ACROSS
1 Scavenge, to enemy’s endless wrath (6) FORAGE (FOe RAGE)
4 Grasp of math is iffy (6) FATHOM (OF MATH)*
9 Song contained in Bihar iambics (4) ARIA (T)
10 Mission, lacking ammo initially, to suppress man (10) CONTINGENT (CONTaIN GENT)
11 Sibling, initially sceptical, replaced first filter of sieve (6) SISTER (SIFTER-F+S)
12 Give at Gates, for instance, advertisement (8) HANDBILL (HAND BILL (Gates))
13 Jibe of lad inducting Eastern photograph (5,4) CHEAP SHOT (CHAP inducting E SHOT)
With elections round the corner, cheap shots come dime a dozen nowadays from many politicians
15 Character, non-entity, uses deodorant to mask body odour initially (5) NODDY (NOboDY uses D) Is an initial character indicator required for d for deodorant?
Noddy reminded of words like Gollywog, Picanniny etc. which became un-parliamentary. Though I have my doubts, looking at parliament (when there are no glitches), as to what is parliamentary and what is not.
16 Got wet behind the ears by upturned French mineral water (5) NAIVE (EVIAN<)
18 Gets rid of cartoon family that protects fashionable revolutionary (9) JETTISONS (JETSONS protects IT<) I am not sure if the 'fashionable=it' works. I thought 'it' refers to something else.
Their dog came a few days back ...
22 Desolate Los Angeles, become sweaty (3,6) LAY WASTE (LA SWEATY*)
23 Capital's hot, small area (6) PARISH (PARIS H)
25 Overbearing car going round bend with twitch (10) AUTOCRATIC (AUTO ARC< TIC)
26 Jewish man missing drink? (4) BREW (heBREW)
Capitalising on an old joke: How does a Jew get tea? He brews
27 Regularly tenses sanyasi with attempts (6) ESSAYS (tEnSeS sAnYaSi)
28 Trending lungis in a whirl (6) SLUING (LUNGIS*) Gerund of Slew
Eleventh commandment: Though shall not fiddle around with our lungis
DOWN
1 Provide pot to fish innards (7) FURNISH (URN in FISH)
2 Laughing artisan leaves because of confusion (5) RIANT (ARTISAN-AS)* I thought this was French, but Chambers has it
3 Supporters, perhaps not protecting company, reverse vehicles (7) GOCARTS (GARTerS protecting CO<)
As all William fans know garters have just one purpose - so that you can make catapults
5 Associates foreigners with Englishmen instead of Germans initially (6) ALIGNS (ALIENS0E+G)
6 Intellectuals, intoxicated, start bitter fights (9) HIGHBROWS (HIGH B ROWS)
Typing 'Brow' reminds me of the time I used to use Foxbase. Invariably half the time I used to doggedly type the command as 'Bow'.
7 Butlers, happy, switch first two vowels, get cut up (7) MANGLED (MEN GLAD with vowels switched)
8 Rotten hens, men spoil coronations (13) ENTHRONEMENTS (ROTTEN HENS MEN)*
14 Bill promises no retirement rights to Somali leader (9) ADVOWSONS (AD VOWS ON< S) Had to Google this one. Defn. in the middle
17 Alien leaves laureates confused more often than not (2,1,4) AS A RULE (LAUREATES-ET)*
19 Local humid weather, say, not right (7) TOPICAL (TrOPICAL)
20 Retreat, regularly engage savings (4,3) NEST EGG (NEST EnGaGe)
21 So, back to kill the hawk? (6) OSPREY (SO< PREY)
Oh! Spray?!
24 Spiritual leader, sailor sheltered by central bank (5) RABBI (AB sheltered by RBI)
Missed just a few. On the whole, it looks like both Skulldugger and KKK have lowered the bar, as Raju said yesterday.
ReplyDeleteFORAGE, FATHOM, HANDBILL, AUTOCRATIC, ESSAYS, SLUING, FURNISH, HIGHBROWS, AS A RULE, OSPREY, OSPREY, RABBI etc. were nice.
ENTHRONEMENTS was reminiscent of Arden and Sankalak.
14D - Placing the definition in the middle was unfair, I felt. Couldn't get. I don't know how others felt.
Delete28A - thankfully it was not clued as 'torn lungis' as anagrind.
DeleteWhen belts are worn, only a little portion of the lungi is above the belt (above in the sense of distance from the ground when standing up). Otherwise it is below the belt.
