ACROSS
1 - Sen’s lute play is unmusical (8) - TUNELESS*
5 - Must bear without hesitation (6) - SHOULD
9 - In maths, its two sides are the same (8) - EQUATION [CD]
10 - Book journalist with secret listening device — might be an unwelcome hotel visitor (6) - {B}{ED}{BUG}
13 - Yum! A little preparation in the end (10) - ULTIMATELY*
15 - Field officer’s left base tail (6) - {F}{O}{L}{LOW}
17 - Father’s guarantee about Latin dance (5) - {P{O{L}K}A}
20 - Fellows on radio appearance (5) - GUISE (~guys)
21 - Los Angeles strike-breaker holding one rope (6) - {LA}{R{I}AT}
24 - Shakeout or reorganisation in east Asian republic (5,5) - SOUTH KOREA*
29 - Use former writer to start dialogue (6) - {EX}{PEN}{D}
30 - Record holder a HUF head in old city (8) - DJ{A}{KARTA} What's the link between Record and DJ other than the DJ playing them?
31 - Account book showing advantage in two sides (6) - {L{EDGE}R} Nice one
32 - Mind a yet-to-go-off explosive (8) - DYNAMITE*
DOWN
1 - Diminutive youth on the boundaries of Surrey (6) - {TEEN}{S
2 - Leader of Naxalites must come to nothing (6) - {N}{OUGHT}
3 - Instrument, say, to plunder (4) - LUTE(~loot)
6 - Animal desire within the limits of Hazra (5) - {H{YEN}
8 - Take-away for the pet (5-3) - {DOGGY}-{BAG}
11 - A number on a pitcher for the inspector (6) - {VI}{EWER}
14 - Final letter on ultimately fertile area (4) - {Z}{ON}{E}
16 - See a couple of learners work and idle (6) - {LO}{LL}{OP}
17 - Scheme to cut the root of an elder, perhaps (4) - PLAN
18 - What an omelette-maker will discard (8) - EGGSHELL [CD]
19 - Canine’s neighbour? (8) - BICUSPID [CD]
22 - Corfiot no fellow to tremble on duty (6) - OCTROI
23 - Revolutionary on the rise for a period in soup (6) - {POT<-}{AGE}
25 - Away! Fence no fellow to get hot (5) - (-f+h){HENCE}
26 - Jone goes round with a bit of yen to have a ball (5) - {ENJO*}{Y}
28 - Fine radish woman discarded for lady’s fingers (4) - {OK}{RA
Good morning folks:
ReplyDeleteThe PUNdit and anagram-lover in Gridman having a ball today.
Enjoyable play with words in some clues like FOLLOW = tail, OCTROI= duty. EGGSHELL-ence in clue-building in some others.
HENCE meaning 'begone' or 'away' was classic, with deletion of 'f' and prefixing of 'h'. BICUSPID was another gem - only dentists could have got the answer at once.
SCOWL, ZONE, LOLLOP etc were also good.
Two canine references - 8D and 19D. Behest in two clues - ought and should. Not a complaint, just an idle observation.
Good start for the day and coming days.
17 - Scheme to cut the root of an elder, perhaps (4)
ReplyDelete[b]PLAN(-t)[/b]
Elder = Shrub/Tree/Plant.
30A DJ is for record holder not just record.
ReplyDelete28 - Fine radish woman discarded for lady’s fingers (4) - {OK}{RAdish}
ReplyDeleteA woman of allure and IT is colloquially referred to as a 'dish', as most of us know. What does the gentler gender feel about it?
Any more TSGN or is this the lot?
ReplyDeleteActually the new, improved NJ is quite enjoyable. Today's Gridman was too easy, like Sankalak
@Suresh 8.40 : To the extent that I mistook Gridman for her in THC forum on orkut.
ReplyDeleteWell not really, but ...
@Richard (8:36):
ReplyDeleteAlthough a woman is usually referred to as a DISH, it is applicable to a man too. In Cambridge dict. the example given is:
He's gorgeous - what a dish! :P
@Richard (8:36):
ReplyDeleteI was wondering whether by IT you mean Information Technology!
Nice puzzle.
ReplyDelete"Canine's neighbor" was tricky. Otherwise, it was all easy.
The difficulty level was pretty much the same as Sankalak's crossword.
I just got one doubt.
3D: Why is the answer LUTE and not LOOT? In clues like these, ought we to take the first part of the clue for definition?
