Solving Time: 22 minutes; about average difficulty. Some very neat clues though I thought, and no real quibbles. Apologies if the blog is a little sketchy; I’m off on an early ferry to France today and need my beauty sleep.
cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”
ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online
|
Across |
|
|---|---|
| 1 |
aspires – when = AS + religious right = PI R + E( |
| 5 | arcadia – CAD in ARIA. Arcadia is where the god Pan lived.. also a city on the planet Gallifrey |
| 9 | transport – rolled = RAN + S + P in TORT, a civil wrong |
| 10 | Nepal – NE + PAL. It is Cockney rhyming slang: China plate = mate |
| 11 | Heath Robinson – HEATH + ROBIN + SO + N. I confess I wrote this in without parsing it properly. The US equivalent would be Rube Goldberg.. |
| 13 | heraldry – *(LYRE HARD) |
| 15 |
pistol – IST + O in PL( |
| 17 | no-side – EDISON, rev. |
| 19 | declares – E + CLARE in policeman = Det. Sgt = DS |
| 22 | meals on wheels – *(ONE MASHES WELL). A worldwide 12dn, originated in London by the WRVS during WWII |
| 25 | nitro – yellow = gold = OR + TIN, all rev. |
| 26 | paralytic – dd. |
| 27 |
nursery – accountant = ( |
| 28 |
earnest – A( |
|
Down |
|
| 1 | ante – ETNA rev. Etna is a decade volcano and very active |
| 2 | poacher – work = OP rev., + ACHER, a longer. The clever def. being “One at the game” |
| 3 | Rasta – god’s = RA’S TA, the Territorial Army volunteer force |
| 4 |
smothers – M( |
| 5 |
author – H( |
| 6 | convivial – N + VI + VI + A in pass = COL. And another.. |
| 7 | deposit – IS rev. in DEPOT |
| 8 | at long last – a dd I suppose, one jocular |
| 12 | phenomenon – PO MEN + performing = ON, containing women = HEN. Hen rather than hens can be justified, as in a hen party perhaps. |
| 14 |
lodestone – see = LO, + good chap = ST + O( |
| 16 | sea horse – visit bay, sounds like “SEE HORSE.” The enumerations should surely be (8) rather than (3,5) Seahorses are amazing creatures, truly remarkable in many ways, their sex life not the least. |
| 18 |
shatter – ( |
| 20 | rosette – entrenched = SET, in ROTE |
| 21 | snappy – doze off = NAP, in SPY |
| 23 | Euler – the French = LE in RUE rev. Clever clue indeed for a clever man, a great and prolific mathematician. |
| 24 |
Scot – C( |
It’s a good thing I had seen ‘Heath Robinson’ before, but nothing else was particularly esoteric. I was amused by the idea of the cobbler crafting a size 17 by hand.
SEA HORSE is two words in Collins and the Oxfords. On earnest/firm I thought one might make an earnest or firm commitment to something or other.
Collins,
Concise Oxford,
Shorter Oxford(two volume):
“sea horse” only
Oxford Dictionary of English (as used by Susie Dent on Countdown),
Chambers:
“seahorse” only
Dictionary.com has both, with “seahorse” as the entry heading but “sea horse” as the first listing and “seahorse” as an alternative.
The only place I have seen it with a hyphen is Dr Annandale’s Concise English Dictionary in an edition published pre-WWII.
Edited at 2014-04-02 06:10 am (UTC)
More interestingly it can mean variously the walrus, the narwhal, a fabulous marine animal, a sea-horse (hippocampus), a flying fish, a hippopotamus, or a white-crested wave.
But it must have been the first ever cryptic I did that had a cobbler AT LAST.
Probably in the Liverpool Echo and clued by Trevor Salisbury, a drinking mate of my Old Dad.
‘John Griffiths, a rugby union historian, states that “when a breakdown in play occurred in the early days of the game it was common for players to ask which side would have possession to restart the game. If the match umpire (later referee) answered ‘no side’, it denoted that time was up.” The expression has been used officially in previous editions of the Laws of the Game, for example during the 1880s.
