Across
1 SNOWBOUND What the redoubtable Ann Bancroft, or come to that the Top Gear Boys could be.
SOUND (thorough) surrounding NOW (current) B(ook)
6 DECAF DEAF, unresponsive as “he was deaf to their plea for mercy” taking C(old) on board for a substance that is almost,
but not quite, entirely unlike coffee. I mean, what is the point of coffee without caffeine?
9 AXILLAE one of those Scrabble™ entriies that players know without having a clue what it is. I looked them up so that you
don’t have to. They are armpits. A football team has XI players until Beckham is sent off. Admit it and ALL “twisted,”
– reversed – into A (&) E (ask Thud ‘n’ Blunder).
10 LACQUER a kindly definition and wordplay, the starts of L(ose) A(t) C(hess) with QUER(y) being without its end.
11 EGO None of the 3-letters were particularly tough today. This Self Confidence is a hidden reverse in imOGEn
12 DISCIPLINED Definition “being strict”, DI plus rejected PICS and LINED with crows feet and such as time’s permanent
markers.
14 HOMAGE the Pig and Whistle pub name needs treatment to separate out the HOG and the last of (whistl)E and wrap them
both around old lady MA. Respect!
15 NEW DELHI The place is well known, the wordplay’s less obvious. Dicky indicates an anagram of WHEN and LIVED short of
V(ery)
17 MAJOLICA Bill=AC(count, see=LO, press=JAM, all reversed to give tin-glazed pottery originally from Italy but nicked by the
Brits and turned into something rather vulgar with a J, not an I
19 FLORAL Lad’s first is L, place inside FOR=for (!) and (s)AL(e) minus its limits. Among other things, “annuals” are generic
flowers.
22 INSEPARABLE How many types of farmland do you know. Yup, ARABLE. Tag it on to an arrangement of PINES and you have
“very close” spelt correctly with an A not an E.
23 DIS the primaries of Druggie Inhabits Shady for the ever useful word for the lower circles of hell and alternate name for
Lucifer.
25 TAIL OFF I got the TOFF for noble but struggled with the AIL for suffer. Don’t know why: perhaps my solving powers are in
decline.
27 RHIZOME another handy Scrabble™ word, meaning “rootstock”. ZERO, H(elp) and I’M move around to create.
28 DWELT “stayed”. See Oxford, think shoe and, here, its bonding WELT added to D(aughter)
29 LANCASTER I think a triple definition, (Burt) Lancaster, the county town of Lancashire, and the Wars of the Roses team
that wasn’t York.
Down
1 STAKE Double definition, pole and the monetary component of a bet/punt. Nothing to do with falling in the Cam.
2 OVIFORM Egg-shaped. Decoration gives O(rder of) M(erit), deposit within V(erse) and generic Welshman IFOR, spelt that
way because it just is, look you.
3 BULLDOG CLIP A highly sprung device for keeping office papers together and inflicting injuries you may be able to claim
for. Order from Rome is a (Papal) BULL, follow=DOG.and CLIP is a glancing blow in, say boxing.
4 UNEASY All you actually have to do is take off the Northern (upper when written in the grid) letters of (J)UNE (w)AS (b)Y.
5 DULCIMER A sort of flat harp played with hammers, rather like the cimbalon that does the Harry Lime theme. Judge is LUD
(as in M’) upset and placed before an involvement of CRIME
6 DOC (not necessarily my) COD fish reversed. Think Leonard “he’s dead Jim” McCoy to make the connection with bones.
7 CHUNNEL LUNCHEON with its O(ver) cancelled and realigned for the contracted version of le tunnel sous la Manche,
surprisingly dating back to 1928
8 FIRE DRILL A semi &lit, I venture. IF backwards, then RED=burning and RILL=trench, the solution being what you need to
combat it.
13 LA DOLCE VITA, Federico Fellini’s take on a week in the life of Rome. Not a musical: that honour is taken by EVITA, which
tacked on to LAD=youth and the even letters of pOt LuCk creates the film.
