Friday, 11 January 2013

No.10668, Friday 11 Jan 13, Gridman

Enjoyable opener from Gridman although the theme is given away for free. Liked quite a few clues including THRONE, PAGE, AMIDST, VERTICAL and ROSEMARY

Starred clues, undefined, are herbs.

ACROSS
1 Usual position next to a road (8) STANDARD (STAND + A + RD)
5 Counterfeit note makes good man to hesitate twice (6) STUMER (ST + UM + ER)
9 Heath or Othello’s tract? (8) MOORLAND (CD)
10 King of Persia imprisoned leader of pirates in island (6) CYPRUS (CYRUS outside P)
12 Almost allow Poles to get projector part (4) LENS (LEt + N S)
13 E’er mooning around part of a ship (6,4) ENGINE, ROOM (E'ER MOONING)*
15 Field Officer’s gear-change in search (6) FORAGE (FO + GEAR*)
17 Part of flight where Bollywood bigwig crosses one (5) STAIR (STAR outside I)
20 “...and when I love thee not, __ is come again” (Othello) (5) CHAOS (GK)
21 Leadership is caught off guard, it’s said (6) THRONE (~ THROWN)
24 Intimidated black line defeated (10) BROWBEATEN (B + ROW + BEATEN)
27 Quiet time for an errand-boy (4) PAGE (P + AGE)
29 In the hub of a shadowy back-street (6) AMIDST (A + DIM<= + ST)
30 Disheartened Chandra has boy going over bad bells (8) CARILLON (ChandrA + RON outside ILL)
31 Ferry on river with intensity (6) DEEPLY (PLY on DEE)
32 See article reshaped: it’s not flat (8) VERTICAL (V + ARTICLE*)

DOWN
1* Small mischievous fellow almost allowed (6) SIMPLE (S + IMP + LEt)
2 Exist in large quantities on a pale (6) ABOUND (A + BOUND)
3* Daughter’s awful (4) DILL (D + ILL)
4 Cricket score board has begun ticking: babble away! (3,2) RUN, ON (RUN + ON)
6* Your old note (5) THYME (THY + ME)
7* Spoil Major’s resettlement? (8) MARJORAM (MAR + MAJOR*)
8* Flower presented to girl (8) ROSEMARY (ROSE + MARY)
11 I learn about a kind of equation (6) LINEAR (I LEARN)*
14 Submits // archery equipment (4) BOWS (DD)
16 Sort of projection saint found in sea (6) ASTRAL (ST inside ARAL)
17 Understanding Pole in sea-change (4) SANE (N inside SEA*)
18 It gets filled to the hilt (8) SCABBARD (CD)
19* Mali, come out! (8) CAMOMILE (MALI COME)*
22* Scold backward insurers (6) GARLIC (RAG<= + LIC)
23* Marsh thriller writer Deighton recalled (6) FENNEL (FEN + LEN<=)
25* Graduates nearly sick (5) BASIL (BA'S + ILl)
26 Tell rightaway and give joy (5) ELATE (rELATE)
28 Money on time for glass shading (4) TINT (TIN + T)


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28 comments:

  1. Deepak Gopinath11 January 2013 at 08:31

    Message from Padmanabhan is reproduced below, please get in touch with him

    A request to all Chennai (or nearabouts) based participants of the blog. Pl. send me your contact details (e mail ID/ phone no.) to keep in touch if & when we arrange for a S & B meet here. It may be put in the comments section here or mailed to me at padmanabhan.pb@gmail.com.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sudarshan11 January 2013 at 09:17

      mY CONTACT DETAILS:-
      ph:9566155637
      reside at Valmiki Nagar, Thiruvanmiyur.

      Delete
    2. Sudarshan11 January 2013 at 09:18

      and email address lamboo@gmail.com

      Delete
    3. Richard11 January 2013 at 10:13

      Since there are not many comments, could our bloggers here come out with some interesting clues that lead to the user name in the above email ID? I have thought of at least three. No offence, Sudarshan..

      Delete
    4. Deepak Gopinath11 January 2013 at 10:22

      He's six foot plus?

      Delete
    5. Anonymous11 January 2013 at 12:36

      He is a GI-ant?

      Delete
    6. Anonymous11 January 2013 at 12:54

      Because he is Chary of being labelled 'bamboo jaisa lamboo"?

      No offense intended, Mr Sudarshan Chari.

      Delete
    7. VMA Nair11 January 2013 at 13:18

      He is in love with car - no alternate hiring .

      Delete
    8. Richard11 January 2013 at 20:23

      That is a creative one, Ajeesh.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous11 January 2013 at 08:31

    9 Heath or Othello’s tract? (8) MOORLAND (CD)

    This can be a DD or even a charade, since
    Othello=Moor
    tract=land

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bhavan11 January 2013 at 08:46

      Actually now that I think about it, this might be better classified as a charade

      Delete
  3. Richard11 January 2013 at 09:22

    If the theme had not been given free, the crossie would have been tougher.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Suresh11 January 2013 at 09:36

    I am a dummy at Botany and had to do a lot of Dictionary work to cfm the answers.

    Again a number of words I will not recollect if I see them again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rengaswamy11 January 2013 at 10:07

      +1. but theme clues were 1D.