Thanks SandhyaP. I was recalling a certain Bollywood performer - was it Raveena Tandon? - gyrating to the song Tu 'cheese' badhi hai mast mast (not sure if the dish was made out of cheddar or parmesan.) I faintly remember it had attracted a lot of criticiam from the womenfolk, for having equated to an object
ReplyDeleteChaturvasi 08:54 Somehow I had a hunch it would draw such a comment. In fact I used IT instead of SA.
ReplyDeletewas busy on facebook... so I didn't log in till now. So here's a quick, interesting story.
ReplyDeleteI had planned on dropping a quick note lauding NJ on the tremendous improvement in her CW today. I was able to solve most of the clues today within an hour... and then got distracted by other stuff, thinking I'll come back to it later. So now, I checked Col's blog to see if anyone had any comments on NJ's much-improved clue setting. :) And only now, after logging in, did I realize that it was Gridman today!!! Lol!
Anyway, I'm gonna try finish up today's CW and log back on. :)
Richard
ReplyDeleteI couldn't resist it because while SA is short for 'sex appeal' and one is justified in writing it as SA, 'it' in the sense of that undefinable, ineffable, can't-quite-grasp charm, is a word in itself and so must be written only as 'it', not IT.
In Tamil we might say "Avalukku adhu irukkuppa. Solla mudiyadhu! Mayanga vendiadhudhaan!"
30a DJ is a record holder
ReplyDelete17d elder=tree/plant, plant cut root = plan= scheme
Double nesting in 17a
ReplyDeleteha ha ha CV sir
ReplyDeleteone quick 1-liner before I go... Just got this on my phone, and thot it was funny.
ReplyDelete"While many in India are pondering where RAM was born, the Australians are wondering why LAXMAN was born!" :-D
good morning all
ReplyDeleteGridman'sque offering. I am very much doubtful on the spelling of jakartha. clueless on LOLLOP and Bicuspid totally new for me. I scratch my head a lot for "equation", i filled it as Loot (lute) took the second part for an answer, how do we arrive it?
Is the desire YEN? (i thought it was yearn)
Good day
Mathu
Chaturvasi 09:52 - Got 'it', the point you made, that is. Maybe my idea of 'capitalizing' on 'it' didn't succeed.
ReplyDeleteHari 10:03 - Good one on Ram-Laxman.
Mathu 10:23 YEN
ReplyDeleteMathu,
ReplyDeleteYenna neenga? Adu YENna, YEARNa ani kekringla? :-)
Sorry, that's the best I could do with my limited Tamil knowledge.
In Tamil we might say "Avalukku adhu irukkuppa. Solla mudiyadhu! Mayanga vendiadhudhaan!"
ReplyDeleteChaturvasi avargaLe Tamil teriyAdu.
From whatever little I have picked from the Sri Lankan repatriates in my brother's rubber estate, I can go so far as, "She's got 'it'. Mustn't say anything......". Further?
Mathu @ 10:23,
ReplyDeleteBesides the other explanations given by the others DJAKARTA is the old spelling for JAKARTA, see the link in the main post
@ Colonel, Richard & Satya
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarifications.
@satya
Vaarthai vilaiyaattu balamaa irukke. is it because Cross word is a game? I sense something "interesting"
Richard:
What is the whole conversation about?
yay! Another complete for me!! (I think.. haven't checked answers yet.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, it's with a * at the end. :)
I happened to glance at the words POLKA and LOLLOP when I logged in earlier... I doubt if I'd have gotten those otherwise... maybe... maybe not. :)
Had to guess on PLOT and another clue... that I didn't quite get the anno for. Gonna read the full blog now to see the explanations. :)
Cheers mateys!
Mathu, please follow it from the point it started, with my 08:36 post.
ReplyDeleteMadhu, I think it's about a spicy dish made of lady's fingers and more.
ReplyDeleteaaah shites!
ReplyDeleteThat's what I get for premature postings! Made a mistake on spelling LARIAT. Didn't bother to confirm and wrote it as LARIOT.. dagnabit! Hence PLAN became PLOT... Either way.. I wouldn't have gotten the anno! :)
Well... close enough! haha
@ Bhavan 8:45 - just read ur comment! u said "not really"... but I actually DID mistake it for NJ! :-D
ReplyDelete@ bhavan 8:33 & Kishore 9:55 - thx for the clarification. Didn't make that association.
