Solving Time: Just under an hour in two sessions so a touch easier, for me at least, than last month’s. The Crossword Club’s statistics bear this out, with (at the time of writing) 55 correct solutions submitted, 9 of them in less than an hour.. the fastest in 9m25s! I can’t imagine doing it so quickly myself, or even wanting to.. this is a crossword where each clue should be savoured..
| Across |
| 1 |
voulge – DIV(O)ULGE |
| 4 |
jatropha – German agreement = JA containing ATROPHY
|
| 9 |
labarum – BA contained in MURAL rev. |
| 11 |
twitten – double = TWIN containing “Man races” = TT + E |
| 12 |
zoril – L + IR + OZ, all rev. |
| 13 |
sassafras – American’s impertinence = SASS + when = AS containing FRA which Chambers defines as “brother or friar.” |
| 14 |
unsympathy – (HYMN SAY PUT)* |
| 16 |
choc – sounds like chock.. |
| 19 |
zeal – all becomes clear once you discover that Aotearoa is a Maori word for New ZEALand |
| 20 |
isodynamic – I + C, added to MANY + DOS + I all rev. Dos here is the plural of a do, as in “Went to a do at the conservative club last night.” |
| 22 |
gravamina – (MAN + VIAGRA)* |
| 23 |
ovolo – see = V (for Vatican) + line = L, interleaved with Os. See = V = Vatican was used in last months Club Monthly too, so hopefully we all remembered that.. |
| 25 |
plateau – eating utensils = PLATE + AU. Note that plate is a plural here – as in “he had a lot of silver plate” |
| 26 |
ex animo – OM + IN + AXE, all rev. This clue uses a novel reversal indicator, “echoed.” Echoes are sounds that bounce back, so I guess it is a correct usage, and the resulting surface is slick, but I still have a niggling doubt that the clue quite works, clever though it is. Others no doubt may differ |
| 27 |
daidzein – DIN containing ADZE containing I = Iodine |
| 28 |
aching – A + CHING. My last in, not because the clue is hard but because a little research was needed as ch’ing = “of the Manchu dynasty” is not in Chambers, and nor is wikipedia’s preferred spelling, Qing. It is however in the OED, and the Oxford Dictionary Online. |
| Down |
| 1 |
velazquez – a velum is a soft palate, it seems, pl. VELA, + Z + QUE + Z, “that in France is among unknowns.” The definition is “Innocent painter. Seldom in history has a word been so misleading and so misused as “Innocent,” when applied to most of the thirteen popes of that name |
| 2 |
umber – UM + ER containing B. Nice easy one to get you started.. |
| 3 |
gorblimy – GORY containing (LIMB)* – another nice easy one, at least for those of us old enough to remember the song by the late, great Lonnie Donegan, whose old man “Wears gorblimey trousers”
|
| 5 |
autoschediaze – AUTO’S + CHE + D(I)AZE. Autoschediaze is a word you can use instead of improvise or extemporise, if you really want to show off. |
| 6 |
raiyat – dReArIlY wAsTe |
| 7 |
petersham – (EP MATHERS)* Edward Powys Mathers was a poet and translator, but is best known as one of the great early cryptic crossword setters, Torquemada, a predecessor to Azed in the distinguished line of setters for the Observer newspaper. He would have approved of the elegant anagram of his name |
| 8 |
alnus – ALUMNUS, a genus of trees and shrubs belonging to the birch family |
| 10 |
moshav shitufi – (IF HO HUM VISTAS)* a simple and obvious clue, made difficult by the obscurity of the Hebrew word we are looking to find. A moshav shitufi is a half way house between your standard moshav, and a full kibbutz… |
| 15 |
scarabaei – (SAAB)* containing CAR, then IE rev. Scarabs are members of a vast family of beetles, scarabaeidae, which includes amongst others the industrious dung beetle |
| 17 |
cacholong – “mostly hoard” = CACHE + “dark tea initially missing” = OOLONG. It is a pretty kind of opal
|
| 18 |
endosarc – CRANE containing turf = SOD, all rev. |
| 21 |
kameez – hidden, rev., in siZE E MAKing |
| 22 |
gaped – G + APE’D – it seems ape = hulk is a vulgar American usage for “a coarse, clumsy or stupid person” |
| 24 |
oribi – BIRO rev. + current = I. An oribi is one of a very wide range of antelope, deer and similar spcies that seem to crop up regularly in crosswords. László József Bíró was the inventor of the ubiquitous ballpoint pen, one of the world’s most widely used inventions |
I had no problem with “echoed” and saw it immediately as a reversal indicator. I loved the clue to PETERSHAM.