      Delete
    2. Chaturvasi11 January 2013 at 10:29

      Dispassionately I looked at all the answers:


      Across: 1 standard, 5 stumer, 9 moorland, 10 Cyprus, 12 lens, 13 engine room, 15 forage, 17 stair, 20 chaos, 21 throne, 24 browbeaten, 27 page, 29 amidst, 30 carillon, 31 deeply, 32 vertical.

      Down: 1 simple, 2 abound, 3 dill, 4 run on, 6 thyme, 7 marjoram, 8 rosemary, 11 linear, 14 bows, 16 astral, 17 sane, 18 scabbard, 19 camomile, 22 garlic, 23 fennel, 25 basil, 26 elate, 28 tint.

      The list after theme words are removed:

      Across: 1 standard, 5 stumer, 9 moorland, 10 Cyprus, 12 lens, 13 engine room, 15 forage, 17 stair, 20 chaos, 21 throne, 24 browbeaten, 27 page, 29 amidst, 30 carillon, 31 deeply, 32 vertical.

      Down:2 abound, 4 run on, 11 linear, 14 bows, 16 astral, 17 sane, 18 scabbard, 26 elate, 28 tint.

      Now, when I look at the answers I find that rather obsucre words that we may not use ine veryday conversation are:

      STUMER
      CARILLON

      Other than the herbs only the above two are obscure, I would say. Theme words don't count because with the theme announced and with the crossings the answers are derived and add to our vocab, if we did not know them already.

      Two obsucure words other than theme words are not too many, I think.

      Any other opinion?

      Delete
    3. Suresh11 January 2013 at 11:18

      I agree with you too. I was not cribbing. Just that my knowledge of botanical words is poor. So SIMPLE words like fennel dill and marjoram needed confirmation from a dictionary after filling in the grid. Carillon was known and Stumer was obvious from crossing, just needing confirmation.

      You can come up with the same words next week and I will need to grab my Dictionary again. But that does not mean that the clue is not good.

      Delete
    4. Anonymous11 January 2013 at 12:39

      Ad ma(r)jorem dei gloriam ? Pardon spelling issues.

      Delete
    5. VP11 January 2013 at 15:44

      Am very poor in botany as well. Left most of the theme words till the end. Really good clues and crossings helped get them all :) Don't know if it was intentional, but having theme words all on Down clues helped get a lot of cross-letters.

      Enjoyed the opener immensely.

      Delete
  5. Deepak Gopinath11 January 2013 at 10:41

    Agree with you CV, I think Suresh was being a bit too harsh.

    CARILLON has appeared here before, clued by Gridman on 16 Dec 11 as "Ring for worker: I will be working"

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nadathur Rajan11 January 2013 at 10:55

    'almost allow/ed' for LE[-t] was used twice - 12ac & 1dn. With so many ways of clueing in this, it could have been avoided.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chaturvasi11 January 2013 at 12:55

      Agreed.

      It has just escaped the gate.

      It is easy to write the clues and think the task is done. The crossword gains its stature only on examination of the grid and the clues from different angles. This I do - on clue text alone, one check to see that the enumerations are in order, another to see if the same component is used twice, yet another to see if the same word (it may be as simple as 'country') is used twice in the clue text and so on.

      Occasional repeats might happen as in this case. I might have noticed it but failed to take corective step in time. I don't remember.

      It is very exhilarating to know that there is such a perceptive set of solvers.

      Delete
  7. Deepak Gopinath11 January 2013 at 12:00

    Sudden spurt in the visits and page views to the blog over the last four days, I wonder why? On an average there are around 1 to 1.2K visits cum page views per day, but over the last four days it's gone up to around 1.6K whereas it should have dropped to below 1K as the Sankalak-Gridman partnership is on.

    ReplyDelete
  8. yeahbeesee11 January 2013 at 13:16

    Newbie here.. Wondering why 27A can't be PEON.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ramani11 January 2013 at 20:15

    should there be hiphen in 29a? If hiphenated back-street would be 'TS' isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  10. RameshJ11 January 2013 at 21:49

    Nice one from Gridman. Liked the way back-street was used. Had a few holes in the grid - Camomile, Carillon & Fennel. So three new words for the day ( Fen=Marsh ) :)

    Also CVji thank you for the clarifications a few days back regarding homophone clues.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Chaturvasi12 January 2013 at 06:17

    If you show me a bunch of camomile or fennel and ask me which is which, I won't be able to say.

    But 'camomile' is a word that I have known from my college days.
    It was in a Shakespeare play and there's this famous quote about a distinct quality of the herb

    Like a camomile bed -
    The more it is trodden
    The more it will spread,

    - a quote I have never forgotten.

    Most of the other herbs too I have come across in my reading.

    Which brings me to the question: is a student of Eng Lit in a better position as crossword solver/setter? My answer: Maybe, but not necessarily".

    Whether you are a literature johnnie or a computer engineer, if you have an interest in words, you note them and remember them. Camomile may be strange even to a literature student who has passed his B.A. Eng Lit from a Tamil Nadu mofussil college but not so to someone who has got his B. Tech from BITS, Pilani. Agreed?

    ReplyDelete

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