23793 Oooh R!

Author   jackktPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time : About 40 minutes. An enjoyable puzzle that didn’t make too many demands on this addled brain when tackled in the early hours before bedtime. Several nice clues, in particular 9, 24 and 27, but my COD goes to 16 as it took me a while to spot the reason having solved it at the first glance. I always seem to notice when there is  predominance of certain letters (lots of Os recently). I’m not sure whether 15 Rs is unusual and I might not even have thought about it but for the overuse of kinq/queen to clue them.

Across
1 OLEANDER – (one alder)*
9 IRIS,H SEA – IRIS+(as he)*
10 A(NO)INT
11 CH(A RIOT)EER
12 V,O,1,D – Apparently void can mean holding no cards of a particular suit.
16 OFFENCE – Two meanings
17 DISDAI,N – (as I did)*+N
20 BOTTLENECK
22 COCK – cock-crow=first light
23 INTERREGNA – (Argentine,R)* 
25 R(A)IDER
27 A,THE,(N.I.),AN
 
Down
2 LONE WOLF – (fellow no)*
3 A,NIM,ADVERT – Apparently nim is a game played usually with matchsticks
4 DUTCH UNCLE – As in “My Dear Old Dutch” plus that pawnbroker again
6 MI(a)MI – Mimi is the tragic heroine in La Boheme. Your tiny hand is frozen and all that.
7 ASSE(R)T – R=king here as in 23……..
8 HAR(R,1)D,AN – ……and queen here.
15 IN(D,E)CISION – Do classes finish at E, I wonder? I suppose they must or D and E would not be particularly low. Celebrity status is measured down to Z-list, I believe.
16 OX(ford)(c,am)BRIDGE – I like this one and it’s my COD
18 IN CAME,R.A. – What would setters do without the Royal Acadamy? Oh of course, they’d use the Royal Artillery instead.
19 P(ERGO)LA(y)
21 TA(T.T.)LE
24 ROAD – Three clues to this, one of them completely new to me. A road can be an anchorage in an area of sea protected by guns, also sounds like “rowed” and “rode”, the last one indicated by “bay” to suggest the world of horses.

6 comments on “23793 Oooh R!”

  1. Animadvert was the only clue to defy final scrutiny though a little push would have got me there as it is
    one of those words that only seems to come up in crosswords and is also one that i always forget what it means exactly. Ontology is another though rare in the xword. Interregna would have my vote because i like unusual plurals but Road i felt was feeble. A somewhat top heavy clue to get a bit of xword cliche only u might end up thinking it is Rode.
    I was wondering Peter if u were doing the xword in the early hours does that mean u could access the club site. Oddly i could get through to bulletin board which has become a morass of complaint the continuity of which escapes me i.e. via the link to the right of this page . I must say to feel for those overseas who can’t get hold the physical form to get their fix; somebody else in need of a fix methinks. A wapping great patch maybe.
    All the best New Year to one and all. alanjc
  2. I enjoyed it too. 24D’s an interesting double-homophone, but I would have preferred ‘on bay’ to ‘across bay’. 3D was last to go in, one of those old-fashioned Latinate words that I only half-remembered. I liked 17A and 16D but choose 21D as COD for sheer cheek – would the Grauniad have included this clue?
  3. Yes I enjoyed it too. Another non-stopper in about 20 minutes or less.
    COD 16Down – I was just going to come on here and ask why when I spotted the reasoning.
  4. 11:02 for me, the last couple of minutes spent on 16D. I wasn’t terribly taken with it even when the penny eventually dropped – in fact I much preferred 24D (“across bay” and all) and nominate it as my COD.
  5. I had to resort to help with 3d as I DNK NIM as a game nor ANIMADVERT as a word for criticize. I shall try to remember those. I did better at the also unknown 23a INTERREGNA as the anagram fodder was fairly clued and the word is at least vaguely recognisable as “periods with no rules”.

    There are just the four “easies” not in the blog:

    13a A French kind of wine, fairly bottled, not returned (10)
    UN RE QUITE D. As in unrequited love. A French wine is UN RED – from La Table region perhaps?

    26a Pill a driver must take on his rounds (4,4)
    GOLF BALL. I have an seemingly irrational dislike for the term pill used for ball. Also the far post as “the far stick” and ……

    5d Run I do differently, crossing line in competition (7)
    R I VA L RY

    14d Order music suitable for the army – and for the fleet (5,5)
    QUICK MARCH

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