ReplyDelete@ Richard 10:58 - thx for that Richard. But I still insist that "YEN for YEARN is not all right!" ;-)
Hari, YEN is a word by itself, which means "a strong desire or inclination."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thefreedictionary.com/yen
@ VJ 11:49 - I know dude. :) I was playing with the words... "not All Right"... as in remove AR from YEARN ... giving YEN.
ReplyDeleteLol! :-)
Oh LOL, that's a nice one.
ReplyDeletethx! :-D
ReplyDeleteGood one Hari
ReplyDeleteRichard:
ReplyDeleteGreat now i got it. Incidentally i brought "bendekka palya" today. A clear case of LOA.
Thanks.
@Hari
Your Boyish enthusiasm jumped on me too. Since when you started setting clues? AR 25 d and 26 d. Plan is easy in the first picking provided we thought elder as a plant before it become tree. haha
mathu
If this was an NJ puzzle, it would have been a step back, IMO; easily solvable is not necessarily good. Although I'm happy to note that there were not many anagrams (for Gridman).
ReplyDeleteI would also like to add that ECHO as a word and "a couple of learners/students" for a clue should be banned from the grid for a few months.
If this was an NJ puzzle, it would have been a step back, IMO.
ReplyDeleteI am unable to get the drift of the above sentence. Anyone know?
A crossword puzzle being difficult or easy is one thing and a puzzle being good, average or bad is another thing.
A crossword puzzle is also judged by the use of English: which one is perfect, which one totters on basic grammar?
A crossword puzzle is also judged by its entertainment value. Which one is good in this respect, which one is boring like 'take this word, add this word and get the required answer'?
A crossword puzzle is also judged by the variety of clue-types. Which one has this and which one is mostly charades with some clue types such as homophones, &lits, etc, etc, totally absent.
A crossword puzzle is also judged by gridfills: which one has most obscure words, which one has everyday words, which one has a reasonable mix?
The subsequent sentence on Navneeth's comment explains his feelings. He enjoyed NJ's puzzles more than this one.
ReplyDeleteJust finished reading The French Confection.
ReplyDeleteI remember buying and reading a book titled 'Chocolat' several years ago.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.curledup.com/chocolat.htm
I think this was made into a successful film.
With ref to Djakarta, the Bahasa spoken in Indonesia and Malaysia has a lot of Indian origin words, in addition to Dutch, Arabic and Chinese. They use the Roman alphabet written in a phonetic way. Some samples from the Malaysian version:
ReplyDeleteBas=bus
kot=coat
Negara=nagara,town
baldi=bucket
Hari Raya= Ramadan Eid
Bhoomiputra=Local, native, son of the soil
Also, interestingly, the language does not have plural words. To signify plural, they use reduplication (dont ask me why re in addition to duplication) i.e.singular word is repeated twice, eg. bas bas would mean buses. Also, apart from the usual prefix suffix usage, the language has a combined use of both together, termed as confix or circumfix.
Of course, I keep away from the Durian.
Chaturvasi, opinions would always be what they are; "opinions." Nothing serious.
ReplyDeleteEven if one's views were backed up with factual information, it'd still just be an opinion and not a fact. For instance, I may say that a certain movie is bad and my reasoning would be that it's too slow and (hence) boring. Does it make it a "bad boring movie"? Well not by a thousand miles. It's quite the same with crosswords too.
Everybody's entitled to have their own views and share 'em in the public domain, but I feel it oughta be done politely so that nobody takes offense. And it'd be nice if all criticisms carried strong disclaimers.
I happen to read just now the following observation by Anax the UK setter somewhere on the Internet:
ReplyDeleteI don’t mind if people say they didn’t enjoy a puzzle because it was too easy/hard – but it’s wrong to describe a puzzle as ‘bad’ for that reason, because it assumes every solver wants the same level of difficulty.
No puzzle is going to be universally popular, because there isn’t a universal solver.
Of course, I know that Navneeth didn't say today's crossword was 'bad'.
On Shuchi's blog and here we have had some exercises in limericks.
ReplyDeleteWell, today I noticed one elsewhere.
http://www.boards2go.com/boards/board.cgi?action=read&id=1286284912&user=dharrison
Members were to write the last three lines of a given limerick (the UK newspaper Titbits used to have a weekly competition in which members had to contribute just the last line.)
I have attempted it at the website indicated above (though I placed my post at a wrong place).
@ Mathu 13:46 - "Boyish"!?! Wow! I'm flattered! I have a son who's just getting ready to leave boyish behind! If only... :-D
ReplyDelete@ Kishore 18:30 - That was some interesting info on Malay. Thx.
