Having said last time that I was on a long streak of decent, straight down the middle Jumbos, this was noticeably more difficult than that, without being a real beast. I should also add it was certainly better than average in quality, particularly in the well-crafted and occasionally deceptive surfaces.
With Jumbos, which attract a far smaller audience than daily puzzles, I generally confine myself to discussion of answers which I think are a) less straightforward for inexperienced or non-UK based solvers, or b) especially elegant / questionable. In other words, unless it’s an exceptionally interesting puzzle, the coverage is unlikely to be 100%; however, as always, if a particular clue is not discussed, please feel free to raise it in comments for explanation or discussion.
Across | |
---|---|
1 |
HAPHAZARD – |
12 |
VAGRANT – V |
13 | GOSPELLER – SPELL in GOER. Monty Python rolled out all the classics last night, including Eric Idle asking “Your wife…is she a goer?” |
16 |
RELATIONSHIP – ELATION in R |
17 |
TAXI DRIVER – T |
19 | HIGH COMMISSION – Commonwealth members have a High Commission in London rather than an embassy. |
22 |
EGOMANIA – E |
25 |
DUPLICATOR – (AL |
26 | NITRE – reverse hidden, divERTINg. A perfect example of the surface leading you away from the right sort of “slow match“. |
29 |
WHEW – HE(man) in W |
34 |
FORESIGHT – R |
35 |
SPENCERS – PENCE, R |
40 | RENDEZVOUS – [Z ED.]rev. in (NERVOUS)*. The unknown is almost always x, y or z. When it’s not n. Or another letter. |
42 | BEHIND – EH(“what?”) in a BIND. |
44 |
BEDSTRAW – BEDS, T |
49 | ALPHABET SOUP – cryptic def. Soup containing alphabet-shaped pasta so kids can learn literacy skills while eating healthily; see also alphabetti spaghetti, which I remember from childhood. |
53 |
SLIGO – (GI |
54 |
ASPARAGUS – PARAGU |
55 | OUTSIZE – OUT(impossible), “SIGHS”. I always love a self-referential surface, even if this Jumbo was merely quite tough, not impossible. |
Down | |
1 |
HEGEL – G |
2 | PLASTICITY – [LAST in PI], CITY. City is almost a generic term for a football team…City, United, Rovers etc. |
3 |
ARTFORMS – FORM in |
4 | AEGIS – G.I. in (SEA)rev. Familiar to all classicists and long-tern cryptic solvers. |
7 | I’LL SAY – ILL(=badly) is indistinguishable from I’LL if you ignore the apostrophe, which crosswords always do. |
8 | CARRIAGE RETURN – CARRIAGE(coach), RETURN(bend); now usually just called the RETURN key, of course, because most keyboards aren’t actually typewriters, so don’t actually have a carriage. |
20 |
GOLDENROD – [OLDEN R |
23 | STRIP CLUBS – STRIP(what footballer wears), CLUBS(suit of cards); this sounds very much appropriate for your modern footballer. |
27 | TOSCANINI – TOSCA(the musical work), In inside N.I., i.e. Northern Ireland. The TOSCA/TOSCANINI relationship is an old friend to setters. |
31 | ANSWERED – (N,S,W,E) inside A RED. I don’t normally like the “take some compass points” clues, but this is a neat – and precise – twist on that device. |
33 | OSTENTATIOUS – (TITUSOATESNO)*. Again a beautifully crafted surface meaning which has no connection with the cryptic answer. |
34 |
FIREBRATS – [B |
37 | RED SNAPPER – gReEkDiSh + NAPPER. |
41 | VERY LIGHT – using the wordplay inherent in the flare gun invented by Mr Very. |
43 | ONE BY ONE – more whimsy, based on Her Maj’s habit of referring to herself via the impersonal pronoun. It has, of course, being suggested that if she followed the modern practice of photographing herself with her phone, such a picture would be a “onesie”. |
45 | DEICIDE – 1 in DECIDE(=”judge”); originally, Juggernaut was one of the names given to Krishna in Sanskrit, so his destruction would be deicide. The modern sense comes about from the huge wagon carrying an image of the god which was liable to crush the unwary under its wheels at festivals. |
50 |
HOSEA – |
52 |
BRIG – B |
I can’t remember much about this but I did it it all correct in 36m, which suggests something only a wee bit trickier than average. Mind you I have an all correct submission but I’m not on the leaderboard, which suggests I must have cheated for something. I can’t for the life of me remember what.
C.ONG’ARA,
NAIROBI.