Solving time: 5’04”
I had a bad start, making a pig’s ear of the top left and working ‘up and left’ through the grid which is always much slower, so I expect others to have recorded some very quick times today. Lots of old chestnuts and no fewer than 5 first names appearing as answers or in clues or wordplay.
Beginners’ tips of the day: ‘publicity’ = PR (Public Relations) (or AD[vert]), ‘jolly’ = RM (Royal Marine), ‘companion’ = CH (Companion of Honour).
* = anagram.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | PR + IN + TABLE – really should have got this straight away, but I thought ‘AD’ instead of ‘PR’ for publicity and had to leave it, costing me a rare sub-5 minute time. |
6 | RECAP; rev. of PACER – remember this reversal, it comes up regularly. |
10 | ROULEAU; “RUE LO” – the one answer I wasn’t sure of: it means ‘a roll or coil of ribbon’. |
12 | A + RM (= Royal Marine = jolly) + STRONG |
13 | SHA(R)D |
14 | NOURISHED; (HOURS ENID)* – ‘to get one X’ in the sense of ‘to give the solver the answer X’ is rather inelegant. Enid is the first of several arbitrary first names today, a bugbear of many solvers. |
17 | I + NE(BRIAN)T – a curiously worded clue (“I will get man into my clutches? Intoxicating!”). Brian is our first man. |
18 | DI + VAN – ‘girl’ = DI is probably the most used name in crosswords; ‘store’s vehicle?’ for VAN is quite verbose. |
19 | SO(A POPE)R[e] + A – a rare care of ‘bishop’ not indicating B or RR. |
22 | CH + ILL – CH stands for Companion of Honour. |
24 | [h]AIRLINE |
26 | [m]EN + SUE – another addition to today’s harem. |
27 | TINSMITHS (cryptic definition) |
Down | |
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1 | PE[s]TER – held up here by trying [s]TIR. At least this name is given a bit of qualification. |
2 | INTRICATE; (NICE ART IT)* – early morning anagramitis cost me dearly here. |
3 | TALL ORDER; LORD in (LATER)* |
5 | EARL MOUNTBATTEN; (A LOT AT NUMBER TEN)* – having speculated ‘-TABLE’ at 1 across I wrote in EARL straightaway but had to come back for the second word. Lord Mountbatten was uncle to Prince Philip and Admiral of the Fleet. |
6 | [p]ROUST – refers to Marcel. |
8 | P(LUGGED)IN |
13 | SH(I + P (= quiet))SH + APE – ‘the brute’ seems a little overspecific, though it’s a good surface. |
15 | INDECORUM; (COR I’M NUDE)* |
20 | ARRAS (hidden) – meaning a tapestry, as originally made at Arras in French. |
23 | LOT + US – I didn’t know the river Lot, or indeed the Garonne of which it is a tributary, but the answer was clear. |
Can someome clarify “creates” in 1 down. “Saint is trouble….” or “Saint’s trouble…” makes sense. “Creates” doesn’t make cryptic sense to me.
I do agree about the inelegance of “one” in 14 across. It’s becoming a common Times device, used purely to mislead. The surface reading would not suffer at all without it; in fact it rather spoils the surface.
Presumably the setter had something like this in mind and wanted to avoid any “I get man” / “I gets man” argument, but the result is rather inelegant.
Richard S
Wil Ransome
Dafydd Price Jones.
Wil Ransome
Dafydd Price Jones
9a Like certain churches taking minimal time with strange ritual (7)
T ITULAR. Like some churches apparently? Is this that easy??
11a Beast foreign character keeps at home (5)
RH IN O
25a Expel number of people coming to meeting (7)
TURNOUT. (DD)
4d Must one sink to this to get a good deal? (7,8)
BARGAIN BASEMENT
7d Firm embracing left-wing set of beliefs (5)
C RED O
16d Argue aggressively? Sufferer with a rotten tooth might do that (4,2,3)
HAVE IT OUT
21d Ready to skate but held back? (2,3)
ON ICE