Welcome Gridman. Do I see shades of a Houdini theme?
ACROSS
1 Run-of-the-mill banner (8) STANDARD [DD]
6 Police officer took time and killed (4) SHOT {SHO}{T}
9 Crude, heart-broken and ultimately crusty (6) EARTHY {HEART*}{
10 Nobility right in French guerilla force (7) MARQUIS {MA{R}QUIS}
13 Cassettes put out legal precedents (4,5) TEST CASES*
14 Tough material from country undergoing final modification (5) CHINO CHIN(-a+o)O
15 Said to have drafted mechanical learning (4) ROTE (~wrote)
16 In rush, shopping complex produces stuff that might surprise consumers (5,5) SMALL PRINT {S{MALL} PRINT}
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| Cartoon by Rishi |
21 Measure lines for the Muslim dignitary (4) EMIR {EM}{IR}
24 Game bird (5) NODDY [DD]
26 Alter the shape of engineer's cast (7) REMODEL {RE}{MODEL}
27 Left in moorland in good condition (6) HEALTH {HEA{L}TH}
28 Pronounced drop in rapport (4) SYNC (~ sink)
29 Apprehending not cold but hot incubator activity (8) HATCHING (-c+h)HATCHING
DOWN
2 Send millions lost in passage (7) TRANSIT TRANS
3 Observe it isn't solid water (6) NOTICE {NOT ICE}
4 Jayaram's a leaning towards the Hindu reform movement (4,5) ARYA SAMAJ*
5 It is dismal to be down in them (5) DUMPS [CD]
7 He was unbound at the end of his performance (7) HOUDINI [CD/GK]
8 Examine Bill - by no means soft - one showing manly stuff (12) TESTOSTERONE {TEST}{
11 Set of directions for fixing price at end of sale (6) RECIPE {PRICE*}{
12 Most recent: SR away from points of agitation (5,7) STORM CENTRES* :-)
17 Admire a photograph quickly and enthusiastically (4,1,4) LIKE A SHOT {LIKE} {A} {SHOT}
18 Approved knocked-out head moving up (6) OKAYED (+o)OKAY(-o)ED
20 Belly's turning - bad sign of things to come (7) ABDOMEN {BAD*}{OMEN}
22 Wet medical officer to pay attention - learner's gone! (7) MOISTEN {MO}{
23 The French money laid out for hood (6) CALASH {CA{LA}SH}
24 Game bird (5) NODDY [DD] ? Game?
ReplyDeleteIt is a card game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noddy_%28card_game%29
Thanks Sandhya
DeleteRe the query against 18d.
ReplyDeleteYesterday when I was doing yet another check prior to publication, I froze for a second. Was there a problem? Had I made a mistake? Was any re-write needed?
I wrote out the words on paper and tried to annotate.
After a few moments of cogitation (don't you like this word?), I satisfied myself by arriving at a possible way to interpret the clue. So I didn't make any revision.
Reader, do you see what I saw - what must have been my very original reasoning.
We setters often forget our annotations after even a little passage of time.
I remain KO'd
DeleteOn some occasions I have submitted the CW with annos to the TH.
DeleteSome setters do that scrupulously and also regularly.
DeleteWhile the inclusion of annos may not be insisted upon (but US and UK publications do!), it has a salutary effect: while writing the annos, the setter has a chance of detecting mistakes that may happen if everything is done mentally.
I don't provide annos but then I check/recheck at different stages.
I retain my solutions with the annotations worked out
DeleteNice to read about the ways of the setters.
DeleteQuestions to setters:
Do you have a test solver?
Or do you solve your own crossword?
Do you write a clue first and then fit the word/phrase in the grid? Or do you write clues for the words that go into the grid?
Even if you don't have a test solver, do you try some clues with/on any friends/relatives?
Do you write clues from the top of your head or from any other part of your body?
No test solver.
DeleteI solve my own.
I write clues for words that go into the grid.
Did it just once and still goofed up!
Start top down and then at random after top down
Ditto
DeleteI myself test solve after a gap of a few months. If I don't get the anno, I peek at my db. When I get an idea for a clue, I put it into the unused tab of my db. I populate the grid with a few from this store and then complete the grid and write clues at random for the inserted words.
DeleteThat is the general m.o., but I have got a few test solved by others, esp. If they have not been pickling for over 3 months.
DeleteDo you have a test solver? No
DeleteOr do you solve your own crossword? No, just read the clues for any spelling mistakes before sending to THC.
Do you write a clue first and then fit the word/phrase in the grid? Or do you write clues for the words that go into the grid? Do both. First start with a word/phrase I have a clue for, use it as seed and as options decrease with each fill, accept what is available and clue that word/phrase.
Even if you don't have a test solver, do you try some clues with/on any friends/relatives? Yes. Amudha reads the clues and tries to workout the wordplay besides trashing any clues where surfaces don't work.
Do you write clues from the top of your head or from any other part of your body? Seed words - top of the head, easy words - tip of the finger, hard words - after monu'mental' struggle.
Was 12 d a coincidence?
ReplyDeleteIf readers draw their own conclusions, they - I mean the conclusions - will not be binding on the setter for whom SR is Southern Railway.
DeleteCoincidentally, the opposite of this railway too is away?
