Over coffee I struggled to crack a puzzle by a devious rogue called Radler, downloaded from Big Dave's [excellent] Crossword Blog. Managed to solve all but one, though I'm still head-scratching over a few subterfuges. Namely:
1. Rhetoric with nothing much put out by Spain after article there = ELOQUENCE [I get the EL, and the nothing, but the remainder...?]
2. Under pressure to remove drug for pain relief = _E_S?? [Dunno. Do you? That's the one I missed.]
And from recent Times:
3. A couple of Scotsmen: pygmies = TWA [Ha?]
4. On both sides of line, squad's not yet fired = UNLIT [Both sides of line?]
5. Recurring problems with eye reported by hospital - this problem? = STRABISMUS [I'm trying to wangle Barts - a London hospital - into this answer, and missing the procedure...]
6. Unemployed South African chap has to integrate = OUT OF USE [Tell me TOFU has no nori roll here...]
7. Pompous golfer’s second round = OROTUND [O + ROUND but how's the T implicated?
Any insights or other eurekas eagerly awaited. And if the Muse moves, then try to compose an alternative clue for any answer here. Thanks.
I'm a huge fan of the Baudelaire series created by Lemony Snicket. As unfortunate events go, they are inspired stories of grim tangents and playful language. Even the titles are worthy of toasting, which you're welcome to do this week.
Pick a book, any book, and see if you can render the title into a clever shred of wordplay. No need to define anything - just enjoy the manipulation of Snicket's alliteration. In order, the wondrous 13 read like so:
Bad Beginning
Reptile Room
Wide Window
Miserable Mill
Austere Academy
Ersatz Elevator
Vile Village
Hostile Hospital
Carnivorous Carnival
Slippery Slope
Grim Grotto
Penultimate Peril
The End
To make a better than bad beginning:
REPTILE ROOM - More 'politer'? Wrong
GRIM GROTTO - Cosgrove gains edge over leading rowing eight in Rome?
MALTHUSIAN - Of the view that swelling populations outstrip the means of survival [From economist and priest Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) who first proposed the concern.] One-child policies in China and elsewhere underpin the Malthusian mindset.
For some Friday follies, let's devise some clues for words where a tail-switch comes into play. Floor cat, for one may be LINO LION, while Timbuktu post could be MALI MAIL.
No need to supply word lengths. (I'm guessing many will be fours - or maybe even threes.) Though the EAGER may find EAGRE, or carpenter Sound quality of wood = TIMBER TIMBRE.
Turn only tails, and please number your clues with byline attached. Like so:
DA1 - Punter's mag
DA2 - Raise trunks
DA3 - Jerk jerks
DA4 - Pet POV?
DA5 - More bashful borough
DA6 - It's sadly beyond Andrew & Myuran
A dual clue challenge, where we ransack a list of US/UK words, dreaming up clues for both members of each transatlantic pair. Use this list as a kickstart. Or feel free to meander outher sources as well, including the vast Wiki entry.
Please identify each pair you're tackling, the better for browsers to appreciate your skulduggery. And make a point of defining each word - the same way or afresh. To get your cogs cranking:
DIAPER - Bum wrap compensated in hindsight
NAPPY - Article covers insurance premium in cool base cover
++
VACATION - Break Spanish cow into droving
HOLIDAY - One setter disrupts divine respite
Have a lark/scream.
FILK - popular song converted into parody [Likely derived from a typo of folk song, an error committed to the Spectator Amateur Press Society in the 1950s.] Originally the filk was a piece of sci-fi slang, as the bungled title was The Influence of Science Fiction on Modern American Filk Music.
Humans seems rusted onto the QWERTY keyboard, despite the Dvorak alternative. If you don't know the story, August Dvorak was an American psychologist who wangled his own typewriter keys in the the 1940s. Only to strike the brickwall of old habits.
Still, there's life in his rejigged alphabet yet. Well, its middle row at least, which assemble the very handy ten of AOEUIDHTNS, the building blocks of our Brainstorm words this week.
No repeats, but feel free to manipulate AOEUIDHTNS any which way - then clue the result. TEDIOUS? DUTIES? HESTON? THE US? Here's an opener or two:
HIDE - Leather veil
EDISON - He made light about team being wired?
HIDEOUTS - Shirt worn by vile lairs
A little late, this 500th Birdbrain. (They should sack the puzzler in charge of this website.) And let's keep with that dismissive mindset to reveal the varied sackings that take place below.
If a sacked model is de-posed, or a dismissed cashier dis-tilled, can you deduce what other de- and dis-puns apply to these ousted professionals? (Alternative oustings are possible. Can you create more doomed careerists?)
1. Electrician
2. Banker
3. Vintner
4. Politician
5. Barber
6. Journo
7. Teacher
8. Lawyer
SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB499 SOLUTION: Cantaloupe, sarcophagi, garlic clove, soundtrack, misbegotten, smokestack, submit, combat, martini, body lice
PIBLOKTO - severe disassociative episode caused by isolation or depression [From Inuktun language, literally 'has hysteria'] Extended darkness and bitter cold are common piblokto triggers among the Inuit people
For a change of pace, let's rewire the titles of books and films into rhyme. Die Hard, for example, could evolve into My Card: How I Came To Lose a MYKI and Wear a $85 Fine. Or being more ambitious, we also have:
The Infernal Pun-Line of a Plotless Kind - fatal Dad jokes from an improv comedian
Dig Zero Tricks - how kids savaged the hired magician at a bar mitzvah
The Younger Flames - adolescent lovers jailed for too much tonsil hockey
Creepy Follow - an unwanted admirer on Twitter
Don't worry about ID-ing your film. (That's part of the fun, as a reader-cum-solver.) Feel free to rhyme the shorter stuff (turning Red Dog into Dead Frog) or dare to dream on the extended titles, where all key words are converted.
