The Rotter’s Science-themed Times-based Crossword

Author   vinyl1Posted on Categories Other Crosswords
Solving time: About 50 minutes

Music: Stravinsky, Petrouchka, Monteux/BSO

This puzzle is now available, without any virus or adware, from my personal web space:
http://home.earthlink.net/~vinyl1/Science0207150001.pdf

I found this puzzle enjoyable, and of only moderate difficulty. The style is more like The Guardian or The Nation, with longer, wordier clues. Some of the surfaces are rather awkward, which makes the puzzle easier to solve; I had little difficulty picking out the wordplay and the literal, which is often not the case with the terser clues. Dean Mayer is a good example of the opposite style, where a few short words are made to do clever tricks.

The science content was not too bad for non-scientists, as the cryptics were rather generous. I had no idea of ‘azido’, but the cryptic gives it to you, and I needed a couple of tries to get the right spelling of the vaguely-remembered ‘speiss’. The two long clues were obviously anagrams, which helped by solve along.

Across
1 DEFILADE, DE + FIL(AD)E. A rather wordy clue, a semi &lit.
6 JUDAIC, JUD[e] + A1 C.
10 PLANCK’S EQUATION, anagram of NON-AQUATIC KELP’S. If you biffed in ‘Planck’s constant’, you are going to have a difficult time.
11 LAY DOWN, LAY + DOWN, followed by two definitions, the second referring to bottles of wine.
12 APOJOVE, A PO + JOVE, a rather obscure word that refers to the moons of Jupiter only. ‘Apogees’ would have fit the cryptic, “a Po, geeze”, but the literal does not call for a plural.
13 DIGERATI, anagram of DIRE GAIT.
15 SIGHS, sounds like SIZE, referring to the bridge in Venice.
18 ENIAC, anagram of CAINE, a very clever clue. I saw almost at once this was an anagram of Caine, and still couldn’t solve it without any checkers.
20 ADMASSES, A.D. MASSES. I ran across this odious bit of business slang in another puzzle, or I might have gotten stuck.
23 MAGNETO, a backwards hidden in [int]O TEN GAM[e]. I biffed this one, and only say the hidden afterwards.
25 ALUMNAE, anagram of MENU A LA. A little awkward because MODE is left hanging out; I might have tried to use ‘mode’ as the anagrind.
26 OXIDATIVE STRESS, anagram of SAID VOTERS EXIST.
27 SPEISS, sounds like SPICE. I needed a few guesses to get the right spelling.
28 HYDROGEN, HY(-ph, + DROG)EN. An interesting substitution clue, although ‘drog’ may be a bit obscure. I wouldn’t say hydrogen is the source of everything, although as its etymology indicates, it is the source of water.
 
Down
1 DIPOLE, DI + POLE.
2 FLAKY WI-FI, anagram of I WALK IFFY. I think that solvers are catching on that ‘surfing’ clues probably have to do with the internet.
3 LACTOSE, sounds like LACK TOES, an easy starter clue.
4 DYSON, anagram of SYNOD. The obvious answer, but I wasn’t sure what was being referred to until doing a little research. They are sold in the US, but it is not a commonly-known brand.
6 URANOUS, URAN(O)US. This is an cation of uranium.
7 AZIDO, AZ I’D O. As for what ‘azido’ actually means, perhaps we should invite a professor of Chemistry, if we can find one somewhere.
8 CONDENSE, CON(DENS)E. I wasted a lot of time trying to fit in ‘Soho’, but eventually saw it.
9 AQUARIUM, AQUA + R(I)UM, a little weak since the ‘aqua’ element means water in both the clue and the answer. I would have tried to use ‘a qua’ = ‘kind of’ in my clue, maybe something like ‘A kind of drink I found in tank’.
14 ANATOMIC, AN ATOMIC, surprisingly easy when you see it.
16 GREENBERG, GREEN + BERG. If you have forgotten the Grand Duchy of Berg, you are not alone. Greenberg pioneered many important theories in high-level linguistics, but he is not very well-remembered either.
17 FERMIONS, anagram of ENSIFORM.
19 COEVALS, CO + SLAVE backwards. Easy, right?
21 STUTTER, ST + UTTER.
22 REASON, [t]REASON, the only clue that is anything like a chestnut in this puzzle.
24 GUIDE, GUI + DE. The first element is Graphic User Interface, the second is Delaware.
24 APERY, sounds like A PERI.

7 comments on “The Rotter’s Science-themed Times-based Crossword”

  1. Thanks to The Rotter and to Vinyl1. I was quite pleased to have completed this (OK, I did resort to aids for speiss) only to come here and discover that my confident “amino” for 7 down was wrong!
    CoD to 23a where I spent ages looking for an anagram of “A dynamo”

    Bob

  2. Thank you Therotter and vinyl1. Most enjoyable but a DNF for me. DNK AZIDO and APOJOVE but the rest crept in eventually. I wonder whether Jimbo saw this.
    Have just noticed the nina ROTTER !

    Edited at 2015-08-05 08:30 pm (UTC)

  3. Thank you for blogging this Vinyl. First, I was a DNF and with an additional one or two DN-parses and I appreciate the blog; second I’ve owed The Rotter a comment for a couple weeks, and this gives me the best excuse to make it.
    I thought a lot of the wordplay was clever. After a bit of solving I also realised how difficult it was to hide some of the science-theme definitions in a clue – scientific words tend to be unique and specialised. There were a couple clues that I would not have solved if I hadn’t been able to pinpoint the themed definition. So a nice balance: a few easy to spot definitions with some tough wordplay; a few very difficult words with easier wordplay; then one of the non-theme clues to keep me at least off balance. So thank you and well done form here.
  4. Thanks for all the comments guys, and to vinyl for the blog, and bigtone for spotting the Nina. No one commented on the pangram but I guess most of you saw that. There are a couple of you who have written to me, and I will get back to them individually – very fair and useful comments. Unfortunately I have the lurgey today, hoping to feel better tomorrow. Thanks again all.
  5. DNF – AZIDO, APOJOVE unknown, and the guessed AZIDO known not to be a word, confirmed later by Chambers and Oxford dictionaries.
    I’d say APOJOVE has the same lack-of-crypticness as aquarium; the Jovian planet was named for Jove.

    Also missed the nina (I always do); and missed the “pre-cursor” i.e. no cursor on the screen for the Eniac – very clever.
    Entertaining, for this engineer.
    Rob

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