorrow excluding the Sunday.
    Just for academic reasons please make a note of the time taken to complete tomorrow's (09 Jul 2010) crossword and mention the same when you post over here.

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  33. @ Richard 1826: Your use 'clash of tenses' reminds me of the 'clash of cymbals' from The Man who knew too Much, which of course is remembered more for Doris Day's QSS.

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  34. Hi Col Sir, Hope you will be able to pop in once in a while. Whatever you are up to, All the best.

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  35. Kishore,
    I am not going anywhere. I meant relaxation as we have Sankalak starting from tomorrow.

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  36. I use Firefox too. No problems. But then I am not as active on this blog as some of you are

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  37. Aaah Col, that is good news. Hope others don't get messed up a la NJ as M almost did.

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  38. Regarding Paul Soup 1826:

    Today's news served yesterday :

    Paul

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