Island hopping with Neyartha
ACROSS
7 Rue auto-van accident in a French school of architecture (3,7) ART NOUVEAU*
9 Bohemian get-together’s leaderless (4) ARTY
10 Carribbean islands upset saint going around the extension counter (8) ANTILLES {ANTI{LLE<=}S*}
11 Knight overwhelms bachelor in row with a football player and…. (6) KICKER (-b+k)KICKER
12 ….Finally gets Turkish radio to track a disassembled barrel (5) SHOOK {S}{H}{O}{O}{K}
13 Cried on the radio after sweeping attack (9) BROADSIDE {BROAD}{SIDE}(~sighed)
14 I put mom in disguise that is perfect (7) OPTIMUM*
17 Rate broadcast covering case brought about by a pet shelter visitor, perhaps (7) ADOPTER {A{DOP<=}TER*}
20 Playful kittens go around commander with elastic knitted fabric (9) STOCKINET {ST{OC}KINET*}
25 Cuban yanking part of a tree (6) BANYAN [T]
27 Charlie at the wrong place with the underworld queen’s whale (4) ORCA (-c)OR(+c)CA
28 Ill-disposed artisans infected with tuberculosis in a Caribbean island (5,5) SAINT BARTS {SAIN{T B}ARTS*}
DOWN
1 Sharp worker fired from a military shelter (6) TRENCH TRENCH
2 Daughter gets rid of the ruffian’s second letter in a listless manner (5) DULLY (-b+d)DULLY
3 Crazy to have gone this way? (7) BERSERK [CD]
4,5 Croatian’s ducks harassed in the Caribbean islands (5,3,6) TURKS AND CAICOS*
6 German number initially found inside revolutionary Greek letter with the audience member (8) ATTENDEE {AT{TEN}{DE}E<=}
8 Keralite, say, with a bird lacking wings in the capital (7) NAIROBI {NAIR}{
15 Crown turns up with a Scottish terrier in a Pacific island (8) PITCAIRN {PIT}{CAIRN}
18 Root vegetable raised by king initially under father’s protection was fairly divided (3,4) PRO RATA {P{R}{O RAT<=}A}
19 American method, practical, for an engineering school to be on top of the announced cut (7) TECHNIC {TECH}{NIC}(~nick)
21 Carribbean islands with an alligator-like reptile (6) CAYMAN [DD]
23 Airtight design from Greece went missing in a Pacific island (6) TAHITI AIRTI
24 Animal tail smuggled to an island (5) MALTA [T]
28 Ill-disposed artisans infected with tuberculosis in a Caribbean island (5,5) SAINT BARTS
ReplyDeleteReminded me of London's St. Bart's Hospital from Sherlock Holmes.
A clue from THC6088 /1.4.1998
ReplyDelete31a. Author of "Race Not to Survive" (7)
Thanks to a collector of old puzzles, who has sent me huge cache of old puzzles!
The said cache contains about a thousand puzzles from the period 1995-2001. May be some can come up as Sunday Specials ...
DeleteAre they soft copies?
DeleteThe puzzle mentioned above has a grid with 3 letter slots and 3 consecutive unches, and when kept sideways the white squares look like a huge S, so if one had to move from the first square to the last, one would have to go from the NW corner till the SW corner, then diagonally to NE and then onwards to SE.
DeleteNope, cuttings. I will try making soft copies of the ones I liked solving.
DeleteBanged print edition has found another new location for the CW !! I see no reason for this new spot as whatever is there in the same row as the CW ie., Faith and From the Archives has just been pushed down.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'll be Banged!
DeleteOurs not to reason why ...
I was going to write on this.
DeleteIn Madras edition too the three contiguous regular features have been pushed down.
For the first time ever - this after the ink has just dried in the last readers' editior column where a reader had paid tribute to the positioning and layout of the crossword.
The present position prevents us from neatly folding the paper into a quarter. Also, colelctors of clippings can't cut it easily now.
* * *
My request is that old THCs should not be used as Sunday Specials unless permission is obtained from copyright holders who are not just the paper but the setters. Mere ack that the original was published in TH isn't enough.
* * *
From No. 1 I had mounds and mounds but one day I threw them away in a fit of disgust - no family member objected to the clutter but maintaining it was becoming difficult. Bhargav had hundreds from a much later period from THC's origin but whether he still keeps them I don't know.
Noted your request. He is the benefactor.
