Solving time: 10:48
A curious mixture this one – a bit old-school in having five double definitions, which some may say is too many – I didn’t mind, as only one of them had a two-word clue, which can be rather a give-away. I did mind a couple of other things, but there’s some lively wordplay and words that we don’t see too often. Answers entered without full wordplay understanding were 1, 25, 3.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | TAP(WAT)ER – I don’t think we’ve had wat as in Angkor Wat before, but I think we might see it again. How about “Do observance in Temple Church (5)” |
| 6 | HOARSE = “horse” – a homophone that surely works for every one |
| 9 | NO LIME = “shortage of fruit”,TANGER(in)E = “orange less popular” – a very nice bit of work from the setter. “noli me tangere” literally means “do not touch me”, and I hope is either familiar or easy to translate – “tangent” and “tangible” should help with “tangere”. It’s also another name for a plant called touch-me-not, so gardeners don’t need any Latin here |
| 10 | GLOWER – 2 defs – a minor quibble here with “at” in “Frown at” – unless glower can be a transitive verb, this has to be a wordplay/def link, and “{def} at {def}” doesn’t really work for me. |
| 11 | ATYPICAL – (play Act I)* |
| 13 | A(D=daughter,MINI=skirt)STER |
| 15 | CAGE – 2 def’s, one referring to John Cage’s notorious 4’33” – I’m sure we’ve linked to that before, so here is the man himself on sounds and silence |
| 16 | PLOT – 2 defs again, linked by “for” this time, which suits me much better than “at” |
| 18 | CHIM(PAN(Z)E)E – this manages to break the “‘unknown’ nearly always means Y” rule of thumb, which is good, but I don’t like “window” as a clue to PANE – as far as I can tell, a pane is part of a window, so this doesn’t make sense |
| 21 | STRESSED = “exerted pressure”- reversal of DESSERTS = “lemon meringue pie and sticky toffee pudding” – I wonder whether the people who grumble about definition by example will accept that giving two examples makes it clear that they must be examples |
| 22 | SPRUCE – 2 defs, one using “barked” to mean “furnished with bark”. |
| 23 | NORWAY LOBSTER (a.k.a. Dublin Bay prawn, langoustine, scampi) = (boys on trawler)* – a nice bit of anagram discovery |
| 25 | C(allow),Y(oun)G,NET=make – this should be easy as “young wings” doesn’t really ring true in the surface (though I got it from checkers and “young bird”) |
| 26 | ENTI(RE=about)TY – a couple of tricks are used here to try to confuse you – a container clue involving a synonym of a containment indicator as the “containee”, and the final “to be eaten” which is the real containment indicator, but could conceivably be “to be” as a wordplay/def link, and then a def. |
| Down | |
| 2 | ANNE=girl,LID=top – yes there are lots of girls to choose from, but not that many worms |
| 3 | WOLF-WHISTLE = attention-seeker – WHIST=game, in rev. of (ELF=spirit, LOW=degrading) |
| 4 | TIM(b)ER – timber being one meaning of deal |
| 5 | RETRACT – rev. of carter = deliveryman, (nigh)T |
| 6 | HONEYTRAP = “planted lovely”, with “lovely” in its cheesy old colloquial sense – “an attractive woman or girl” – H(ollyhocks),ONE,YTRAP=rev. of party = bunch (of people) |
| 7 | (p)ALE – if you’re going to complain about white=pale, check the first bullet under meaning 1 here |
| 8 | SHE=female,BANG=shot – the ‘s in the clue has to be read as “has” |
| 12 | INCINERATOR – ((f)IR(e),container)* |
| 14 | INCESSANT = endless – reversal of (A,SS) = “a ship), in INCENT(ive) |
| 17 | LA(TEN)CY – I’m not quite 100% convinced that lacy = sexy, but “figure-hugging” worked well |
| 19 | INDULGE = humour (vb.) = eluding* |
| 20 | EXCE((trouse)R)PT – the “trouser clip” in the surface reading may be a bicycle clip to you |
| 22 | SABOT = clog = shoe – reverse hidden in “photo basically” – third clothing reference in four clues |
| 24 | What, no omitted explanation yet? This must be it. |
There are 2 typos in the blog, by the way, 5d is missing a T and 20d a P.
I did waste a lot of time trying to use either the first or last letters of 21, which is what long clues usually end up as, and per usual got stuck on the easy ‘hoarse’, ‘plot’ and ‘cage’. At least I saw the omitted answer right away.
Luckily I knew “wat” from AZED/Mephisto because wat=hare has come up somewhere and the temple definition is next to it in C. 21A is a bit of a train crash of a clue anyway so adding “for example” would hardly have made things worse – why pick such long worded sweets? 25A is an interesting example of how pedestrian analysers like me solve clues (callow head =C, young wings=YG – must be CYGNET) as against Peter’s probably faster route of scanning the definition and checkers.
This time, I’m wondering why the heck you persevered with EDGE when there’s nothing to indicate reversing those letters. There’s a single “back” that might indicate either reversal or back ends of words, but not both.
One-word desserts would almost certainly not have offered you a tempting ‘EDGE’, but I still think there are desserts out there that can be included in a clue like this without so obviously being a pair of desserts.
However, unlike those I needled, I discarded my theory when it didn’t work and went on to other approaches. I’m so slow anyway, I’m not worried about erasing and spending another five minutes.
I do use pencil, though, since I usually enter half the correct answers in the wrong slot.
After all that effort I was very disappointed to find an error at 2d where I went for ANNALID. I vaguely knew of the worm but had no idea whether it had A or E as its middle letter and I jumped the wrong way.
Other than all that, this was another very lively puzzle which I thoroughly enjoyed solving.
I liked the Latin even if it was unfamiliar, but COD to HONEYTRAP.
I’d be lying if I said I’d noticed any quibbles while solving – I was too busy just trying to get through the thing. Really lively and entertaining challenge, though.
by the way.. “a couple of tricks are used here to try to confuse you – a container clue involving a synonym of a containment indicator as the “containee”, and the final “to be eaten” which is the real containment indicator, but could conceivably be “to be” as a wordplay/def link, and then a def.”
– that’s brilliant. And made me laugh as I did a cartoon double-take and said “Huh?”. All that’s missing is a “Simple.” at the end. Another Tefal moment.
Great blog, Pete.
STRESSED was almost last, as I was sure the sweets must somwhow be there for their letters rather than their meaning.
Joe Casey
‘Hoarse’ has roughly the same vowel sound as RP, but the ‘r’ is sounded, of course; ‘horse’ has the same vowel sound as ‘cot’, which is the same vowel sound as ‘caught’ but not ‘court’.
Oh, and by the way, ‘goose’ rhymes with ‘puss’ in Scotland.
Joe Casey
Maybe because I had a late night, maybe becasue it was harder than yesterday and maybe because my brain told me croaky for 6 across for quite some time…this was a struggle. but around 90 minutes of effort got me home with minimal help. There was a mental groan when i saw how easy Stressed was. like at least one other i was erroneously looking for ending letters etc….
Thought that Tapwater was good clue but hard….and has for Noli me tangere! i thought this was a below the belt clue…just too tough.
COD Honeytrap
But to make up for it, I beat my brains out over ones like ‘plot’.
Now I shall try to finish yesterday’s puzzle, which is still missing several entries.
I shall persevere – with the help of this website, one day I just might complete a full week’s worth.
Once I had started the clues unwound quite logically and with hardly any delay. COD to HONEYTRAP!