We're back on track again at the end of the freshers week.
ACROSS
1 - A conservative word of praise about quiet feat (14) - ACCOMPLISHMENT {A}{C}{COMPLI(SH}MENT}
8 - Gorge seen in a river north-east (6) - RAVINE {RAVI}{NE}
11 - Excited and annoyed, in retrospect, by promises to pay back
(9) - DELIRIOUS {DELIR<-}{IOUS}
13 - Elucidate what was once British currency (7) - EXPOUND {EX}{POUND}
15 - Have ice broken and be successful (7) - ACHIEVE*
17 - Wearing a girdle to hide onset of arthritis? Overdue! (7) - BELATED {BEL{A}TED}
19 - Egg cells, say, ready, get set out (7) - GAMETES {GAME}{SET*}
21 - New route away from the centre (5) - OUTER*
23 - Poetry without charge! (4,5) - FREE VERSE [CD]
25 - Immoral time of ten years before beginnings of new traditions
(8) - DECADENT {DECADE}{N}{T}
26 - Modify commercial a wee bit (6) - ADJUST {AD}{JUST}
27 - Device on aircraft that forced the girl right out (6,8) - FLIGHT RECORDER {FORCED+THE+GIRL+R}*
DOWN
1 - The odd bird found in a long time? Make it short (7) - ABRIDGE {A{BIRD*}GE}
2 - Trivial objection by an accountant, endlessly disgusting (5) - CAVIL {CA}{VILe}
3 - Clubs in bridge, say (5,4) - MINOR SUIT [CD]
5 - Skin disease of animals revealed by a German geneticist (5) - MANGE [T]
6 - A walkover, in the absence of a fight? (2,7) - NO CONTEST [CD]
7 - Evidence of sleeplessness needing correction in photo (3,3) - RED EYE [DD]
10 - Minor ailment of the aged after a touch of coryza (4) - COLD {C}{OLD}
16 - Domestic entertainment to hide move designed to suppress love
(4,5) - HOME VIDEO {H{O}ME VIDEO*}
17 - Light-haired noble worried about daughter (6) - BLONDE {BLON{D}E*}
18 - Fund etc., mis-directed, is no longer usable (7) - DEFUNCT*
19 - Expression of surprise about hot cooking fat (4) - GHEE {G{H}EE}
20 - Refuge that lets her free (7) - SHELTER*
22 - Investigate afresh exposing embarrassed policeman (2-3) - RE-DIG {RE-D}{IG}
24 - Bullet, French one found in angler’s tool (5) - ROUND {RO{UN}D}
Quickie!
ReplyDeleteKishore is advised to be explicit and avoid such one-word messages. 'Quickie' has three meanings (in Chambers) and I don't know what he is alluding to in this pithy statement.
ReplyDeleteThis being a crossword forum, I am referring to it. Readers might read something else into it, but then connotation is in the brains of the reader.
DeleteWelcome back! Am I glad? Oh! Boy!
ReplyDeleteCV: In Tamil we have: Idam, porul, eval.
ReplyDeleteYou know that.
Yeah, in English it is ERC - explain with reference to the context.
DeleteIn school we had questions which we had to ERC.
Yes,we had also similar questions but they are called "Annotations wrt context" in school exams in fifties.
DeleteIt can also be called a smoothie- silky, at the same time delicious!
ReplyDeleteKnew lake Erie, but not Erne. Managed to fill in though. Made a 'minor' mistake in 3D,corrected it later thanks to Bridge.
Aha, Diamonds a few days back and now Clubs. Takes me back to my Precision Club bidding
DeleteI am wrong. There is no lake erne. Should it be 'N' for one in 'erie'? (in stead of 1)
ReplyDeleteLoch Erne in Northern Ireland
DeleteCol.
ReplyDeleteBlonde was great ! Had a good laugh.
Why are blondes said to be dumb? Do we have blondes in our country? If not, what is the equivalent of a blonde here?
DeleteSardars. I have seen this cartoon in Sardar jokes.
Delete@Padmanabhan: There IS a lake Erne - in Northern Ireland.
ReplyDeleteSorry. Missed Col.'s ref.
ReplyDeleteWhew, relief to have Sankalak back! Enjoyed the freshers, but old is Gold!! And yes, it was quick!
ReplyDeleteNice touch as usual, but mostly a breeze. Going by recent experience, will progressively get tougher perhaps.
ReplyDeleteHave noticed of late, that a word gets repeated in other setter's puzzles (in quick succession). SWANSEA today an example. Has happened with such regularity that I can't put it down to co-incidence. And going by CV's comment some time back, the puzzles are submitted well in advance. Are setters given a brief that a certain word must be included in the grid, just to compare the different clues written?
Bhala
DeleteWell, to the last question, my answer is "no".
Setters may work in advance (or not) but they are all scattered and, while working together, they work apart from each other. They do not have any idea of words that go into the grids of others.
If THC, the feature as such, were to avoid higher frequency of certain words, the watch must be kept elsewhere but that is also not that easy. A searchable dB has to be maintained of all crossword 'lights' of all setters and then each ('light' I mean, not the setter) has to be put through it to determine how often it has been used before.