@ the rest :-) - I'm going to be "totally redundant" (as opposed to "just a bit redundant"!), and agree with the gist of what everyone says on CW setting. I personally try to take care not to overly squawk on setters just 'cos moi didn't like their grid. Being unable to solve a clue doesn't bother me nearly as much as finding out later that I was barking up the wrong tree, courtesy of a badly set clue.
Now... that comment also comes with the realization that the experts on this forum are able to look past these occasional idiosyncrasies. However, for relative novices like myself, it becomes a sore point. Maybe over the next few months, I shall also be inured to the vagaries of NJesque clues. :) But... to be fair, she has definitely improved her sets compared to a few months ago.
Have a good nite all! Cheers! :-)
My first comment was posted in haste, so I'd better explain it post-haste.
ReplyDeleteIt was essentially in reply to Hari's first comment (where he relates how he thought that it was (an improved) NJ, today). Now that I read my comment again, it appears to me as a quasi-snide remark, though I did not intend to offend him or anybody else.
While I'm happy to finish a CW or even come close to do doing so, solving one set by the likes of NJ who set the bar high, for better or for worse, give me a sense of accomplishment. (I can see others rolling their eyes and saying, "It's just a puzzle, for god's sake!" ;-) :D )
Apropos Hari's reference to Malay, I had visited Kenya just after Malaysia and talking to friends there, I was asked about my Malaysian trip. I said 'I had just been to Malaya last month' using the old name for the Malaysian peninsula, and my Kiswahili speaking friends burst out in laughter. Malaya in Kiswahili means the same as an 'escort' in Spain.
ReplyDeleteThough not absolutely correct Kiswahili, Zebras are called Punda Malaya, in popular folklore, loosely translated as 'Donkey Prostitute', presuming it to be an offspring of a donkey and a stallion, but the correct spelling is Punda Milia, or a donkey with stripes.
ReplyDelete@ Kishore 19:37 & 19:42 - LoL!!! :-D
ReplyDelete@ Navneeth 19:35 - (rolling my eyes) Absolutely no offence taken! haha! :-D Anyhow, in my case, I'd feel the accomplishment w/ pretty much any of the setters. I honestly don't believe I'd get extra satisfaction from cracking NJ... but we'll see when that happens. My biggest expectation (personal) from THC, is enjoyment. Once that ceases, it becomes tedium... no matter who the setter is.
Sorry Navneeth, I think NJ sets the bar "high" only because she writes clues that require the solver to 1) ignore the errors that invariably creep in (grammatical in some instances, just plain incomplete cluing in some others), 2) do not follow consistent cryptic crossword rules (the rules themselves are flexible but I think what is inflexible would be the consistent application of rules as the setter sees it). If there is no consistency then the solver is barking up the wrong tree for no fault of his/her imagination which would not be fair.
ReplyDeleteBut, clearly her clues in this cycle were better than she usually does, but still I would like to pick on a few to make my point from say, yesterday's crossword:
Infuriated she gets rid of the devilish character (5) - LIVIDshe*
The usual rule is that the letters to be deleted should be given in the order it appears in the clue ("she" is not in the same order in "devilish"). "character" is extraneous unless one takes it to be the AInd, which could be a stretch.
24 - So much confusion with the friend (4) - CHUM*
"So" is certainly just padding which is usually frowned upon.
13 - Old boy is in a messy litigation omitting it in an assignment (10) - {OB}{L(-it)IGATION}
There is nothing "messy" with taking out "it" from "litigation" - here how is one supposed to interpret "messy" - as AInd with "litigation" as fodder? That would only be true if in true NJ style, we take the letters "i" and "t" out from "litigation" in any order but the obvious adjacent one that the Col. has picked. Or is the intent just to be used as padding in the clue and hence cause some confusion in the solver's mind?
There are several others that are questionable and some have been commented on as well...but again, these are easily palatable given the more egregious ones that usually fill the clues.
But Hari's observation that a puzzle needs to be enjoyable is spot on in terms of it being the most fundamental requirement. But, I also respectfully submit that it also needs to follow basic rules. While Gridman and Sankalak also occasionally stray, but that is a very, very rare occurence and can easily be
attributed to the fact that we seek perfection and make every attempt to be so but in the end, cannot be 100% all the time.
I have no stake in the matter other than being a fellow THC solver but I just could not resist adding my 2 cents and standing up for my favorite setters when I saw your opinion on the high bar.