Solving time: 1hr 40m – so quite hard, especially the last few clues..
Another high class offering that I can’t find anything to quibble about, though I do have two clues I am not clever enough to understand (7dn, 16dn). 15 words I hadn’t come across before, versus 13 I had. And a couple of them so bizarre that I would not have believed they existed at all, were it not for the evidence of my trusty Chambers.
I solved the top half in reasonably good order, but struggled somewhat with the lower end and in particular the SE.. last in were 25ac and 27ac.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | stishovite – ITS rev + barge = SHOVE containing IT |
| 6 | scum – S(C)UM |
| 9 | forethinks – (FRESH KIT ON)* |
| 10 | fuzz – Dble def., not hard but a nice surface |
| 12 | drongo cuckoo – DOG* containing R + ON, + barking (mad) = CUCKOO, to make a rather dull looking bird that is not, as I naively thought Australian, but Asian. |
| 15 | pokeberry – jab = POKE + “bury” = BERRY, an American plant with various uses. The OED defines pokeberry as: “the berry of pokeweed, which yields a red dye; the plant itself.” But the accompanying quotations imply that the berries have laxative properties. They are also toxic, which is a bit confusing.. “ |
| 17 |
karri – K |
| 18 |
rusma – |
| 19 | dryasdust – (sad, sturdy)*. Originally, a fictional character invented by Sir Walter Scott. |
| 20 | twitter boned – the wordplay here took me a while to work out. It is “yak nervously” = TWITTER with earth = DEN and dead = OB, both rev., to make one of the various ghastly ailments that horses are prone to and that make them such an expensive proposition, unless you happen to be a farm-owning vet |
| 24 | unix – today’s obligatory science content, a word familiar to anyone with any IT history: U, meaning not PG or cert.18, + NIX = zip, for our American cousins anyway. Unix is an operating system with an interesting history |
| 25 | dukkeripen – DUKE containing king = K, + mellow = RIPEN. One of my last two in, not so much because the wordplay is hard, as because I simply refused to believe that such a daft word existed. But it does, courtesy of the Romany. |
| 26 | keno – compass = KEN (as in “beyond our..”) + O which we shall pretend is a circle for present purposes. Though it isn’t, not on my computer, anyway. Keno is a game “akin to bingo” though seemingly much more complex |
| 27 | sea surgeon – SEA S(URGE)ON. Clever, difficult to spot without crossing letters. |
| Down | |
| 1 | sift – “Sphinx the first” = S + provided = IF + T to make sift, or riddle |
| 2 | inro – Fleet = RN + “foot of samurai” = I, rev., + O. Inro |
| 3 | heteroblasty – (in brothel as yet).* Not a familiar word, but guessable and one of the early ones in. |
| 4 |
v-sign – |
| 5 | teknonymy – (toy monkey),* having first exchanged one of the Os for an N, producing a handy way to refer to, for example, Dan’s mum. Teknon is Greek for child. The word is in Chambers but is cunningly hidden in the OED under “tecno-“ |
| 7 | chucker-out – I can’t seem to quite parse this one.. “chuck ER out” would seem to be an anti-royalist chant producing a bouncer or chucker-out, but why the Charles? ..because, it seems, Charles = CHUCK (I knew that!) and the chant is just “ER out.” Thanks Aloo2 |
| 8 | mezzotinto – M(EZZ)OT + keen on = INTO, to make mezzotinto, a printing process more usually called a mezzotint |
| 11 | bunko steerer – ”trap on course” = BUNKER, containing OST + EER (= ‘eer = ever), to make another half-familiar word. I would have said bunco was more common than bunko, but either way this should not be a hard clue to solve once trap on course = bunker occurs to you. |
| 13 | spirit duck – no relative of the Toilet Duck.. Chambers says: “Spirit Duck – another name for the Bufflehead, from its rapid diving.” As if one were needed. Really just a simple cryptic def., but set out to confuse. |
| 14 |
ekistician – (CITIES IN A |
| 16 | red grouse – R + EDGE containing R + OUS, but once again I am in doubt here.. how to derive the OUS? Oxford University Salsa team, perhaps? – not too hard, as it turns out.. OU’S = “Varsity team’s,” as vinyl1 points out, I simply overlooked the apostrophe. what a bufflehead! |
| 21 | onkus – O (N) K + US, to make an Oz word meaning disorganised.. |
| 22 |
apse – |
| 23 |
anan – |
Not getting ‘Unix’ was especially embarrassing, knowledge of Unix is how I earn my living. And I did correctly interpret the literal of ‘dukkeripen’, although I was nowhere near the word. I had put ‘bottle neck’ for 13, then erased it, was suspecting some kind of duck.
As for ‘red grouse’, Varsity team’s = OU’s, the apostrophe ess is part of the cryptic.
Still perplexed by “team” in 16dn.
Like others I don’t quite see OU’s = “(varsity) team’s” in 16D
An excellent puzzle. I do look forward to these monthly club offerings.
a. [Of unknown origin.] Disagreeable, distasteful; disordered.
1918 G.C. Cooper Diary 17 Nov., Felt pretty ‘onkus’ in consequence of a fall I had on deck the previous night. 1962 D. McLean World turned upside Down 121 All this yabber about Danny is onkus.
So it’s not exactly something you drop into everday conversation. For future reference, it’s followed by “ooah” (a variant of “Yohi”) and “Oodnagalahbi”!