I thought I was doing well to get in just under 20 minutes, though I started in rather desultory fashion and spent too long dithering over the emperor, or possibly antique dominion at 5d. Apart from that clue, there wasn’t anything particularly obscure, or at least not to Times readers versed in cricket lore and Gilbert and Sullivan.
And since this is the point at which I complete the blog, I can report that “it doesn’t seem to be”.
Definitions underlined in italics, letters to be excluded are in [square brackets]
| Across | |
| 1 | Angry Sri Lankan POW’s cynical notion of work (10,3) |
| PARKINSONS LAW – “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. An anagram, with angry the slightly unusual indicator, of SRI LANKAN POW’S. I’ll let you know if it’s true once I’ve finished the blog. | |
| 8 | Doughty at heart, fondle ferret (4) |
| GRUB – The middle of douGhty plus RUB for fondle. Ferret as the verb to rummage around. | |
| 9 | Report on particular fielder (5,5) |
| COVER POINT – If you report on a particular issue, you COVER the POINT. Such a fielder stands on the cricket field around 10-15 yards to the left and a little forward of a right-handed batsmen in a vain attempt to stop cover drives. | |
| 10 | Complex flavonoid initially lacking in curry (8) |
| VINDALOO – An anagram (complex) of FLAVANOID without its initial F. | |
| 11 | Glimpse one impersonating copper (6) |
| APERÇU – One impersonating is the (rather ugly) APER, and copper Cu/U. | |
| 13 | Writer’s gripped by odd sound (10) |
| UNIMPAIRED – Setter’s self referential I’M contained by UNPAIRED, as in an odd sock. | |
| 16 | Smart set regularly wasted stuff (4) |
| SATE – Odd letters of SmArT sEt. Stuff as in eat to capacity. | |
| 17 | Express contentment, parking posh luxury car (4) |
| PURR – P[arking], U for the Mitford posh, RR for a Rolls Royce. | |
| 18 | Ribaldry and ebullience when Henry moves (10) |
| EARTHINESS – HEARTINESS would be ebullience, move the H[enry] to where it fits. | |
| 20 | Look after a fine female pigeon (6) |
| AFFAIR – Look is (an) AIR, set after A F[ine] F[emale]. Via pidgin, a corruption of the Chinese word for business, pigeon is one’s affair or concern. | |
| 22 | Swift perhaps to pursue boy with unknown bug (8) |
| LADYBIRD – The maybe swift is just a BIRD, placed after LAD for boy and Y for unknown. | |
| 24 | Patience maybe of one manager overwhelmed by stupor (5,5) |
| COMIC OPERA – Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride, is a Gilbert and Sullivan spoof on the arty elite of the time. Here it’s I COPER, one manager, enclosed in a COMA or stupor. | |
| 26 | Low-down half-wit (4) |
| DOPE – A double definition. | |
| 27 | Re-enacted racy plays in support facility (3-4,6) |
| DAY-CARE CENTRE – An anagram (plays) of RE-ENACTED RACY. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Pal refusing to swim in Asian sea (7,4) |
| PERSIAN GULF – Not quite as far east as I was expecting, but an anagram (to swim) of PAL REFUSING | |
| 2 | Mad boozer keels over unconscious (5) |
| RABID – A boozer is a BAR that in this case is overturned, and then you have the unconscious source of all our baser drives, the ID. | |
| 3 | Clean it up, shifting blame (9) |
| INCULPATE – An anagram (shifting) of CLEAN IT UP. | |
| 4 | Deliverer of bouquet nicking half of it (7) |
| SAVIOUR – A Slightly easier clue, I think, than we had on Monday. Bouquet is SAVOUR, insert half of IT (I’ll let you work out which half). | |
| 5 | Emperor in tears, intermittently missing Old Dominion (5) |
| NERVA – September 96 to January 98 following the assassination of Domitian. The odd (even) letters of iN tEaRs and VA from Virginia, known as the Old Dominion, if not by me. | |
| 6 | People watching lovely boy (7-2) |
| LOOKERS-ON – Someone who is lovely is a LOOKER, if not necessarily a SON or boy. | |
| 7 | Briefly crave pasty (3) |
| WAN – That pronunciation of pasty. It’s WANT, craved, with its last letter scrubbed. | |
| 12 | Tragedy of feline pet throttled by alpha male (11) |
| CATASTROPHE – OK. So it’s feline: CAT and then pet: STROP enclosed in A from alpha and HE from male. | |
| 14 | Death of ethics over time (9) |
| MORTALITY – Over is the oddish containment indicator, putting T[ime] in MORALITY for ethics. | |
| 15 | Dry and extremely delicate late husband cocked up on drug (9) |
| DEHYDRATE – The outer letters of D[elicate] followed by TARDY (late) H[usband] reversed (cocked up) and the the drug E. | |
| 19 | Mostly depended on village’s banks for aid (7) |
| RELIEVE – Depended on gives RELIED, from which you detach the last letter. The “banks” of V[illag]E complete. | |
| 21 | Port and fine German wine (5) |
| RIOJA – The port is the ever useful RIO, and JA what a German might say to me that’s fine. | |
| 23 | Try and empty elegant basin (5) |
| BIDET – Try is BID, and if you empty E[legan]T you create the porcelain. | |
| 25 | Random piece of period drama (3) |
| ODD – At last, today’s hidden, in periOD Drama | |
Bunged in Nerva without trying to justify va, as I’m currently reading Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome. Apercu came from some dim recess of memory. Otherwise a good workout, thanks as ever. .