DeleteA la Magwitch, not Miss Havisham ...
DeleteTo understand Kishore, we need dictionaries, google.....
DeleteKishore has Great Expectations from his readers
DeleteYes, Mr Pumblechook
DeleteGot it thanks to Ramesh's clue!
Delete13 Cried on the radio after sweeping attack (9) BROADSIDE {BOAD}{SIDE}(~sighed)
ReplyDeleteAnno needs a re-look pl.
Done
DeleteI guessed the answer. Could you please explain where "sighed" comes from?
DeleteSighed / Cried
DeleteKishore
ReplyDeleteI started setting THC in 2001.
If you tell me a THC serial number, I will be able to say whether it was Gridman's in those anonymous days.
Even without this, you can identify G's by looking at the grid and checking whether it is one of the six grids that are used cyclically in each appearance.
Pick any number between 6000 and 6100. I shall arrange them in order and hopefully I can pull it out.
DeleteThe first Gridman puzzle was 7092 published on June 27, 2001.
DeleteRough calculations show you should be hitting the 1000 mark by Jun next year
DeleteI can say that the latest crossword of Gridman was 840 (add a few unnumbered specials which were set on an impulse outside of the regular series).
DeleteIn a year 12 sets may not have been published. It may have been 11 because supplies may have been 30 to 35 from contributors when only 26 are needed for a month.
DeleteCV@1009: That would mean this lot does not have GM puzzles. Any pointers on who the setters were in those years. The Admiral?
DeleteThe 6000 series may not have any of the Admiral's.
DeleteIf my assessment is correct, he must have published some 3000 puzzles single-handedly - scores of these set probably even when he was in service as a kind of hobby when there was no publisher on the horizon. For I can't imagine someone agreeing to supply six per week without sufficient stock or with the publisher's messenger waiting at the door for the next day's puzzle.
From 3000 onwards regular solvers noticed a different unseen hand. That must have been when the Admiral sought the help of a friend. After some years of two-man endeavour, more joined and at one time there might have been four or five - most of these introduced by the Admiral or a subsequent ex-Army, Navy or Air Force officer or his relative - most if not all living in Sainikpuri, (?Sec'bad/Hyd'bad). I was a stranger to THC and I used to say that THC was held by a Sec'bad preserve.
This was breached by a retired IAS officer who at some time got into the panel but after some years he left. This IAS officer was a friend of mine but I had not been inducted into THC panel as yet.
I wouldn't know/remember if Sankalak and the IAS man were contemporaries but it is these two who released THC from the ex-servicemen's league.
Thanks, the one I mentioned above, I solved today. Some clues were so-so. I will bring up superb clues when I come across them.
DeleteNaan intha attathukku varalai - Ambel - Could get only a few like Tahiti, optimum, arty, cayman, Unionize....ugh .... long way to go Ram!
ReplyDeleteungaloda ennaikkuda sekkalam! What a tough puzzle!!
Deletenaanum!
DeleteIslands.....fine
ReplyDeletepacific & caribbean islands...fine
Atlas in stead of dic. .....fine
But a lens also to look for the tiniest of them?
Wordplay/ anagrams in a few led to them, but not all.
Could manage to complete only about 50%
Disappointed after yesterday's better show.
About the latest position of CW, CV said it all. So soon after Readers' Editor writeup makes it a mockery.
6D- De from? German? I could only get
ReplyDeletenimber- ten
Revolutionary Greek letter- Tae
DE for Deutschland (uber alles?)
DeleteRev. Gr. letter = ETA<
Thank you Kishore.
DeleteIsland hopping. You also have Malta
ReplyDeleteYes,malta too to be highlighted.
ReplyDeleteKishore, your cartoon underlines the fact that mere availability of data is not sufficient. They are lucky to get am accurate map by chance. What's the use?! Of course, part of it is known to them already.
Aaah, the whimsifulness of Dame Luck is terrific, as Hurree Jamset Ramsingh would say.
DeleteHurree Jamset Ram Singh was an Indian Prince of the fictional state of Bhanipur, where he had learnt a peculiarly idiomatic version of English to which Kishore has alluded.
DeleteRamsingh (nickname 'Inky') was a classmate of Billy Bunter in Greyfriars Schools in that famous series of Public (Boarding) School stories written by Frank Richards.
Richards' actual name was Charles Harold St. John Hamilton. His other pseudonyms included Martin Clifford (for St Jim's), Owen Conquest (for Rookwood) and Ralph Redway (for The Rio Kid). Under his 'real' name, he wrote the Ken King stories for The Modern Boy.
