Monday 9 August 2010

No 9916, Monday 09 Aug 10, M Manna

Across
1 One of the toxophilists of Robin Hood (6) ARCHER [E]
4 Runs about to scare MPs to go off (8) SCAMPERS*
10 Act according to criminal record (7) PER FORM
11 A nut affected by the moon! (7) LUNATIC [CD]
12 Stagger to dance (4) REEL [DD]
13 Walker risking prosecution according to the signs (10) TRESPASSER [E]
16 Ma has plan to use petroleum jelly for flame throwers (6) NAPALM*
17 Main way to describe peace (7) PACIFIC [DD]
20 She is one who holds a tenet (7) AN NETTE*
21 Desert having point to a Scot (6) NUB  IAN: adj. or noun?
24 Thespian troupe I confined to base and punished (10) CAST{I}GATED
25 Combination of parties for a common purpose (4) BLOC [E]
27 Once more a righteous man is in opposition (7) AGAIN{ST}
29 Two vehicles joined by a third one (7) CAR A VAN
30 Three stripes and you're sent round to change gear (8) SERGEANT*
31 Her aim is to get arable land (6) EMILIA anno pending

Down
1 Hopeful, like sanctimonious trading group (8) AS PI RING
2 Agrees to write some letters (11) CORRESPONDS [DD]
3 The conscious mind (3) EGO [CD]
5 The firm rule about the French salad (4,4) {CO(LE) S? {LAW}
6 Fraudulent? Better a hundred debts! (10) (MEND)(A)(C)(IOUS)
7 Creature held by tribal chieftain (3) EFT[T]
8 Engineer sure to be free from danger (6) S{EC}URE
9 Witty dandy to be punished (5) SMART [DD]
14 It enables one to go straight (6,5) SPIRIT LEVEL [CD]
15 Loyalty, say, in kinship (10) ALL(EG)IANCE
18 Skills return when one finds a number to cause difficulties (8) STRA{<
ß}{I}TEN
19 The biggest twister to have a crush on one? (8) ANACONDA [CD]
22 Starting price made out for cars that are discarded as outdated (6) SCRA*{PS*}
23 Middle East cricket club with a great attraction for pilgrims (5) {ME} CCA
26 Pam goes round road, pushing baby carriage (4) P{R}AM
28 An affectation of superiority (3) AIR [DD]

57 comments:

  1. 21 Desert having point to a Scot (6) NUB IAN: adj. or noun?

    Did not understand the doubt. Nubian is the name of a desert; so it is a noun

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  2. 31 Her aim is to get arable land (6) EMILIA anno pending
    Apparently an anagram of AIM and LIE (for land). Where arable comes in and which is the anagram indicator I don't know. Unless 'get' is the indicator like in Gotcha.

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  3. Further to my post on the advisory:

    PERFORM (why criminal?), PACIFIC (nice one), ANNETTE (remembered the Goan singer with a haunting voice, Annette Pinto, who sang a few songs for Bollywood movies - one of them was Kudrat under R D Burman's baton - about two decades ago and was last heard in Mr Bond made in 1992), CARAVAN (liked this), COLE SLAW (always thought it is a single word), MENDANCIOUS (good play on 'better'), STRAITEN (was in dire straits over this for a while), ANACONDA (good one), PRAM (a giveaway)

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  4. Richard.
    Form is infrmally used to mean criminal record. Ref. OED

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  5. Deepak, can SPIRIT LEVEL be considered as an equation between CHHOTA and PATIALA? :-)

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  6. Gita, nice job!!

    31A is driving me crazy. Really curious to know what the setter's anno is.

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  7. In 31ac I had AMELIA.
    Don't ask me for the anno/expln.
    I have issues with several clues in this puzzle but I shall keep quiet.
    Except to say the setter has broken the rule of symmetry in the grid probably because he had painted himself into a corner.
    If 3d is a 3-letter slot, 26d too must have been so. Vice versa.

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  8. 31A is driving me crazy too!

    Sorry about the typo in MENDACIOUS.

    Disclaimer: The Col. is a HARD ACT to follow.

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  9. 31A: Could the name be spelled AMILEA? If yes, the anno could be AMI* LEA - anagram of aim + lea (for arable land)

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  10. VJ you got it. It is AMILEA

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  11. AFAICS, you've MENDACIOUS right in the main post.
    Richard corrected a typo in his own comment.

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  12. AMILEA seems to be the most uncommon name.
    No wonder most of us were groping, esp. when the clueing was not that perfect.