No side has been superseded in popular usage by the term full time.’
Surely ‘without’ is sufficient as insertion indicator and ’rounds’ doesn’t add anything to the surface reading. It would appear to suggest a reversal which as far as I can tell doesn’t apply.
CoD to the cobbler, with a mention for the definition for heraldry.
I held myself up by unaccountably having HEATH ROBONSON, which made that N66 business in 6d completely opaque
I was so relieved to be able to correct PHENOMENAL I didn’t notice what may be an error in the clue (Jason thinks so, so it must be true) which works better as “without men”
CONVIVIAL is brilliant, as is PISTOL. And I do like “One at the game” for POACHER.
Thank you, setter. Bon voyage, Jerry.
I agree that this was a very enjoyable with plenty of top quality cluing and a few cunning and/or amusing definitions thrown in to boot, all of which have been mentioned above.
Spent some time failing to sort out 12 before entering it and am reassured by the comments above that it wasn’t just my problem.
For what it’s worth, I thought the puzzle had a good mixture of clues with a range of different types including some easy ones to “let the dog see the rabbit” and a few that required careful unpicking.
Particularly liked convivial (I even pointed this one out to my wife who whilst she ‘can’t see the point’ of this delightful indulgence actually rather warmed to this clue).
1ac: how does “religious” give PI? No idea how we morph from a mathematical thing to a religion!
9ac: Utterly baffled by this. Get the S and P and TORT, and vaguely see how “rolled” might give RAN (would I be on the right track with rolling an old style film tape to “run” the film?”) but can see no overall indicator / definition pointing to TRANSPORT as the answer.
In crosswordland, pi = pious = religious. Just the way it is. In 9ac, transport = entrance (ie transport of delight; I was entranced by that music etc. Hope this helps!
And then we have transport, not in this case London (though see below) tubes and buses, but ecstasy or rapture.
Flanders and Swann delightfully used transport in both senses in describing the London Bus as a “transport of delight”, referencing a metrical version of the 23rd Psalm, viz: “Oh what transport of delight from thy pure chalice floweth”. Couldn’t do it today and expect to get anything other than a bewildered response.
Re. transports of delight, now get it – thanks tringmardo. Shades of Spike Milligan then!
A very enjoyable crossword with some very nice surface readings.
CoD without doubt CONVIVIAL, which pretty much sums up how to throw a solver off the scent, plus POACHER and the cobbler joke.
More of same please! Great blog too from Jerry.
Chris.
Edited at 2014-04-02 01:00 pm (UTC)
Nairobi Wallah
Also couldn’t parse ASPIRES, so thanks for working that one out.
FOI Nepal, LOI Poacher (loved that def).
Also liked the def of ‘hatter’.
Good to see one of the greatest mathematicians ever (Leonhard Euler) appearing.
About 40min for me, helped somewhat by having the right clues printed in the right place!
COD for me was TRANSPORT, if only for the misdirection (the clue itself was a little clunky, I thought), closely followed by CONVIVIAL. Failed to fully parse LODESTONE, and does it really mean a focus of attention? I suppose it’s magnetic, which amounts to the same thing, in a way.
Three cheers for EULER. I hope we will soon be given others (such as Ramanujan).
Liked CONVIVIAL and POACHER, my joint CODs. FOI NEPAL, LOI ROSETTE. Nice anagram of MEALS ON WHEELS – wanted to put in “beans on” something for ages. Wrong fodder/anagrind. Some nice misleading surfaces and less than obvious definitions.
No problem with PHENOMENON: PO MEN, performing=ON, the whole “rounds” =surrounds “without men”=HEN (a “without men” party = a HEN party).
Edited at 2014-04-02 10:32 pm (UTC)
I can’t decide whether 12dn is correct or not and without input from the setter or editor we may never know. Technically it *does* work as it is, as parsed in the blog, with the containment indicator being “rounds without” as in “The gamekeeper waits without, m’lord..” ie without means outside. But using two words seems a tad clunky and I do feel that changing women to men improves the clue somewhat.