14 HAM-FISTED Our actor is the not necessarily awkward HAM, the IS is gripped by the newspaper boss who is the F(inancial)
T(imes) ED
16 SCORNFUL Sixteen is four fifths of SCORe (geddit?), added to the N(ational) F(armers’) U(nion) and L(eft) “showing
contempt”
18 JASMINE One of my small collection of known plants and an air freshener flavour. Germany’s yes (JA) set over S(mall)
MINE=pit
20 REDCOAT An entertainer at Butlin’s holiday camps and of course the archetypal British soldier. I’ve been trying to find out
whether British soldiers were called redcoats and Tommies at the same time. Today’s debate, perhaps.
21 OBERON King of the fairies in AMSND. Our alumnus, an O(ld) B(oy) picks up the openings of E(xpress) and R(egret) and
ON, as in playing on stage.
24 SHEER Compete as in “sheer nonsense” sounds a lot like SHEAR as in haircut or clip.
26 OUT “Away”. In Corsica, you would say OU for “where” and temperature’s highest (we are still in down clues) is T
At 9ac, the A&E is Accident and Emergency I think, which if so fits the surface nicely. Sorry if I stole the thunder!
What struck me today was the great surfaces of the clues. (Or was it just after yesterday’s retro where there were few.) 1dn and 24dn are particularly good.
And … there are non-hammered dulcimers.
Like McT (how did the warbling go? You may be giving the old Carousel number quite a few airings come May if things continue the way they are), I thought STAKE was especially neat?
The trouble with the end of the season is that the minnows bite back, as Man City just saw. And there’s also the fact that (though it hurts to say it) Chelsea are not a bad side at all.
Edited at 2014-04-17 04:30 am (UTC)
As to REDCOATS, according to Wikipedia the British army last fought in red coats at the battle of Gennis (Sudan) in 1885. The OED gives the first literary reference to TOMMY in 1884 (Kipling). According to Wikpipedia the use of “Tommy Atkins” dates from mid-18C, although it is not clear on the earliest use of just TOMMY.
Edited at 2014-04-17 04:24 am (UTC)
An exercise for sceptical solvers: if you find a clue weak, write down the answer two weeks ahead in your diary. Then clue it yourself. Then go back and compare yours with the original for accuracy and aesthetic value.
I can’t say I paid much attention to the surface readings on this one – I tend to avoid doing so – but my heart sank when I saw so many words on the page and I’m hoping for succinctness in tomorrow’s puzzle.
(Jim will hate this comment!)
Edited at 2014-04-17 05:33 am (UTC)
I couldn’t parse 16d, so thank you Z8 for untangling that bit of mathematical mischief.
My unknowns/forgottens were AXILLAE and MAJOLICA. Thanks setter for the “say” in 28A and the devious “sixteen” in 16D
I think the first plans for the CHUNNEL were drawn up in the 1800s and I’m sure building it was used in the Paris Peace conference after WW1 as a means of trying to convince the French that we Brits would always be around to help them out. (How many Frenchmen are needed to defend Paris – nobody knows as they’ve never managed to do it!)
For a moment there I thought you had quite ruined Z8’s day!
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/zither-man/qu ery/anton+karas
I got a smile out of the sixteen farmers clue, once I figured out how it works.
Thank you blogger and setter.
Nairobi Wallah
Nairobi Wallah
Nah, not so good for me at all today…
After coming back to it (again and again), I still had gaps at DULCIMER (unknown/unfamiliar) and STAKE. I also had ‘disciplines’ which gave the unlikely ‘fire skill’.
Needed the blog to understand SCORNFUL. Too clever for me…
A couple of wing-and-prayer jobs with AXILLAE and MAJOLICA but the wordplay couldn’t have been clearer.
As so often a little ignorance can be a good thing: I knew the word DULCIMER but had no idea what one might or might not be hit with, so it didn’t cause me a problem.
Just over the hour which is good for me!
For some reason, stared at a blank grid for some time, not quite believing that the four short ones were so straightforward. Held up a bit, as tried to parse “disinclined” instead of DISCIPLINED. FOI DIS, then DOC, etc … LOI DULCIMER.
COD for DULCIMER, for reminding me of damsels, and caverns measureless to man, and pleasure domes, and sacred rivers … Happy Days!
I think I’ll have an early night.
Kipling’s poem “Tommy” in Barrack-Room Ballads does indeed use ‘redcoat’ and ‘Tommy’ within a few lines of each other.