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  13. Hi
    Talking of ARCHER, did you know there are two authors with that surname: Jeffrey and Geoffrey? NAPALM, SERGEANT were war oriented while PACIFIC was not (Atlantic figures in today’s ET: 16 Irish and Americans have it between them ). MENDACIOUS ALLEGIANCE is to be CASTIGATED. SPIRIT LEVEL, CORRESPONDENCE, ANACONDA, CO-LES-LAW, NUB-IAN were good. CARAVAN(-s) and (+S)CAMPERS form a pair. TRESSPASSER reminded of the Bond film ‘Live and let die’ with a croc farm with the signboard ‘TRESSPASSERS WILL BE EATEN’. Incidentally this was Roger Moore’s first Bond film, though Albert Broccoli claims he was Ian Fleming’s first choice for the series but could not take up as he was doing a series on Leslie Charteris’ ‘The Saint’ -Simon Templar (remember the logo?), and hence Sean Connery was cast for Dr No.

    The Saint logo can be seen at Logo

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  14. Suresh
    Nubia is a region.
    The desert is known as the Nubian desert (where I would think Nubian is an adj.)
    Nubian by itself is not used to indicate the desert.
    I still think the clue is defective.

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  15. Great work, Gita. I put down AMELIA* as an anagram of I AM LEA.

    NUBIAN is the name of the desert derived from NUBIA, it also represents the natives of NUBIA: Remember those huge blacks, who carry the governor's palanquin in Astrix, who break into big smiles on their faces when their boss is brought down to earth ?

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  16. 5a The anno is CO-LES-LAW, since les is also the in French, just like le.

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  17. CV. Nubian, being the name given to the desert, like Sahara Desert, it would be a proper name. The name itself may have been derived from the region Nubia, but nonetheless it is a name. Hence it would be a proper noun

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  18. AMELIA...

    Don't know if it's an uncommon name or an uncommon spelling??

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  19. Kishore

    My answer too was AMELIA. If you think it's an anagram, pray what is the anagram indictor?

    All

    Though VJ has offered AMILEA and has given a very convincing explanation and there seems to be rare instance or two of the spelling variant, I should think the compiler's answer is AMELIA. We shall wait and see!

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  20. Suresh
    Kishore

    While not really wishing to cross swords with such eminent and knowledgeable personalities as you, may I ask you to cite one usage in any authoritative newspaper/journal where 'Nubian' (instead of the Nubian desert) is used to ferer to the desert.

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  21. Wrt a clue in HT/TT xwd:
    2 Bill has long hair, as a Thespian (7) AC TRESS

    In India we refer to a Shivaji Ganesan or a Dilip Kumar as a 'thespian'.
    Does anyone remember a Saroja Devi or a Meena Kumari being mentioned as a 'thespian'?
    Why so? The old prejudice against women?

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  22. Good one. I am reminded of a good old question - Why do they call it one's mother-tongue?

    Someone said it was because the father hardly gets much chance to speak. ;-)

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  23. C'vasi, please don't think I have trivialized the issue. You have my full support on that point. A thespian can be of either gender. So why is the masculine bias?

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  24. While there are lots of awesome female performers in our country, it's the male actors that get to become extremelyyyyyyy popular and some even achieve larger than life status (MGR, Rajini, Bachan, NTR, Rajkumar etc).

    This tradition has been continuing since the early days of Indian cinema and there's no signs of any changes happening. Well sad but true.

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  25. 3D: I think "The conscious self" would have been a better clue. What do you think? Personally, I don't see how "conscious mind" could be equated to "ego."

    While conscious mind encompasses everything that's to do with our subjective experience/ awareness, ego is what we identify ourselves with. Thoughts?

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  26. http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx

    Please visit the URL and after clicking on 'after hours' (supplement issue along with main paper) go to page 4.
    There is a crossword there.
    No registration is required for looking at it.
    After seeing similar instances of publication of this type of crossword grid and solution grid in the same paper, I looked for the latest instance and today's issue happens to have it.
    Now let me check the above and then give my comment in a later post.

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  27. Yes, it works.
    If you click on the 'Enlarge image' at bottom right beneath the grid, you can get a bigger picture.
    Now, do you notice anything?
    I will give my observaation and I will be happy if at least one reader agrees with me.
    Well, I think what is published as the solution grid upside down is actually the crossword that has to appear as a bigger grid. What appears as a bigger image is actually the solution grid!
    Now, this is not the first time it 's happening. Every time this type of crossword is published it seems that the paper is misprinting the grids.
    Doesn't any editor notice it? Doesn't any solver protest? Doesn't the setter (at least one who MUST be looking at the publication) talk to the editors? Who gains by this mindless publication of crosswords?