NR should also have quoted the next line from the Wiki page for Charles Hamilton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hamilton_%28writer%29:
DeleteHe is estimated to have written about 100 million words in his lifetime and has featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most prolific author.
The 100,000,000 words he is estimated to have written, using around 20 pseudonyms, are equivalent to 1,200 novels. Dame Barbara (Cartland) holds the Guinness World Record for the most novels written in a single year (23). The most published novelist in history is Dame Agatha (Christie); she is estimated to have sold 4 billion books, having written 69 novels and 19 plays.
DeleteJust googled Greyfriars. I have not read any book of this series.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWelcome, Abhay from 225
DeleteSorry, Kishore - I deleted the comment because I discovered I had posted it without due proofreading - have reposted it below after correcting it. Thank you for the welcome!
DeleteI discovered this blog today while trying to find a cure for the "headache" clue - for some reason, I just couldn't get that word! Great work by the bloggers here. This is likely to become a daily visit now along with fifteensquared.
ReplyDeleteMy above comment at 4:44 was in response to the immediately above comment of Abhay at 4:45. Don't break your head on the apparent mismatch in time. I had just gone back into the past.
DeletePerchance, are you the Abhay Prasanna, who won prize on CU last year?
DeleteNo. My full name is Abhay Phadnis. I live in Chennai.
DeleteAbhay,
DeleteWelcome here. The more the merrier!
I might tell you that I am Rishi, a former blogger on fifteensquared and a present Commenter. In these parts I am known as chaturvasi, CV for short.
DeleteAlong with Abhay, today I had come across a few more new names like - Magwitch, Miss Havisham, Mr.Pumblechook, Hurree Jamset Ram Singh and Charles Hamilton! Wondering who they are?! Please dial Kishore! ;-)
ReplyDeleteWhat price, Estella?
Delete:)
DeleteToday is the 450th birth anniversary of the Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare. Interestingly, he was born on this day in 1564; the same day he died in 1616. Another such person was Dr BC Roy (his date of birth (and death) is July 1, observed as Doctor's Day in India).
ReplyDeleteIt would have been topical had Neyartha taken it as his theme rather than islands.
IMO, Islands is a less obscure theme. Can you name at least 4 more to make it a theme and also write clues for them? And what guarantee would Neyartha have that the cwd would get published today? IMO, it's quite impractical unless one can book a print slot easily.
Delete"IMO, Islands is a less obscure theme."
DeleteRomeo and Juliet is far more widely known than Turks and Caicos. At least, I hadn't heard of this place until today. ;-)
And what guarantee would Neyartha have that the cwd would get published today? IMO, it's quite impractical unless one can book a print slot easily.
But we do have commemorative crosswords occasionally, no? Given a fixed roster, it's easy to figure out whose grid comes when (barring some extreme cases when a setter is not able to turn in a grid within the time limit). If the setter is alerted, say, a month or two in advance, and is willing, I suppose it might be practical. (What am I missing?)
It is a combination I suppose of your interest in the day's theme and willingness to put something together for the occasion. If you have those in place, then requesting the THC editor to book a day shouldn't be hard. There were two such from Scintillator that were out of band - one for CV's birthday and the other for pongal if I recall right.
DeleteI am curious to know. How do the setters do anagrams? I was actually amused to see Croatian's Ducks become Turks and Caicos. I managed to unscramble it on my own and find the answer. But, sometimes, I am dumbfounded by the anagrams. Do the setters use any software or do they just stare at words and it just comes to them? Whatever be the case, hats off to you all.
ReplyDeleteI for one, use pen and paper for smaller words (up to 7 letters). For longer words/phrases, there are some websites like this and the crossword compiler software allows me to see possible combinations too.
DeleteThe website described by Bhavan is the best anagram generator, I think. I read somewhere that an Indian is the owner of this site.
DeleteAnu Garg, 47, who lives with his wife, Stuti, in Columbus, Ohio. He had earlier worked as a computer specialist with AT&T Laboratories.
DeleteRaghu, information about the founder is on the same website :
Deletehttp://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/about.html
http://www.wordsmith.org/anu/
Thanks, Bhavan, NR. I did about him later on the same site.
DeleteThank you all. I am aware of the website referenced above. And, I regularly get the wordsmith mails as well.
Delete