Delete14d, especially since it is an uncommon word
DeleteBit of a mixed bag for me. The bar might have been lowered, but at the expense of surfaces if this puzzle is anything to go by.
DeleteFor every good clue like FORAGE or FATHOM, there seemed to be many which made no sense - ARIA (what are Bihar iambics anyway)
How do you get AUTO in 25a?
Not sure how the letter replacement indicator in 5d works. For starters Englishmen is not E. And Aliens(foreigners) has no G for E to be used instead of.
14d definition in the middle? To what end?
Or may be its me who got out of the wrong side of the bed today.
25 A did not make sense.
DeleteA car (AUTO) being overbearing and that too with a twitch?
No Bhavan you got out of the right side all right. See my 8:46 below
DeleteLooks like KKK intended CAR to mean AUTO and 'going round bend' to indicate ARC*
DeleteI agree with Bhavan on Bihar ambiacs. Perhaps 'Song contained in Bihari album' sould have sounded better. But then it would have been a straight giveaway.
Deletecorr. should have sounded better.
DeleteI think a typo in the cartoon caption needs fixing.
ReplyDeleteWilco
Delete9 Song contained in Bihar iambics (4) ARIA (T) Actually RIAM is Royal Irish Academy of Music
ReplyDeleteDidn’t like the CW today. Looks like KKK is going the NJ way with clues like
ReplyDelete15A - D for deodorant?
18A – IT for fashionable?
22A - ‘become’ as AnInd?
5D – Englishmen instead of Germans would be E for G leading to ALIENS
7D – MEN for BUTLERS ?
14D – Definition in the middle
+1
DeleteUnable to post comments using FIREFOX. Any others facing the undermentioned problem?
ReplyDeleteThe comments box does not show up at the bottom and when I try to post a reply the entire blog shows up in the comments area and does not permit typing a comment!!
Not today. I faced a similar problem some days ago, with the entire page popping out of the comments box. It was just for a short while. Maybe a passing aberration.
DeleteThe problem sometimes with Chrome is when I start to enter in reply space the page scrolls up and I have to scroll down again to get the space on the screen. Also happens in my phone with android.
DeleteRunning fine at this end
Deleteon Firefox
DeleteRaghunath,
DeleteYou're right! Of late, I have been experiencing the same problem!
My Fox is Firing alright !
Delete15 Character, non-entity, uses deodorant to mask body odour initially (5) NODDY (NOboDY uses D) Is an initial character indicator required for d for deodorant?
ReplyDeleteActually body odour didn't indicator but Deo... did.
The above two comments were made using IE
ReplyDeleteDid the clue-writer intend 'initially' to be applied to deo as well as body odour? Doesn't work, though.
DeleteNo.mine is fine.But takes some time
ReplyDeleteBhala, an article on our friend Satyajit appears in today's Friday Review supplement of TH
ReplyDeleteCan't find it in the Chennai edition? Is it about the Kalakshetra production which he staged recently? If so, it appeared in Chennai edition earlier itself (maybe a week or two before). Thought these were aligned nationally but not necessarily it seems
DeleteSupplements such as Metroplus and Friday Page will depend upon page level.
DeleteStories will generally be pegged to local interest.
Where a story has all-India interest, one in any centre may be picked up by other centres, depending upon space availability - which in turn depends on ad level. Hence the time-lag.
Yes, it is about that.
DeleteThe comments box is not there while viewing through FIREFOX and using the Reply link is like what happens when you sit between two mirrors in a Barber shop, the entire blog shows up in the comment box with all the links working, clicking on a reply link throws up the blog again!!!!
ReplyDeleteI am trying to post this test Comment with Mozilla FF.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 2000s when I had Internet in the office, I used Netscape, attracted probably by the animation in the icon.
Later, for several years I was using only IE.
After Chrome, I am sticking with that.
Whenever TH has a dummy masthead on the cover page having advertisements ( it repeats the masthead on page 1), it usually numbers the pages J 1 through 4. After seeing today's paper I understood why!
ReplyDeleteI think J is for Jacket.
ReplyDeleteIn the Chennai edition today there is an ad page F4 - can't guess what F stands for.
Not to be ignored is the unnumbered half-jacket in between.
Newspapers are going crazy for ad revenue in these difficult times.
They might even have a nine-yard sari soon!
Today J appears to be for JJ
DeleteMadras was famous for its half-sari, as I think the langa-davani combo was called. But, pray, what is a half-jacket?
