24662 – a pre-emptive strike

Author   glhPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Placeholder post – I got a last-minute gig tonight and may not be able to blog the crossword until the morning. If anyone can get in through the new system and complete the crossword, feel free to leave comments. I’ll get the blog up as soon as I can.

Solving time : Well after putting the placeholder up, and going to do a show, I found this extremely difficult and it appears 35 minutes have passed, but not all of them on the crossword. I think if I was sober I’d do it a lot faster, but on the other hand, I had an excellent and amusing night, and I think I’ve got this all out. Oh, and I managed to log on to the new crossword club and this printed out just fine, so the panic attacks of earlier are alleviated.

And away we go!

Across
1 MUSTARD: STAR(t) in MUD
5 sounds like an answer I’ve seen elsewhere this week, so let’s omit it
9 HORSE: ummm, double definition if you call “in need of” as a homophone indicator, or am I missing something? Edit: Of course I am – HOARSE minus A – see comments
10 MASS,AGING
11 MILLION: one of my last in and a crafty little clue – MILL(spinner),I(one),ON(leg – ref cricket)
12 ON PAPER: PAP in ONE then R
13 CASSIOPEIA: anagram of SOAP,IS,ACE,I
15 ARID: R in AID, and not R in SEE as I wrote initially
18 L,ASH
20 PRO,MEN,AD,ER: liked this charade, but didn’t see it until several looks at the clue
23 CENTAVO: anagram of VOTE,CAN
24 SLEIGH,T
25 SKINFLINT: FLIN(g) in SKINT
26 IDAHO: hidden
27 EAGRE: a tidal bore – sounds like EAGER
28 GENOESE: ON reversed surrounded by GEESE
 
Down
1 MARBLES: BR reversed in MALES
2 SPECIFIC: C(cold) in (SPICE,IF)
3 (m)ADMAN
4 DESPOTISM: SPOT in DEISM
5 CLAMPS: L in CAMPS
6 let’s cut this one out
7 EGGAR: EG then RAG reversed – a moth with cocoon-shaped eggs
8 CHEMICAL: (MALICE)* after CH
14 PARDONING: DON in PARING
16 DU(e),RATION
17 ANDESITE: SITE(scene) with AND,E at the front
19 S,INNING: though the components of a baseball game are usually called INNINGS rather than INNING. And a tie-in to the start of the Major League Baseball playoffs that started yesterday
21 DEGRADE: that would be a Daughter with an E GRADE
22 RAF,FLE(w)
23 CAST,E
24 SA,TIN: SA being the Salvation Army, of whom I have little good to say, so I’ll leave it up to The Goodies

64 comments on “24662 – a pre-emptive strike”

  1. DNF, and I thought the hard bits were quite hard (but the rest was not too bad and would have been easier if I hadn’t misspelt CASSIOPEIA). The problem clues were of course ANDESITE (whose correctness is easy to check from wordplay if you can find it in the first place, but I didn’t manage that, so I found it a bit unfair) and MILLION — although it was staring me in the face I refused to believe that “square” could be an adequate definition for one particular square number (especially one whose squareness is not really the property which first comes to mind). But on second thought why shouldn’t it be OK, if “moth” is an adequate definition for EGGAR, “flyer” would be an adequate definition for any bird, and so on. No chance to understand at least part of the wordplay for MILLION though, as I am of the wrong nationality to know anything about cricket.
    1. Just remember ‘leg’ = ‘on’ and ‘extra’ is often ‘w’ (for Wide) and you’re half way there.
  2. An “inning” is part of a baseball game (there are 9 “innings” in the usual game), so 19 is clued properly as far as this baseball fan is concerned.
    But I know very little about cricket – does “on” mean the same thing as “square leg?” I had “mullion” as the answer for 11, thinking that “spinner” perhaps meant “muon” (a subatomic particle which may spin, for all I know).
    Also had “angelite” instead of “andesite” for 17. Angelite is indeed a rock, but admittedly it does not fit the rest of the clue.

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