DeleteShould we be surprised?
DeleteYou mean Northern Railway?
DeleteEstablished fact?
DeleteYes to CV's 8.59
DeleteSouthern Railway and Northern Railway are poles apart. Or are they? They must be having a common holiday package.
DeleteKishore & Raghu,
DeleteIt is nice to be remembered, if only indirectly.
It was long time no see!
DeleteNR, any idea about SR?
DeleteThey reside in opposite regions. NR in SR and SR in NR. So the response from NR could be "No Idea" I think. :)
DeleteOops, I forgot, the twain never meet. CR comes in the middle!
DeleteWho is SR? I reall need to know (that it is not me:)
DeleteSR is Venkatesh
Delete:)
DeleteI took O to mean HEAD, like in a matchstick drawing.
ReplyDeleteI took out of Knock-out on double duty. out head = o
DeleteSandhya, we could have bet you will have the answer!
ReplyDeleteBefore I give my own anno, let's see if anyone else has a more detailed anno.
I just saw the head !
Delete... leaving it out for someone else to identify it
DeleteI can see 'O'ut's head moving up. If so it's doing double duty.
DeleteYes - this too is doing double duty!
DeleteIs approved doing double duty and denoted by aye(d)?
Delete@CV: I've become rusty of late, thanks to a long break :P
DeleteI was wondering about this clue too. So 'out' being on double duty was intentional from the setter?
Delete'knocked' is good enough as an anagrind. So head will refer to 'o' in 'out'. But then my usual grouse: it should be 'out's head' or 'head of out' to be strictly grammatical, but I notice that this is often not followed rigorously, seems acceptable in general
Delete25 d reminded me also of the Loius L'amour westerns.
ReplyDeleteSudden
DeleteYes by Oliver Strange.
DeleteAnd a couple of other guys too, yu sabe ...
DeleteAnd the word ravine reminds me of Ray Bradbury's The whole town is sleeping.
DeleteKemo Sabe
DeleteStrangely (pun unintended), one of the recurring themes in Sudden was rustling which involved changing of brands on cattle. 13 being made into Bar B etc.
DeleteRaghu, yu shore are cute
Delete4 Jayaram's a leaning towards the Hindu reform movement (4,5) ARYA SAMAJ*
ReplyDeleteIs something (a punctuation) missing from the clue?
Depends on how you want to read the 's
Delete"Jayaram is a leaning towards the Hindu reform movement" makes no sense to me even if any punctuation marks are added.
"Jayaram has a leaning towards the Hindu reform movement" sounds good to me in the surface reading.
Somehow 's for 'has' has always not stuck in my mind, although I've used it too.
DeleteHaving "a" before words ending with -ing is common in some dialects. Well reminds of this song by Hank Williams "You're gonna change or I'm a gonna leave" and another one by Bob Dylan that goes like "The times they're a changin..." Sounds nice IMO
DeleteThat's what I had thought initially when writing the comment (like 'a changin') as you wrote, but with a hyphen in between. However, I think it's 'has' as written by Bhavan.
DeleteThe hyphen is omitted in most texts that I've come across. Well it's excusable considering that it's dialectic and non-standard usage.
Delete6A : Am not getting the connection btn Police Officer and SHO. Anyone to my rescue pl?
ReplyDeleteStation house officer
DeleteThanks, Kishore. :)
DeleteThat's quite frequently used in North India.
DeleteSo I think !
DeleteQuite an enjoyable offering from Gridman. Missed out on 24A NODDY, nonetheless it was a happy outing today! Thanks Gridman. :)
ReplyDeleteATTN: CHANDRASEKAR SWAMINATHAN and any others interested
ReplyDelete==================================================
Following a Comment by CS and a response of mine under yesterday's blog, I have now added a Page on this blog detailing how one can solve THC interactively on one's machine - when the apps are of no use and when one does not have the inclination or wherewithal to take a printout of the HC.
See the link above - immediately under THCC logo/header.
Tailpiece - Puzzlers cave software will not work on a Mac
DeleteMac may work on Puzzlers' Cave software.
DeleteWindows or Mac, the primary requirement is access to the e-paper without which we will have no component of the puzzle, neither grid nor clues, to proceed. May I suggest adding such requirements/qualifications at the beginning of the otherwise quite helpful post?
DeleteThe software could be made to work in Mac and other OSs (no guarantees), but it will require the installation of other software, e.g. http://www.winehq.org/.
Navneeth,
DeleteYou've a point!
I have slightly edited the relevant para.
Now everything is quite clear, I think.
The fact that when apps are not able to d/l the puzzle, this is a stop-gap arrangement for those solvers who still want to do the CWD on their machine without having to take a print from the PDF in e-Paper is abundantly made clear, I think.
DeleteI can tell you that it takes little time and effort if you have some spare moments and the mind
to do it.
You save many trees as the environmentalists say but I don't believe in this slogan when I know how saplings are carelessly laid on city roads and then barely taken care of in India. They grow haphazardly and in due course the branches are cut off or the whole tree comes crashing down in a heavy rain.
Once you have all the grids saved it doesn't take time, that off course comes with the rider that the setters use the same grids always. Even then if a different grid appears it doesn't take long to set one up using the downloaded free software from Puzzlers Cave
Delete