DeleteNo F4 in the Banged
DeleteIt is yet another insert before the main page. It stops midway - that is, the width is half or less of the normal width of a typical page.
ReplyDeleteIt usually appeared as the first page causing problems in trying to hold up the paper while reading
DeleteI was ref. to clothing as in Sankarabharam:
DeleteAntha speedu, busslu, trainlu, rocketlu, jacketlu ...
Firefox problem appears to be localised to my laptop as the problem is not here on the laptop being used by my wife
ReplyDeleteNew article by Shuchi on her blog: lipogram
ReplyDelete22 Desolate Los Angeles, become sweaty (3,6) LAY WASTE (LA SWEATY)
ReplyDeleteEnumeration should be (3,5)
Besides that how does 'become sweaty' lead to YWASTE*
DeleteShould have been 'becomes'
DeleteStill won't work
DeleteWhat I meant was it still won't work as an AInd though the surface improves
DeleteWhy not:
DeleteI see it as: Y- WASTE* becomes SWEATY.(actually SWEATY Becomes Y WASTE). It is like this clue: Dog catching ball nonchalantly (5) COLLY and Merchant prince not getting remedy (6) MEDICIne
www.crosswordunclued has becomes in the list of Anainds.
I still feel that the AInd is not properly placed
DeleteDesolate = Definition
Los Angeles = LA (Agreed)
becomes sweaty = YWASTE (How?)
Agreed.
DeleteNot Very enjoyable cw for me. Missed out on many! :-(
ReplyDeleteWhat Ho!
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I would like to apologize for the iffy nature of a certain few clues. I would like to defend myself but I can see that most of the objections raised are by people who know and have been solving crosswords for far longer than I have, and who know what they are talking about. So, I will simply take all the comments on board and will improve.
I have not commented on the past couple (or three) grids of mine because I was seeing that the general nature of the comments was favorable and there did not seem to be too many problems with the grid. Dare I say that there were even a few good comments on the nature of the puzzles.
Just when I was thinking that I was taking a step forward, this. I sincerely hope and believe that this is a one-off. I am not making excuses - I have none to make for more than 10 grids have been published now - but I did go back and look at the submission that I made. It was at a time when things weren't right (health-wise) and I think that I rather hurried the grid - and still managed to overshoot the deadline! - and this is a result of that. Like I said, I do not wish to use that as an excuse because, as a rule, I do not like giving excuses. I believe in sticking my hand up and admitting to being wrong when I am indeed in the wrong.
I think that the comments section of this blog is a fair gauge of how people find the grid and hence I take the comments very seriously. This particular puzzle itself has been such a mixed bag. There were both Arden and Sankalak comparisons, and NJ comparisons. While the former left me with the smile, the latter left me shuddering. I am 100% sure that I shall not reach those levels (Miss Jaggi, if you're reading, no offence meant).
On a personal note, I would like to express my sense of loss. I learnt of the passing away of Sankalak only on Monday (a couple of days after the event) and only then did I come to the blog and have a look at the obit posts and the comments. I was too late to comment there but as many of you so eloquently expressed, the sense of loss is great.
Sankalak was a wonderful setter, one whose puzzles many solvers yearned for, and whose brilliance other cruciverbalists aspired to. I am no different. As a solver, I always loved the simplicity of his clueing and as a setter always would - and always will - look at many of his clues to serve as examples of great clueing.
The world, sadly, is a less puzzling place now.
Thank you, Sir.
K
Thank you KKK for taking it in the right spirit. Maybe I was a bit too harsh in making comaprisons, which I should not have done.
DeleteKKK: Well said and responded on the comments. Modesty and humility are thy middle names. A setter's job is to set as he can, and the solver's is to try, as (s)he can. Tougher and more complicated, the better for the setter.
ReplyDeleteTalking about advertisement starved newspapers, Today, I found in the Deccan Chronicle and Indian Express, many full page mugshots of Amma gaping at me and the Indian Express had completely omitted the cartoon strips, and the Crossword section !! Who pays for these Govt Ads? Tax payers of course ! Kejriwal can cry hoarse about crony capitalism but again, how can the press reports news and views independently and free of pressures?
ReplyDeleteWhy penalize the poor crossword addict who buys the paper only for that ?
Raju, The Hindu had 4 full pages with her in it and pages were numbered J1 to J4. See Kishore's comment at 9:10 above
Delete