Monday 7 June 2010

No 9862, Monday 07 Jun 10, Sankalak

Another cake from Sankalak.
ACROSS
1   - Resting place where a royal tames boredom somehow (6,7) - {MASTE*}{R} {BEDROOM*}
10 - Church boy, one beginning to copy French article — a history of events (9) - {CH}{RON}{I}{C}{LE}
11 - Valuable thing which could also be cultured (5) - PEARL [DD]
12 - Duck said to be one that helps (5) - EIDER(~aider)
13 - Such checks come before take-off (3-6) - PRE-FLIGHT [CD]
14 - Explosive things which may be found on the beach (6) - SHELLS [DD]
16 - Power of a southern side (5) - {S}{TEAM}
19 - The pain that went with ecstasy in Irving Stone's work (5) - AGONY [E]
20 - A person loved, not likely to falter (6) - STEADY [DD]
25 - Alarms etc set off by a know-all (5,4) - SMART ALEC*
26 - The longest bone in the body (5) - FEMUR [E]
27 - Abandon daughter with irritation (5) - {D}{ITCH}
28 - Gradual increase in sound may end soccer play (9) - CRESCENDO}
29 - Healer who gives sharp treatment? (13) - ACUPUNCTURIST [CD]
DOWN
2   - A game in these days is shortened (8) - {A{BRIDGE}D}
3   - Skin lotion stored in a stone receptacle (5) - TONER [T]
4   - Prescription for the cook (6) - RECIPE [E]
5   - Oxygen and hydrogen, perhaps (8) - ELEMENTS [CD]
6   - Feel sorry about everyone returning a guard against mosquitoes, say (9) - {REPE{LLA<-}NT}
7   - Fruit, so called, in Old English (6) - {O{RANG}E}
8   - A conservative tax on entry (6) - {A}{C}{CESS}
9   - Something to write on for a student in improvised seat (5) - {S{L}ATE*}
15 - Fires over joint, a warning to sailors (9) - {LIGHTS}{HIP}
17 - Church member who can align afresh (8) - ANGLICAN*
18 - Clothes for member escorted by men (8) - {G{ARM}ENTS}
21 - Plant providing unknown missile (8) - {Y}{ARROW}
22 - A line for the audience's ears only (5) - {A}{SIDE}
23 - Master's credit shortened by gum (6) - {MAS}{TICk}
24 - Stress produced by the way people speak (6) - ACCENT [DD]
26 - Severe blow for an expert in France (5) - {F{ACE}R}

12 comments:

  1. Good morning

    It was 'greasewalk'! (Pardon the new coinage. I am aware that a cake can be eaten, but grease cannot. Just rhetoric.)

    Almost all clues could be solved by surface reading.

    The 'gum' in 23D was misleading. Good one.

    Liked STEADY, ACUPUNCTURIST, ACCENT and a few others.

    18D - MEN and GENTS both hidden here. Quite crafty!

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  2. CHRONICLE, CRESCENDO, FACER, ABRIDGED were nice.

    Richard: Grease, as used in the context of fat, can be eaten, though not desirable. Reminds me of the waiter's fall causing three national calamities, the slide of Greece, the fall of Turkey and the smashing of China.

    Also, Grease in the Indian context, called Ghoos is usually eater: Ghoos khilana, by government employees.

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  3. Remembered the Randal Kleiser-directed GREASE (1978) starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

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  4. It was nice and easy....

    I thought 7A was smart. I could get the answer from the crossings, but it took some time for me to figure out the anno. Was reading so called with a hyphen.

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  5. Grease: What a fun movie!!!

    The sequel was kinda disappointing though.

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  6. An easy puzzle spawns obiter dicta. So here are the answers for my metric puzzle posted a few days back:

    1. MilliHelen A face that launched only one ship (as against Helen of Troy, whose face launched a thousand ships)
    2. Dekatithe The whole of your income (ten times of one tenth of your income)
    3. kk k=1000, kk= 1000k =a thousand thousand = a million
    4. Milliner A hat dealer (googly)
    5. Millimillenium One year
    6. Hectokilokilometer per second 1/3 speed of light in vacuum
    7. Cubic-decimeter One litre
    8. Decalogue The ten commandments
    9. Kiloword A picture (that is worth a thousand words)
    10. Terrapin A type of turtle (googly)

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  7. Apropos the discussion on Tamil alphabets representing multiple sounds, I recall something similar in Mandarin. Peking =Beijing, Mao-tse-tung=Mao-Ze-Dong, Sichuan=Schezwan, China=Sino (I am sure that the same alphabets do not represent 2 sounds in Mandarin as there are no alphabets, only pictograms), or does this represent distortion due to Anglification as in Udhagamandalam becoming Ootacamund. Advance xiexie to anyone who can clarify.

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  8. @Kishore: I'm not an expert in Chinese but have lived in Chinese speaking countries.

    There have been many attempts to Romanize Chinese over the years or at least make the pronunciation available to foreigners on a systematic basis. The first such honor goes to Sanskrit teachers from India who went there peddling export quality Hinduism (aka Buddhism) :)

    The next big milestone in representing Chinese characters was the Wade Giles system of the 19th century. Peking, e.g., was the Wade Giles representation in Roman characters of the capital city.

    After the Chinese Revolution in 1949, they simplified the Chinese writing system and threw the Wade Giles system out replacing it with a phonetic Pin Yin system. The result is we now spell it 'Beijing'.

    This is a quick 5,000 foot view, You can read more at:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Chinese

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  9. Thanks, LNS. My Mandarin is quite limited, but I really like Teresa Teng's Yue Liang dai biao wo de xin

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  10. The traffic in the comment space was like that of week-end. Why?

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  11. Subbu: Success(or victory) has many fathers, failure is an orphan. However, in this space, a complete non controversial solution brooks no discussion, only unconnected stuff. Conversely, when the solution is incomplete (rare occassion), every one tries to interpret it his/her way. Watch this space when NJ starts.

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