February 05 2012

Circuit Breakers [BB348]

Squeeze a seven-letter word between each pair to make a string of two phrases. Short breaker, say, is short CIRCUIT & CIRCUIT breaker. Answers are in alphabetical order.

(And see if you can throw the horde with a few more pairings, with a seven-letter word as the link.)

1. car chicken
2. master eyes
3. blood pack
4. English surf
5. cold stop
6. rough python
7. small teller
8. loose pike
9. dog blower

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB347 SOLUTION: Piazza, marijuana, misogyny, cauliflower, spryly, mugwump, bantamweight, advocacy. Albeit, virtuosos, betwixt, shibboleth, unwieldy, halcyon, verbiage, laryngitis, blitzkrieg (or possibly whizkid), eisteddfod. Other words may do the trick.

8 comments

February 04 2012

Falsity Finale

Quiet start to a Stormy year, but plenty of quality among the posts to compensate for volume. Clearly this was a big ask, to make a clue that seemed to be one recipe, yet operated according to another. Rather than try to explain, let’s admire the pick of the posts, with the top three wrapping up:

Spooner about small start of poverty (8): POORNESS [One Wheel incites the Spoony one, only to rely on cocktailing.]

Same stunt, with a tad more flair, pulled by SK: Spooner displayed tendency to limp? (10) = DROOPINESS

Possibly lyrical gear? = REVERSE [That’s my bid – a false anagram going down the charade road.]

Cockney drug, playing and hurting (4,5) EAST ENDER [Mr X proves the Pavlo theory. As soon as a cryptic mutt hears Cockney, he gets ready to slash an H: wrong.]

Back up in cricket, say (7) SUPPORT [Boniface has us facing a homophone, only to trap us inside a container.]

Misfortunes sounding terrible (8) UNDOINGS [Boniface again, scoring bronze, with a sly jumble that quacks and waddles like a hidden.]

Approval or penalty contains violence = SANCTION [To snag silver, Mr X executes a similar bait-and-switch, with the added bonus of a contranym – since sanction has oppositing meanings.]

Used to be shut into a box with label! (11,4) = EXCLAMATION MARK [That man again, SK, proving he has the mettle for a dominant 2012 unless you can shade him. This is exquisite – seems a pun, and yet baffles with hybrid. Don’t geddit? Here’s the sequence:

Used to be = EX
shut = CLAM
into a box = fodder + anagrind = ATION
label = MARK
! = def

A picnic it ain’t – but the clue is beautifully two-faced. Thanks for your curly work, and congratz to the podium trio. Leaving us with Anax’s nagging question: How can a setter signal a spoonerism without naming Reverend Spooner? Is it at all possible?

3 comments

February 03 2012

Speaking of Tweeps...

Had a grin about a tale in today’s Metro section. The whole kerfuffle swung on a single word, and how a paranoid US security service swooped on a fun-loving Tweeter. Seems a 26-year-old Pom named Leigh Van Bryan was out for revelry, not destruction – but the SWAT team took the other end of the pineapple. Here’s Leigh’s tweet:

Free this week for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America?

Poor sod. Destroy was his vernacular for part-ay. The lad flew into LAX with a song in his heart, only to be detained by Homeland Security for 12 hours, then sent back to Heathrow.

Dabbling in our own double-entendres, can you compose a tweet that is meant in all innocence, yet may trip an alarm in the Fed bunker? Here’s one or two:

Tall ships in Syd Harbour this weekend. Might go down to vantage point and sink a few.

Rafting trip down Snowy on hold. Blast that Eucumbene Dam.

15 comments

February 03 2012

Japas & Tweeps

Fresh back from my Sydney trip, arguing the virtues of burqini over japas (Japanese tapas), or fracking over announceable (a snippet pollies use to divert attention from the bad news). Or tweep (a Twitter follower) against dogfooding (consuming your own prodict.)

Our committee was a balance of academia (Sydney Uni vice-chancellor Dr Michael Spence, and campus provost Prof Stephen Garton), possum-stirring poetry (the glorious Les Murray), the Joy of Lex (Macquarie editor Sue Butler) and a crossword maker.

Les was dead-set keen on dairyness, and I made a last-gasp case for cloud server. Other words rose and fell in the parley. Planking was out early, and photobomb made a late surge. Though a hint to our verdict lay on the table, namely a plate of ham bagels.

Think about it – the kosher and the treif. The Jewish and the Christian, making a delicious fusion. Just like a BURQINI – our Word of the Year – combines Islamic and Aussie, Basra and Bronte. It’s perfect. And a cool click of phonemes too – with a u-less Q, and a godsend for the next awkward crossword corner.

To glimpse the final list of category winners, and a honourable mentions, go here. And see if you can use any two in a single sensible sentence!

5 comments

January 31 2012

False Friends

Learning a new language, you will encounter what teachers call false friends, or faux amis on the Seine. In Spanish, speaking from red-faced experience, I can tell you that embarazada doesn’t mean embarrassed, but pregnant, while finger in Yiddish means toe, and korn in Swedish means barley.