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  28. @VJ:
    Ego's definition is straight from Freud's classification!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind

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  29. While most are reviewing Nubian and Amelia, I had a different take on 20ac. My response was ANIETTE (one, a and tenet) vs ANNETTE.

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  30. @VJ,@Chaturvasi@Kishore, AMELIA as in Enid Blyton's 'Amelia Jane'series

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  31. While not really wishing to cross swords with such eminent and knowledgeable personalities as you, may I ask you to cite one usage in any authoritative newspaper/journal where 'Nubian' (instead of the Nubian desert) is used to ferer to the desert.

    Maybe not. Because it is not a desert which is in the news in these parts.

    In any case Nubian does not qualify desert or add any character to it. So it is not an adjective. It is a name and would be a proper noun.

    It is like Indian Ocean. It is like saying Pacific Ocean etc. However, while other oceans are referred to often as The Pacific, The Atlantic etc. ,it is not customary to refer to the Indian Ocean as the Indian. That does not make it an adjective here. It retains the same character as Pacific or Atlantic. So in this context Indian would be a noun.

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  32. Maybe we could refer to a grammarian.

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  33. In any case I do not see a problem with the definition in the clue. If Desert can refer to Sahara,it can also refer to Nubian

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  34. Suresh at 15:13
    Very interesting but I am not convinced!

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  35. Actually the noun would be 'The Indian Ocean' or 'The Sahara Desert' as a combined phrase. For the CW purpose my comment of 15:19 holds.

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  36. The reason we do not say The Indian for Indian Ocean is because it can mean something else,i.e a person from India. Similarly if you said The Nubian, it may refer to a person from Nubia.

    I'll call it a day as far as this subject goes and agree to disagree

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  37. Sumitra 1437: Reminded me of St.Clares, Mallory Towers, and the scones and stuff Frederick Algernon Trotteville and friends used to have. All those books used to make me quite hungry (as did the report of S&B)

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  38. Why, Kishore, even Ian Fleming in some of his novels has written quite lovingly about food and drink, descriptions that might make one's mouth water....

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  39. Hi everyone,

    Thanks for keeping the blog active.

    Gita a special thanks to you for hosting the blog on my behalf. However it appears that the mail has got in late accordingly it has got published at 9:07AM only.

    Just for info of all, got home at 9:30PM last night after the S&B meet at Chennai, left Bangalore at 5:30AM this morning and checked in here at Sterling Resorts in Munnar at 2:45 PM, (total 520 KM upto the resort which is 15 KM beyond Munnar). Took me 9hrs 15 min as I had a flat enroute and had to hunt for a tyre shop to buy a tube as the tyre was a tubeless one and the crack could not be patched, added to that we took a couple of wrong turnings otherwise we should have been in by 1:30 PM latest, anyway alls well that ends well.

    Am not commenting on the CW as I want to take a nap and get fresh for the evening bonfire with old collegemates some of whom I am meeting after 36 years!!

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  40. What a travel schedule, Deepak! Short of using a chopper, you seem to have done everything.:-)

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  41. With servicemen, the difficult is done at once, the impossible takes a little longer !

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  42. Apropos the discussion about place names becoming adjectives for certain nouns and then taking the place of such nouns, I have an Indo-Chinese example (though I agree that this is not an example to measure English usage against):

    Manchuria in China, the home of the Manchu people (who can forget Lo Tsen, the 'most old' Little Manchu from James Hilton's Lost Horizon) became a descriptive in the form of Gobi Manchurian for the Indian Gobi prepared in a certain way and then reduced to just Gobi or Manjoori (Col, saab :-) ) with the millions who eat it happily as 'Chinees', they know not the existence of the place.

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  43. Col saab, sorry to hear about your apartment enroute.

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  44. @Kishore 18.06 LOL - same pinch

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  45. Kishore, 'flat' and 'apartment' - you ought become a crossword setter, to replace who-know-who.

    Of course, it wouldn't be a nice feeling to get into that slot.

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  46. I thought Colonel's apartment was robbed or something.

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  47. Richard, are you in some kinda contest against Suresh?

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  48. A little birdie gave us a tit-bit of good news at the S & B meet. Will keep all of you in suspense about it.

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  49. Richard: Unenviable position.

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  50. ... anything to do with 10 - 4 = 6?

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