2 down: Dire turnaround, it is integral to king, perhaps (7)
The answer is drastic, so does that mean king = tsar and that’s turned around? Or does that mean it is turned around inside drasc? Is there a draughts term meaning to king involved here?
20 down: Fruit slice satisfied foodie (7)
I got foodie = gourmet from cross clues, and without those cross clues I would have continued to be none the wiser.
Buenas dias de Darwin AS y todos!
EC and I gave DA some Northern exposure yesterday, and the tropical air must have been the cause of our indifferent performance. The Saturday Age costs $7 up here and we only got it down to 35c per solved clue! I can help you with 20 down though:
Fruit slice = gourd without the “d”, satisfied = met (as in to satisfy certain requirements) gour + met = gourmet = foodie
I dont really get 17 across. Ninja = assassin, but were you meant to guess that greenback was a turtle? “greenback invoice” I wanted to be “neerg” said outloud, but I couldnt manage to say it like “ninja”.
Can I get some help with 8 & 14 dn?
16 dn was damn nasty. Advanced hair!!! Damn.
20D: ‘fruit’ = gourd (yes, really, a gourd is a fruit!) so slice it to get gour, then ‘satisfied’= met, as in “satisfied the requirements”.
2D: I interpreted it as ‘its’ inside ‘card’ turned around, so ‘king’ = card; but I don’t like it.
I really liked 5D: a million is 1000 times 1000, or MM, removed from commerce to give coerce!
RC, good to hear Darwin is still a DA town, even if at exorbitant prices. And if I remember correctly, you’ve had trouble with DA crosswords before that have been full of anagrams. Clearly, the anagram is your bete noir.
And in order to buttress your Spanish classes over in Darwin, I give you this: I think it would be BUENOS dias DESDE Darwin. DIAS is irregularly masculine, and DESDE is more appropriate here because:
– La comida de Melbourne means The Melbournian food (the food of Melbourne)
– La comida desde Melbourne means The food from Melbourne, which might not be typical of Melbourne but just happens to come from there.
17A, the ninja clue is awesome. GREENBACK INVOICE HURT = N INVOICE INJURE = NINJA = ASSASSIN.
8D: EURO currency = ROUBLE inserted into an anagram of MARKETS.
14D: anagram of ROME IF DAS meaning OTHER THAN.
Muchas gracias para la ayuda de Espanol y acerca mi preguntas de DA. Acordamos mas Espanol!! Arriba!
RE 2D: DRASTIC – I agree with JG’s explanation, and I’d point out that CARD=”king, perhaps”, which makes it more palatable. I liked the clue.
Re 5D: COERCE – I have a slightly different take on this one. If MM was 1000×1000 then the clue should read “million”, not “millions”. My interpretation is to think lower case m (abbrev for million), rather than upper case M (Roman numeral for thousand). Hence mm is millions.
I don’t like 26A because of the ‘gout = g out’ without any hint (“nasty” as Ian says), and also because ‘just’ is not a synonym of ‘mere’: a ‘mere cigar’ is not a ‘just cigar’ or, ‘just a cigar’ is ‘merely a cigar’
I thought “g out” was great! Nasty, I agree. But very DA-like.
As for just=mere, I had the same reservation as JG. “Mere” is an adjective, “just” is an adverb. (“Just” can be an adjective, but then it has a different meaning, namely “fair”). However, my copy of The Shorter Oxford seems to have (if I am interpreting it correctly) a justification for “mere” used as an adverb (=merely).
No, no, RB, we have to draw a line in the sand on the slippery slope before the floodgates open! Allow in gout, and next you have doubt = leave out d, and been = bin = put in b! Where will it end?
Apparently the Guardian setter Paul once clued JAIN as “Ancient Hindu in a jiffy,” (iffy here being the anagram indicator) but the editor threw it out. It has long been obvious Fairfax doesn’t employ a crossword editor, so DA has to be inventive but also do his own estimate of where the line is. My personal definition of the line is where I couldn’t get the answer, and therefore the clue must have been unfair or badly worded. It’s a very subjective thing. Gout as G out gave me some trouble before I realised, but I did get it, so it passed my test.
What a clue! Marvellous! Definitely unfair, but marvellous!