Solving time : 12:44
A very enjoyable puzzle with lots of fun clues and smooth surfaces. And there were a couple I felt smug about getting quickly. Overall I was feeling reasonably pleased when I thought I was heading for a time that might be just under 10 minutes.
And then I came to 10A. I went through the alphabet and worked out that I did not know any words that fitted (except Donna, which made no sense). I eventually put in DONGA, which turned out to be right; but it meant nothing to me and felt like a pretty shaky guess at the time.
Across
| 1 | PAST PARTICIPLES – very neat. I knew I was looking for some sort of trick (beyond the usual crosswording tricks), but I still needed a few crossing letters before I spotted it |
| 10 | DON + GA(me) – Never having heard of the answer didn’t help. Otherwise I can’t entirely explain why this took me so long once there were only two letters to fill in. Perhaps because I was unnecessarily worried that “fellow” could be being used to indicate any name (as “man” indicates “Reg” in 18A); and “spending” for “dispensing with” was less than transparent. |
| 11 | HARE (=run) + MS – “Modern Miss” for “Ms” is irritatingly clever |
| 12 | MACARONI – two meanings neatly combined: a food that might be part of a beano; and a dandy. For some reason I knew this second meaning. Chambers defines it rather oddly as “in the 18c, a dandy” – does that mean that the word was only current in the 18th century? Or that people use the word now, but only in relation to a particular band of historical dandies? |
| 13 | R(UN) OUT |
| 19 | US(UnpopulaR)ER |
| 21 | ARTIC + LED |
| 23 | (g)AMBLER – I now feel misled when “better” does not refer to gambling |
| 26 | (s)IMPLY |
| 27 | A (BAND ONE) D, with “backing” telling you that ONE follows BAND (=group). These last five clues have fairly normal words and approaches, but they have all been managed into surprisingly convincing surfaces |
| 28 | MUTATIS MUTANDIS – (MAN’S AUDIT IT MUST)* – Having failed to crack the 15-lettered 1A on the first run, I was pleased to find this blatant anagram for the other long one |
Down
| 2 | S(h)OWER |
| 4 | (b)RUIN |
| 5 | INGR(A(r)T)ES – I think Flann O’Brien was the first to make the “more in Seurat than in Ingres” joke, which I confess is the only thing I associate with this painter. |
| 6 | IN + AID(rev) |
| 7 | LAN(DOWN)E + R |
| 8 | SP(A N(ame))IEL |
| 14 | NIGHTSPOT (=”Knight’s pot”) – that’s another run of excellent surfaces |
| 16 | MASS MEDIA, being (A MISS MADE)* – “to look special” seems a bit of a stretch for an anagram indicator |
| 17 | MENE + LAUS, being the first word of the writing on the wall, followed by SAUL* |
| 18 | REA (L + IS) M |
| 20 | R(ER)ED + OS – I first met the words reredos and rood-screen in crosswords (perhaps originally in the same clue?). I visited Albi earlier this month and now know that the reredos can be what is on the back surface of the rood-screen |
| 22 | CRY + P(or)T |
| 24 | L(IN)ED |
| 25 | T(A B)U – Is it daring to have the break between wordplay and linking words in the middle of “you’ll”? |
I did pretty well with this one, clocking 6:55. It should have been a tad quicker, as I initially went for a careless ‘tramline’ at 15. 10A is a good warm-up for the real thing – an obscure word where you just have to trust the wordplay.