If you’ve hit any brick walls anywhere, this is how it all works. If you haven’t, just go straight to the comments and complain about how easy the Times is getting, or how uneven the difficulty levels are becoming what with the swine yesterday.
Across
1 PALPABLY Your two friends are both PALs, and one of them cuddles a B(achelor) before picking up the end of a
(part)Y. Touching stuff.
6 RAGGED Double definition time, with a touch of a pronunciation test to throw the foreigners. Worn clothes are
“ragg’id”, made fun of “ragd”
9 STIR One of the many slang terms for prison, where you stir your porridge with a circular motion.
10 XENOPHOBES A quite delightful anagram made easy if you’ve got the X to start with. From the Greek ξενός strange or
foreign and φοβος fear.
11 POTTERS BAR Whence I recently journeyed to York behind A4 Pacific “Sir Nigel Gresley”. A town once in Middlesex, now
in Hertfordshire, famous for being on exit 24 of the M25 and host to the original Great North Road. Clarinettist Acker Bilk
is a part time resident. Potters Bar has also hosted two notorious crashes: a Zeppelin in 1916 and a train in 2002. Oh yes,
the wordplay. (Harry) Potter is the wizard, wand the (mildly misleading) bar.
13 GOYA GOA the Indian state, Y the unknown entry for the celebrated Spanish painter now apparently part of our shared
European heritage.
14 MISNOMER A chap who’s mean is a MISER, Pierre being French is a NOM
16 SNAPPY as in dresser, S(mall) NAPPY, necessity for the messy end of an infant. Believe me.
18 VERTEX Take the ends off VER(y) and TEX(t) for the pointy bit of a triangle, among other things
20 INDUSTRY Effort gives you TRY, place it east of the River INDUS and you have what might possibly also be a business
22 SAGA C(arbon) (mon)O(xide) is A GAS. Reverse it for a short word for a long story
24 MARATHONER. Nothing to so with Sigismund lll, whose column graces Warsaw. Our long run competitor is constituted
from MARAT, the quintessential French revolutionary (not Che, hooray!) and HONE for polish (had it yesterday). R(ex)
for King at the end.
26 BALL-PLAYER who might be skilled at soccer, made up of an anagram of BARELY containing ALL and P(ressure)
28 IDES Most famously the 15th March (“infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!”) That is, also in Latin, is ID EST, knock
off the T. Did the Romans pronounce it EEDEZ?
29 STURDY Robust the definition, investigation gives STUDY, R(ing)’s leader provides the inserted letter.
30 WOODSHED Post solve, Chambers informs me that this is a both a verb and a setting for “practice intensely and
privately”. (orig. US). Sir Henry WOOD, of Proms fame, is the conductor, Female had provides SHE’D. Took me 20%
of my solving time.
Down
2 AUTHORISE An original version of THOREAU containing IS to give a verb version of okay.
3 PURITAN An oblique reference to Potters Bar in the cluing? Anagram of UP TRAIN for our traveller on the strait and
narrow path
4 BOXER Fighter the definition, cross X carried by BOER. In Britain, we are conscious that there are very few peoples on
the planet who have not at some time been our enemies. Johannes Boer is just one. Johnny BOXER was another, in
China, though strictly that’s irrelevant to the clue
5 YEN A geisha’s small change is, of course the ¥, which is also a synonym of desire.
6 REPHRASED Three steps to heaven. REP theatre, H(ospital) RASED demolished. Gives you “in other words”
7 GEORGIA Two states and a woman. USSR? I think not, in fact definitely not now. Even if Stalin called it home.
8 ENEMY Today’s hidden (and reversed) unfriendlY MEN Evidently
12 BARRIER Dam the definition. Our dramatic writer is J M BARRIE (Peter Pan and all that) taking position over R(iver)
15 MAXIMALLY Whimsically, the gunman is Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, inventor of the machine gun that bears his name, dam’
useful against all those foreigners (see above). An associate is an ALLY, Concatenation gives “as much as possible”
17 PERSEVERE “Continue” constructed from PER SE, Latin for as such, with EVER (as always) chucked in just before the end
19 TRAILER Two definitions, the latter an ad for a forthcoming movie or such
21 STORIES “Accounts” made up by S(ingular) TORIES. Right minded people. It’s a play on words, not necessarily a
description of political probity
23 AVAST Break up the clue as “At sea, stop” which is what avast really means, and S(on) getting into A VAT. That sort of
vessel.
25 TORSO T(emperature) together with OR SO, as in this puzzle took me 10 minutes or so.
27 YAW Can certainly mean what it says in the clue. WAY for “route” heads north, for which read “goes in reversed”.
I suspect this may not be so easy for beginners, we always gloss over the routine clues that are new to them. The ‘torso’ and ‘industry’ clues, the use of ‘Marat’, and the ‘saga’ trick are all old friends.
Other words not familiar with: AVAST, Sir MAXIM
Great anagram at 10ac.
My COD was 9ac; I’m a sucker for double definitions.
Not sure about ‘wand’ = BAR because of the shapes I have in mind which don’t match, but my thesaurus has BAR = ‘stick, rod’ so I guess it’s okay.
z8 — am I allowed to complain about having nothing to complain about?
* while eating branflakes
Edited at 2014-05-01 08:08 am (UTC)
Where’s the “Like” button?
Edited at 2014-05-01 09:49 am (UTC)
But, for me far and away the best thing arising out of this is to learn from z8’s fine blog that Acker Bilk is still with us! Remarkable and wonderful news. If he is only living part time in PB, I can only assume (and hope) that he is spending the rest of his time in Zummerzet… complete with waistcoat and bowler hat. Top man.
Mention of woodsheds brings the wonderful novel Cold Comfort Farm irresistably to mind
No problem with WOODSHED, a word I think I may have first come across with that meaning in an article in The Times! (Cold Comfort Farm is one of my absolutely favourite novels, so I wouldn’t have minded a reference to that either.)
A pleasant straightforward solve.
Edited at 2014-05-01 10:25 pm (UTC)