Solving time 10 minutes
Apologies for the delay in posting. I’m unable to access Live Journal and Andy is posting this for me.
Daily Telegraph standard and style of puzzle – it’s very difficult to find much to say about either individual clues or the puzzle overall.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | HABITAT – H-A-BIT-AT; |
5 | MACABRE – MA(CAB)RE; |
9 | DIGITALLY – DIG-I-TALLY; |
10 | SCOTT – S-C-OTT; |
11 | ELITE – hidden (d)ELI-TE(mporarily); |
12 | RANSACKER – RAN-S-ACKER(s); “ackers” is old slang for money; |
13 | PASS,THE,PARCEL – (castle perhaps)*; |
17 | HARD,TO,SWALLOW – two definitions; “tall” as in “tall story”; |
21 | MINIDRESS – MI-(in red)*-SS; |
24 | CARER – CA(RE)R; |
25 | IMPRO – I-MPR-O; MPR from M(y) P(a)R(t); |
26 | PROFUSION – PRO-FUSION; |
27 | GILBERT – (gerbil + t)*; tail without trouble=”tail” without “ail”=t; |
28 | TORPEDO – TO(R)PE-DO; R from “last of motheR”; |
Down | |
1 | HODMEN – HO-MEND then raise D; |
2 | BIG,DIPPER – two meanings; |
3 | TETHERS – TE(THE)RS(e); short=terse; |
4 | TOLERATES – (role state)*; |
5 | MAYAN – NAY-AM reversed; |
6 | CASSATA – C-A-S-SATA(y); |
7 | BLOCK – two meanings; |
8 | ENTIRELY – E(N-TIRE)LY; N from “end of marathoN”; |
14 | E-PASSPORT – (validat)E-(pop star’s)*; |
15 | COWARDICE – CO-WAR-DICE; |
16 | THUMPING – TH-UMP(ire)-ING; |
18 | TADPOLE – TAD-POLE; |
19 | LACQUER – sounds like “lacker”=someone needing; |
20 | BRANDO – BRAND-O; BRAND=line; [ Edited – I agree with fathippy2 ] |
22 | NEPAL – NE(arby)-PAL; |
23 | EXPAT – (n)EX-PA-T; |
I thought that 20D was merely line=brand as in a line of clothing. My last in was GILBERT as I got sidetracked into assuming that tail indicated the last letter of something and couldnt shake that thought.
Quite liked the ‘T=tail without trouble’ at 27ac, but otherwise, not a lot stood out.
Never heard of ACKERs.
I like clues with a very natural surface, such as 3.
Haven’t contributed here for a long while but I check in daily so thanks to the bloggers and commentators for the good read! It’s always entertaining and educational.
I don’t remember seeing tadpole clued as “Little European creature” before – what fun! Spent last weekend on Anglesey and the clear nights were perfect for stargazing. Saw the Big Dipper and the Milky Way and an occasional shooting star. At 23:40 ish on Saturday night the moon rose out of the sea – it was an orange crescent.
Do e-passports really exist? Having cruised around the Baltic this summer I don’t think they’d have passed muster with the immigration officers at St Petersburg!
I am now able to log in on Windows, but not on Firefox. I was able to read on Firefox by deleting my LiveJournal cookies.
As for the crossword, a fairly easy but none-the-less fun run to the line, confused only by entering INHABIT at 1ac and wondering where the definition had gone, and by being totally non-plussed by ACKERS. COD to CASSATA; I have to say satay ice-cream is a particular favourite of mine.
This is the first time in two days I’ve been able to access the site, so I don’t know how others managed it. No amount of cookie crumbling worked for me.
Many happy returns to the blogger.
I am sure this may well have been discussed but I couldn’t find any threads anywhere. Has there been any consideration given to moving the blog? I’ve never been to a blog that seems to give so much trouble to folk with access. I blogged for years at wordpress.com and I don’t recall a single problem with a wordpress.com blog being down. In addition, there are no annoying adverts.
I realise it would be a lot of work to move everyone (and archives) over but it seems to be a real difficulty on a disappointingly regular basis. It’s a great little blog and deserves a better platform than LiveJournal seems to be offering.
Actually the LJ problems of the past few days and the recent attack on their servers are the only serious disruptions to the service in the time I have been contributing (3+ years). I posted a lot a few months ago about problems I was having but nobody else reported difficulties and it turned out to be a glitch affecting my ISP only.