Solving time: 9:09
Most of this was pretty quick, but the NE corner put up a fight – my order for this: 6, 10, 8, 12, 5, 14, 4D. 11 and 1D went in without full wordplay understanding.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | BECOME – 2 defs – an old chestnut, but the kind that reads so smoothly that it can easily fool you more than once if they put it back in the box for long enough. (become = suit) is as in “Your mouth’s wide open and it don’t become you” – a Boomtown Rats lyric found for me by Google |
| 4 | FLAP=stew,PER=”for every” – more on flappers here if you need it |
| 9 | MADAM – “still looking in mirror” is one way of saying that this is a palindrome |
| 10 | ANNA – our third lady in a row,POLIS(h) – Annapolis was apparently the temporary capital of the US (1783-4), but is now best known as the site of the US Naval Academy |
| 11 | ADVERSARY – (A,S=special,REV.) reversed, in (A,DRY=dull) |
| 12 | RE=on=concerning,RUN=travel |
| 13 | TAR=salt=sailor,(tow)N – full detail on tarns here |
| 14 | LIBERTY MAN = (by terminal)* – a new word for me, though easily understood |
| 18 | CONS=does=tricks(IS=lives),TORY – a consistory (= “consistory court”) is presided over by a bishop |
| 20 | JAWS – 2 defs, one as in Churchill’s “jaw, jaw / war, war” quote, and the other from the 1975 movie |
| 23 | STRAP = parts, reversed |
| 24 | QUICK=brainy,STEP = pets = blue-eyed boys, reversed |
| 25 | PRESS=reporters, GA(N)G – “force” and “press-gang” work best as verbs here, though a press gang is a sort of “force” too. More surprising is the verbal “gag” (to tell joke), but this is supported by COED |
| 26 | PRUNE – 2 defs – the Oxford Dictionaries site gives a good example of the “disagreeable person” one |
| 27 | ROYALTY = payment – the initial L in loyalty=allegiance is changed. This clue seems to work equally well for “payment after initially changing = LOYALTY” and that’s what I wrote first, but S?P?L as checkers for 23D didn’t look promising. |
| 28 | MEDDLE = “medal” – ‘tinker’ is a verb in the cryptic reading |
| Down | |
| 1 | BO = O.B. (old boy) reversed=up,M(B)ASTIC – mastic is the tree that supplies the original version of this gum, as well as the gum itself |
| 2 | CAD,AVER=to state with conviction – “stiff” as cadaver comes up eventually in this smorgasbord of bad taste |
| 3 | MEMO=note,RY.=railway=lines |
| 4 | FANCY – 2 defs – looks simple, but hard enough for me – my last answer |
| 5 | AS=like,P(E.R.)ITY – asperity = “a rough manner” is quite tricky – I though it was related to aspersion, but apparently not |
| 6 | PIL=rev. of lip,GRIM=ghastly – the ultimate destination of pilgrimages was often a shrine such as that of Thomas Becket at Canterbury |
| 7 | RE-SIN = be naughty again, and cannabis in the form of hashish is a resin |
| 8 | S(wing),A,LARIAT=rope – salariat is another word in the “obscure but easily guessed” category |
| 15 | Today’s omitted answer |
| 16 | NOSE=”knows”,PIECE – one meaning of nosepiece is “the central part of a pair of glasses that fits over the bridge of the nose” |
| 17 | DISPOSAL = (iPod, lass)* – a fairly accurate surface about a modern-day teenager |
| 19 | NURSE=harbour (vb.),R(ust)Y – I had to use the dictionary to discover that a nursery cannon is “a cannon which keeps the balls close together” (Billiards, he adds, to stop any sniggering at the back – I wonder if this answer has been used in the Private Eye puzzle yet …) |
| 21 | A,S(T)OUND – minor delay with this one from trying to start it with AG(e) = “a short time” |
| 22 | SKOPJE – P=parking, in jokes* – the capital of Macedonia really needs a X??XX? or ?X?XX? pattern of checking letters for maximum bafflement |
| 23 | SUP(p)ER – “one quietly had to leave” is a marvellous combination of precise clue-writing with convicing surface meaning (as long as you don’t mind some clues being in the past tense) |
| 24 | QUA(K)Y – appearing close to SKOPJE, this suggested a possible pangram, but H,X,Z are missing |
I had a completed grid (with ASPERATE instead of ASPERITY)at my cut-off time but the idea that I “solved” it is a bit of a stretch as had at least 6 guesses.
congratulations on the sub 7 minute time!
PRUNE was, in my youth, a term of affection garnered from I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, who developed Radio Prune as an antidote to Radio One (…is lots of fun like migraine headaches) and Sir Angus of the Prune, a disguise adopted by their spoof Robin Hood. Can’t imagine it as a negative – it’s more like the contemporary (or nearly) “muppet”.
FANCY = crazy? Isn’t that unwisely rude to pigeon racers?
And was anyone really frightened by JAWS?
CoD to PILGRIM
Indeed it would – but surely “Be crazy about” = FANCY?
The first thing I discovered was that I had an error at 4dn where I had plumped for FADDY thinking it sort of worked but I can see now that it doesn’t. I then compounded this error by inventing the US city of LADYPOLIS and I admit I wasn’t quite so hopeful about that one being correct.
Of course this then stumped me at 8 down but I wouldn’t have known the word SALARIAT anyway. I also didn’t know CONSISTORY and I have never heard of NURSERY cannons so I think I was never going to finish this puzzle without looking things up.
Does ‘FANCY’ = ‘be crazy about’? It seems a bit strong to me. And is a ‘PRUNE’ a ‘disagreeable’ person? Not according to the dictionaries that I’ve looked in (Collins, Chambers, Dictionary.com). Maybe it’s in the Oxfords.
COD to MEDDLE for the elegant, and somewhat misleading, simplicity. I can’t believe I can be the only person to think of this fellow at 23dn?
Some very nice surfaces. I especially like the one for QUICKSTEP – with its rhythm and alliteration it could be a Morrissey lyric (The Rusholme Quickstep, perhaps).
Last in SALARIAT.
As usual, I struggled with the omitted answer, but saw ‘Skopje’, ‘consistory’, and ‘asperity’ quite quickly.
The ones I hesitated on were ‘nursery’, which had to be solved from the cryptic, and ‘madam’. I can see from the clue it is a palindrome, but how does the literal work?
Other than that I had SHAKY for a while.
So a tough solve all round – looking at the rest of the times I might have expected 15-20 minutes but didn’t get the brain out of second gear today
Like others I was a bit surprised by the definition of PRUNE but at least I got that one.
Not a successful week so far. A timely reminder that whilst I can usually do these things in respectable time I am a long way from achieving real consistency.
I didn’t find this quite so easy – 40 minutes to get all but 8d and most of the NW corner, though with in retrospect 4d and 5d wrong (FUNNY and ASPERATE respectively, and with very little defence in the latter case).
8d needed a dictionary search, as I’ve heard of either the class or the rope, and the rest fell over the course of an hour, off and on, from 3d / 9ac / 1ac / 1d to, finally, 18ac.
COD 2d.
7. Billiards. A group of balls kept close together in order for a series of cannons to be made.
and “nurse” means
9. trans. Billiards. To keep (the balls) close to one another in order to enable a prolonged series of cannons to be made.
Nursery cannons therefore come in a series.