Cryptopia has false friends too, where a clue seems to answer to one formula, only to operate by another. A wonderful example in the Times – as toasted by The Guardian’s excellent crossword blog – looked for all the world like a homophone clue:

Tailor may destroy suit with this, we hear = AUDITORY SYSTEM [Anagram of MAY DESTROY SUIT]

Another may suggest anagram, and yet be a homophone:

Villains rendered so in the ear? = ANTIHEROES

Or then again, you may encounter what looks like a Spooner clue, only to be ambushed by a hidden:

Softball caught in Spooner family = NERF

To file your false friend, please supply the solution too, as the red herring can be more promptly enjoyed. Keep your eye on brevity, and authentic ambiguity – where each recipe can be argued. Likewise an answer of suitable length – for either approach – will also impress.

Let’s create a coterie of bogus mates this week, with a deadline by 8pm this Thursday, where all players are invited to submit their favourite three (with or without friendly tweaks and edits from this forum’s genuine friends.)

20 comments

January 30 2012

2012AD (Anything Different?)

As Queensland is getting flogged by tropical rain, and Cyclone Iggy is mauling the Pilbara, the time seems right to resume our Storm cycle for 2012, launching a new challenge on Tuesday as per usual.

Though before we get cracking in earnest, see how you feel about a few minor tweaks to the formula:

• the formal contests (with weekend shortlist and medal ceremony) won’t be every week, but once or twice a month. A good way to keep our edge, as well as manage the backroom hours.

• plenty of more casual whimsy and word challenges in between – much like the last few weeks have been. All fun and less post mortem.

• maybe a chance for guest posts, or DIY puzzles, depending on your Muses.

• open call for other Category ideas – reviving existing ones, or trialling the new. Any notions? Feel free to lodge your thoughts here, or offstage through the Email link.

• One idea is Site-seeing, where now and then a new word-flavoured website (or web wonder) is nominated – such as our own Nib’s brilliant Die Antwoord spoof here – or any one of the English-y sites currently up for prizes in the Macmillan Dictionary’s poll. We check it, and swap impressions, or the trinkets we discover.

Anyway, that’s one idea among a dozen tangents we may try in ‘12. Always keen to harbour your genius, and hear your thoughts.

7 comments

January 30 2012

Salon 13

Halfway through reading The Sleepers Almanac No 7, a collection of stories from local writers on the make. Some gems among the navel-gazing, including yarns from Jane Dickenson and Susan McCreery (outback angst and suburban veggies respectively), and belly laughs from Ryan O'Neill and Brad Bryant. Though in Brad’s story I came across this puzzle:

‘The [funeral] prayers began and soon my niece started giggling. She was seven and a repeated phrase in Latin sounded like soup and sandwiches.’

My Latin is fair, but not so adept as to know what phrase mimics soup and sandwiches. Do we have a scholar, or high-church Catholic in da house?

Speaking of Latin, you need to carpe Paul’s Prize crossword from last Saturday – a genuine sweetmeat, with a godless 1-Across my pick among many, including a sly Python cameo. Compare this to the Sunday Times, which looked too breezy to bother. (Look forward to a thorny Loroso approaching.)

In toto, carpe what crosswords you can, good people. And share your hosannas and egads here, with a spoiler-cap prior to your lunchtime soup & sandwiches.

19 comments

January 30 2012

Word of the Week: Malapert

MALAPERT [MAL-uh-purt] – unbecomingly saucy [From French, mal apert, ill-skilled] Drunken chat-up merchants swiftly slide from flirtatious to malapert.

13 comments

January 29 2012

Secret Meetings [BB347]

We supply eighteen uncommon combinations, each of which makes up part of a relatively familiar word. EZV, say, nestles in RENDEZVOUS.

Prepare to meet the rest – with several owning alternative answers – and then tell us what other peculiar combinations are lying within everyday words.

1. IAZ
2. JUA
3. SOGY
4. ULIF
5. PRYL
6. GWU
7. AMWE
8. OCAC
9. LBEI
10. OSOS
11. WIX
12. HIBB
13. ELDY
14. CYO
15. BIAG
16. YNG
17. ZK
18. DDF

Any more covert clusters?

SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB346 SOLUTION: Sublet, goblet, omelet, scarlet, triplet, singlet, mullet, skillet, billet (and tablet)

13 comments

January 27 2012

Needing No Intro

For those yet to glance at Times 9224 in The Australian, there is a neat clue at 1-Down: Scary book from German writer needing no introduction (7).

If you don’t wish to know the answer, then please don’t dive into the Comments section (where the solution is lurking). But no shock the wordplay entails a German writer losing his initial – or needing no introduction.

Naturally my mind wandered, thinking of other famous people who spell new words or names without their first letter. Orlando Bloom, for one, spells Loom, and Hugh (or Cary) Grant create Rant. A definitie Wordwit idea, and one to throw your way in production. Can you name these actors – none of whom gets or requires an intro – by these clues below? Warning, the last four are more playful.

1. Waterbird
2. Yacht fitting
3. Garden tool
4. Hirsute cousin
5. Scrabble letters
6. Fletcher’s creation?
7. Macho della corrida
8. Yours affectionately? (And very affectionately?)
9. Sigmund Freud?
10. One vocalist?

Feel free to blab the answers. It’s a bit of Friday whimsy. Likewise, if you can add to the list – actors or anyone who needs no intro – then throw in a new numbered clue.

42 comments