ST 4336 (Sun 5 Jul) – Ashes to Ashes

Author   talbinhoPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Solving time: 5:16

Like England’s bowling, this was not too challenging with lots of easy ones to get you going and nothing likely to catch you out. The clues were generally good though.

* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.

Across
1 ISLE (cryptic definition)
3 TRAMPOLINE; (IN LATE ROMP)*
10 FOREST + ALL
11 NI(E)CE
12 LEDGE[r]
13 INTERNAL; A L following “IN TURN”
15 IDOLISE; I.E. + (SOLID)* – ‘on’ in the sense of ‘being worn by’. I originally had ‘idolons’ (an anagram of ‘on solid’) in here.
17 ARUNDEL; (RULE DAN)* – known to me via the cricket ground where Sussex occasionally play. I’ve just noticed that this is an anagram of ‘a nurdle’, Paul Collingwood’s favourite shot.
19 LAID LOW; (I’D ALLOW)*
21 UNHORSE; U.N. (= ‘international organisation’) + HORSE (= ‘Arab’) – ‘Arab’ really requires some kind of indicator that this is ‘definition by example’.
22 DIS + LODGE – ‘Infernal’ because Dis was the Greek underworld.
24 [t]ERROR
27 PIANO (cryptic definition)
28 EXEGETIST; EXE + (GETS IT)* – from ‘exegesis’. I stared at this for a while before convincing myself that it was right.
29 CLEVERNESS – I think the breakdown here is just ‘clever’ (= ‘smart’) + NESS (= ‘point’), which apart from the double meaning of ‘point’ is hardly a breakdown at all.
30 UNDO (hidden)

Down
1 INFALLIBLE; IN, + rev. of ILL in FABLE
2 LURID; [s]LU[m] + RID
4 REALISE; (LIES ARE)*
5 MILITIA; (A LIMIT I)*
6 OWNER; (NEW)* in OR
7 ICELANDER; “I SLANDER” – nice homophone.
8 EVEN[t]
9 ESPECIAL; (SPICE ALE)*
14 ALL + EGRET + TO – a musical term for ‘quite fast’.
16 OR(I + GIN)ATE
18 UNHEEDED; (HE ENDED U[p])*
20 WIDGEON; (DOING WE)* – a naughty hyphenation (‘For wrong-doing,…’) which I suppose the excalamation mark is a flimsy attempt to justify.
21 USE LESS
23 LOOSE; (SOLO)* + [grav]E
25 RE[s]IGN
26 EPIC (hidden)

2 comments on “ST 4336 (Sun 5 Jul) – Ashes to Ashes”

  1. In today’s ST cryptic, 8dn is (4,2,4,3) and not as stated. Also, it would appear that 14ac should read “Wild boar blocking friend by a curved path”
  2. I found this quite difficult and took 50 minutes to solve it. Today’s ST also gave me loads of problems.

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