Solving time: between 45 and 55 mins I reckon – did in bed and didn’t time myself.
One of my favourite puzzles for some time – just the kind I really enjoy. Lots of excellent clueing and plenty of smiles to be had along the way.
I looked up Tagus and ‘folie de grandeur’ to check after solving, but both were quite gettable from the wordplay.
Across
1 | G,AIT – I know AIT=’small island’ only through crosswords; might be difficult for beginners. |
4 | SAFETY,SHOT – SHOT=’one landed’ and ‘safety cushion’ sounds right, although I don’t think I’ve come across it before. |
9 | VI(LLANELL[i])E – wow, yesterday I listened to Leonard Cohen’s Villanelle for Our Time – quite excited about going to see him in concert in a couple of weeks. |
11 | J[ustic]E,ROME – last one to go in this morning. I’ve heard of Jerome, but it didn’t come to me until I’d hollowed out justice. |
12 | ENO,R,MOUS[e] – ENO is the English National Opera. |
15 | SHE’LL S(H)OCK |
20 | [pl]AGUE |
21 | PENCIL IN – PENICILLIN with 1(I) and L(50) removed. |
23 | OCTETS – ST,ETC,O reversed |
24 | SEXT[on] – a couple of church bits here – after coming across None a while ago, I decided to learnt the Canonical Hours (Sext is the sixth). A sexton is someone who looks after the church grounds and rings the bells – I also came across this through doing crosswords. |
26 | SING [reg]ULARLY |
27 | EDDA – ADDE[d] reversed. Edda is another word I’ve only encountered in crosswords. |
Down
2 | ABIDE WITH ME – sung at lots of sports matches – so quite a few non-church-goers should be able to get this. |
4 | SUNLESS – sounds like sonless. |
5 | FOLIE DE GRANDEUR – anagram of ‘lauded foreigner’ – not a phrase I knew, but not really the only choice when lots of checking letters in place. |
6 | T(REF)OIL |
7 | HARPO[on] – I am a huge Marx Brothers fan, always smile when they turn up. I would say Harpo is far from silent, what with his whistling, sneezing and horn-blowing; I think he also sings in Monkey Business. But I think we know what the setter means. |
8 | TAG US – I think I knew the Tagus but I looked it up to check. |
13 | UNCL[e],UTTERED – again UNCLE=pawnproker I first heard in crosswords. As well as being good fun, crosswords are educational as well! |
16 | HEAR,TACHE – TACHE being short for moustache. I really liked TACHE for ‘hair on head’. |
18 | WAL[l]S,ALL |
19 | DU(O(P)O)LY |
21 | POSES – I can see this is POSSE with an S moved to the end – I wasn’t sure about this when solving – is this raise as in ‘bring to an end’? Or does it mean POSES with a raised S gives POSSE? |
22 | NIX,ON – in one way not very tricky, but in other quite Tricky indeed. |
At 21d, the last point in posse (law team) is E, which is raised to make POSES.
His death, which happen’d in his berth,
At forty-odd befell:
They went and told the sexton, and
The sexton toll’d the bell.
I got myself bogged down in all sorts of trouble, for example trying to make sense of GARBO at 7dn, and although 5dn obviously couldn’t be DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR I convinced myself that the second word was OF and tried to make the first word out of the remaining letters ILDEE. I then got BUFFER SHOT into my head for 4ac and convinced myself it must be right even thought it’s not in the Big Three as I felt sure I had heard the term used in snooker circles.
Anyway, one by one I sorted the clues out and came in just over the hour.
I can’t make up my mind whether 11ac is very clever or unfair (ROME as headquarters, I mean), and I’m not sure I have met “river” being clued by “current” before, if that’s what’s going on at 8dn.
As for Leonard Cohen: me too; I’m off to Amsterdam on the 12th to see him in concert. It’s a lovely setting he’s made of Frank Scott’s “Villanelle for our time”. We cruciverbalists might empathise with the lines
We loved the easy and the smart,
But now, with keener hand and brain,
We rise to play a greater part.
Dafydd.
Foggy, I don’t think Harpo sang in Monkey Business but in an attempt to get on the ship by prentending to be Maurice Chevalier he had a gramophone on his back and mimed to a record of “If a nightingale could sing like you…”
Loads of clues worthy of COD status but I’ll go for 7d.
You can see the scene about 2 mins into the film…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPoEHDQZqcQ
Maurice
About 50 minutes, with an interruption halfway through.
Extremely discombobulated by the image which 22d brought up!
JohnPMarshall
…Robert
Hallelujah!
There are 5 “easies” not in the blog:
10a Regularly s P u R n I n G humbug (4)
PRIG. Quite an old fashioned word and likewise humbug – the sort you might read in CS Lewis. I always thought that PRIG was like P***K?
Maybe not.
14a Deer’s tongue losing tip (4)
HIND (I). Yes the tongue is Hindi the devotee is Hindu.
17a Poor place, as we are away from the sun (5,5)
THIRD WORLD. I always have difficulty of thinking of other planets as “Worlds”. My “world” definition includes life.
25a Charity is mature business (3,7)
AGE CONCERN
3d Challenge High Command (4,5)
TALL ORDER