After so many elongated words - like satyagraha and pangram clues - let's downsize to ding and dong and other onomatopoeia. We have open slather, from bang to zap, from clip-clop to hiphop, from boom to vroom.
Here's a list that may warm your engines, but feel free to snaffle your sizzle. So long as the word is a sound effect, it's sound. (And if you want to be extra-creative, you can also grab extended words or phrases that include a sound-word: SWAT team, crackpot and Bo Peep, say.)
Both wordplay and definition are required, making the challenge a little stiffer, since grrr, meow and ribbit can be ticklish to define, let alone camouflage. The best of the week's cacophony will warrant the roar of the crowd. To kick off:
MURMUR - Rumour redoubled spirit in return
BLAST - Carpeting becomes second-grade, expose to weather
SIR TOBY BELCH - Bard's boozer dissolved into hysteric blob
Have a hoot with this.
SATYAGRAHA [SORT-yor-GRAR-ha] - passive resistance, especially as a protest action [Hindi via Sanskrit, literally: insistence on truth, from satya truth + agraha fervour] Mahatma Gandhi made an art form of satyagraha
Clothe the clusters below, and you’ll make nine common words or phrases. Of course, by clothe, I mean clad each cluster in the right garment to render a familiar verbal ensemble.
For example, (AGU) can squeeze inside VEST to make V(AGU)EST, while (RE/OF) needs a SCARF to make SCARE OFF.
1. (NATALOU)
2. (COPHAG)
3. (ARLIC/C)
4. (UNDTRA)
5. (SBEGO)
6. (KESTA)
7. (BM)
8. (MB)
9. (ART)
10. (Y/L)
SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB498 SOLUTION: Battery, bedroom, blister, channel, comfort, diamond, fortune, forward, whistle. (Other words could suit.)
Can we do it? Can we weave the entire alphabet into a single clue (and its answer), with the entity still somehow making sense, and somehow seeming to maintain that slinky, precise nature of the cryptic clue?
I have my doubts, but I'm prepared to take the plunge. Perhaps if we choose an answer like JOAQUIN PHOENIX, we're halfway there. Or take a shine to the Mexican hairless, aka the XOLOITZCUINTLI.
Then again, the braver soul may find an alphabetical way to clue a less loaded solution. Either approach can earn the inaugural PanGrammy.
Of course, feel free to share your near misses, as these can be as noble as the holy grail itself. To kick off the bidding:
Showy bird left weaving round jacket for Mexico's Feathered Serpent = QUETZALCOATL [26]
Jack the Ripper's foggy zone quivered with each ring area's bum removed = WHITECHAPEL [25 - no X]
Kakorrhaphiophobia - fear of failure or defeat [From Greek, kako - evil, plus rhaphio - plan, and phobia] When clue-drafting, avoid any kakorrhaphiophobia as a redraft can always rescue your first tack.
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.
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
BB497 SOLUTION: Possess, assassin, Mississippi, business class, messiness (or grossness), crassness, gutlessness, cross-dresser, criss-cross, Mission Impossible, passive-aggression
Japan to the Japanese is Nippon, just as Norge is how the Norwegians know their home turf. The list below shows a few more nations, according to the nationals. You'll recognise a few, while others will have you lunging for the atlas.
And the dictionary, and the anagram engines, as your challenge is to convert any of these collacalisms into stylish clues. (No definitions are needed, unless that helps your clue along.)
Let's see who shall be sashed as the Grand National champion. (And a purple heart to anyone who grapples the last few.)
Bharat (India in Hindi)
Hellas (Greece)
Espana
Suomi (Finland)
Lietuva (Lithuania)
Deutschland
Hrvatska (Croatia)
Aotearoa (NZ in Maori)
Osterreich (Austria)
Magyarorszag (Hungary)
Shqiperia (Albania)
Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)
Can you find some latitude amid the meridians?
RATHSKELLER - underground tavern or restaurant [From German Rath - council, Keller - cellar] Melbourne's Moat, below the Wheeler Centre, is a classic rathskeller
A surplus of sibilance steeps today’s solutions, with every answer boasting double-S twice. And just to make this 'brain a little sassier, I've removed word and phrase lengths, the better to ASSESS your serpentine sense.
1. Own
2. Killer
3. US state
4. How some fly
5. Squalor (2 ansswerss)
6. Vulgarity
7. Cowardice
8. Drag queen
9. Intersect
10. Cruise flick
11. Negative conduct
SOLUTION NEXT WEEK
BB496 SOLUTION: Sublet, goblet, omelet, scarlet, triplet, singlet, mullet, skillet, billet (and tablet)
Something a bit different this week, the fruit of a recent insomnia spell. Can you switch the letters in a well-known name - trading between the two names - to create a new identity. Mick Jagger, say, would become a truck glass, or Mack Jigger. While Bob Carr could turn into Rob Carb - or lift pasta.
Near misses are many, from Pail Sumon to Tiny Fea, but let's keep the exchanges pure, switching letters without moving any other letters. As with the examples, a letter removed must have its vacancy filled by the letter gained.
There not easy to find. Hence the insomnia, and the shortlist. Can you figure these people out - as well as manufacture your own?
1. Taurus cluesmith (Oz actor)
2. Killjoys quarrel (tennis stat/coach)
3. Tuber muscle (Oz reporter)
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