Each setter can maintain a dB - especially in these times when fresh setters start out with computer aids. It would be interesting to see if any setter repeats any words within a certain period.
As far as I am concerned, I am very particular that no word must repeat within a week's bunch. If, while writing clues, I notice any repeat, I rework that area. Repetitions may not occur even in large swathes of a particular setter.
So far I have set 700 puzzles and certainly some words have occurred multiple times and sometimes haven't I cited how the same word was tackled in different ways?
In UK crosswords too sometimes the same word occurs in the works of two different crosswords in the same paper or in different papers and solvers do point it out (thanks to blogs that publish the clues with the answers and the search facility that is available).
The life of crossword setters is becoming difficult! In pre-computer and pre-Internet days the solvers may have got a vague feeling that they had encountered a particular light only recently but as newspapers were binned they had no means of confirming their suspicions; even if papers were available, who will have the patience to conduct a manual search?
The life of crossword setters is becoming difficult!
Delete@CV Sir, but in so many other contexts, setting is much easier with computers and software. At times I wonder how a setter would have filled a grid without any software - using pencil and erasers, filling, rubbing out and repeating this process ad infinitum! Today a whole grid gets filled at the click of a button and all that remains is to write the clues.
Even in clue-writing one has access to a comprehensive list of anagrams at the click of a button. And not to forget the comfy software dictionary - one would have had to rummage through a huge dictionary a decade back and it's safe to vouch it is a painful process given the frequency of referencing one needs while setting.
I think the via media encompassing both opinions is that setting by itself has probably become much easier, but the post setting phase, where solvers come back with comebacks has made the life of setters difficult...
Delete@Kishore: The mechanical process involved in setting has eased out, but the goalposts for setters would have probably shifted over years. It is likely that Sankalak of 1992 would have used more direct and non-cryptic clues than today. A gradual shift towards wordplay-oriented clues has happened even in British puzzles, albeit a lot earlier than in India.
DeleteThe challenge today is hardly in writing clues, but providing clever deception and meaningful surfaces. A clue like "Bedroom refurbished for ennui (7)" would have been solved without any issue some years back, but today it may gain brickbats for insipid surface, especially if it is one of many similar clues in a puzzle.
Welcome back to my favourite setter
ReplyDeleteTo Vijay Sarvagnam
ReplyDeleteThe most regular and consistent solver of THC - whether the setting is good or otherwise...
Many Happy Returns of the Day.
SR
I join you in wishing sarvagnam in wishing him many happy returns of the day. May he keep solving many more CW's.
DeleteGood to have Sankalak back after a heady week of fresh faces.
ReplyDeleteToday's crossword was :
Even truth has some minuses (6)
s(m)ooth
DeleteHow do you get that?
DeleteEven = Definition
DeleteTruth = Sooth
Some minuses = m
truth has some minuses = s(m)ooth = Even
Thank you. But I did not truth= sooth.
DeleteSankalak appears to have become the gold standard for setters of THC.
ReplyDeleteWe welcome a Continuous Quality Improvement programme among setters to live up to the expectations of the solvers.
I was expecting a picture of Captain Haddock for 9A.
ReplyDeleteNever was a Tin Tin fan.
DeleteYes, 'blistering barnacles' is a typical Tin Tin phrase ! Of course 'thundering typhoons' will also be always added to give it the effect. I used to like the typical hairstyle of Tin Tin ( of course when I had some of my own!)
DeleteChaturvasi8:51 AM GMT+05:30
ReplyDeleteKishore is advised to be explicit and avoid such one-word messages. 'Quickie' has three meanings (in Chambers) and I don't know what he is alluding to in this pithy statement.
Reply
We all know Kishore is never ambiguous. He means only one thing
.... and says it in one word !
ReplyDeleteDr. Srinivasan:
ReplyDeleteJug Suraiiya still contributes twice a week in the TOI- as Jugular vein and Second Opinion. I'm sure, you know it. Do you mean the clippings of his articles in the Defunct JS or the TOI publication of his articles? I have one of these:also, of Bhachhi Karkaria who also is my favourite for her inimitable style of writing. The former for his dry and t-in -cheek humour and the latter for her using thematic words and phrases in her articles. Value for money. I collect all these clippings as much as the middles of those days and nowadays from the NIE, in which Ravi Shankar writes poetically effusive articles.
My wife always wonders why I collect them, once I have read them all but there are times when I go back to my collectionss to read them, very rarely though.
Crossword cuttings and clippings of articles occupy two or three drumfuls in my balcony.
I wish I could be like CV who says, I now possess nothing !!
Kishore: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.Wasn't it Mahatma Gandhoi who told that even if yo think evil, you had commited a sin?
ReplyDeleteOr so you mean in Swahili: Shaouri YakO? to mean: That's his business how he interprets my words?
ERNE is also featured in crosswords for eagle, like AYRIE as an eagle's nest
ReplyDeleteVijay Sarvagnam
ReplyDeleteMany happy returns of the day from all of us in the H Crossword Family . God bless you . many days of Crossword solving.