Jumbo 1180

Author   mohn2Posted on Categories Jumbo Cryptic
On the easy side though there were a few words I didn’t know as well as a few that only seemed vaguely familiar – fortunately in all cases the wordplay didn’t offer any obvious alternatives.

Solving time: 13m 15s

* = anagram, dd = double definition, {} = omission

Across
1 NUDISTS – DIS (Disrespectful talk) in NUTS (enthusiasts)
5 SCARFACE – SCARCE (wanting) around reversal of A + F (female)
9 BAOBAB – reversal of A + BOA (snake), all inside {ru}BB{er} (middle of rubber)
13 SCARLET PIMPERNEL – dd, Anagallis arvensis and Baroness Orczy’s most famous hero respectively
14 APERCU – C (Conservative) in A + PERU (foreign country)
16 YOKED – YE’D (You had) around OK (fine), defn: “as one with a burden to bear?”
17 HACKLED – HACK (Horse) + LED (escorted). Chambers: “noun: A comb for flax or hemp; transitive verb: To comb with a hackle”. Not a word I knew.
18 PILLAGING – PILL (tablet) + AGING (withering)
19 AMBERGRIS – (SMEAR A BRIG)* with the clue referring to the fact that ambergris (a waxy secretion from whales’ intestines) could well be found smeared on a brig. There was some talk on the forum about a superfluous letter in the clue, but I can only assume that that was either in the print version only or the online version had been corrected before I attempted it. Edit: as Andy points out below, the word “a” spoils the anagram.
21 FAIREST – AIR (song) in FE{a}ST (saint’s day, but no heart)
22 DRACO – DO (party) around RAC (car club, i.e. Royal Automobile Club), for the constellation also known as The Dragon. I had always imagined that the Royal Automobile Club was the same as the RAC breakdown company, but Wikipedia tells me that the two are separate entities (though the former used to own the latter).
23 KRAAL – reversal of LARK (frolic) around A, for the “South African village of huts surrounded by a fence” (Chambers)
25 CASSOULET – SOUL (Person) + E (little energy) inside CAST (acting group)
27 EAGLETS – {shor}E (edge of shore) + AGLETS (tags). I hadn’t heard of an aglet but I couldn’t think of any other small birds that fitted E?G?E?S.
29 ROADWORKS – ROADWORK (Runner’s training) + ‘S
31 INTERDIGITATE – (ATTIRED GENT + I + I)*, defn: “get linked together”, Chambers: “To interlock by finger-like processes, or in the manner of the fingers of clasped hands”. Didn’t know this.
34 PROCESSIONALS – PRE-COLOSSIANS*, Chambers: “A book of litanies, hymns, etc for processions”
35 ELECTIONS – SELECTION with its first letter moved to the end
37 ADOPTER – ADO (Fuss) + P{a}TER (father, not a)
39 FACTORS IN – hidden in nafF ACTOR SINging
42 RAISE – homophone of RAYS (components of light)
43 OVERT – OVER (maiden perhaps, as in cricket) + {beau}T{iful} (beautiful at heart)
45 INSPIRE – IN (Fashionable) + SPIRE (feature of Oxford). Matthew Arnold apparently called Oxford the “city of dreaming spires” but that’s the only link I can find between Oxford and spires. Are they any more of a feature there than in, say, Cambridge, York, Bagan, etc?
47 ABHORRENT – A + BENT (criminal) around HO (house) + RR (bishop)
49 WAFER-THIN – I’m assuming that this is a cryptic definition referring to a wafer being a common accompaniment to ice-cream (aka ice)
50 BACK ROW – dd, referring to the two flankers and number eight, and the place in a school classroom/bus where the disreputables are likely to be found, respectively
52 PULSE – dd, the second taking “pound” as a verb. For the first, pulse can be either singular or (in this case) plural.
54 RECTOR – RE{a}CTOR (Source of power dismissing a)
55 COMBINE HARVESTER – (THE CORN’S AMBER I’VE)* A bit of Googling suggests that corn is never amber and in particular is brown when it is harvested so, depending on how much of a stickler for agricultural accuracy you are, this is either an imaginative attempt at an &lit or a poor clue.
56 SEDATE – hidden in RaiSED AT Eton. I tend to think of sedate as meaning calm, but the usual dictionaries support the definition used here.
57 IN PERSON – P (Quiet) + ER (monarch) + SO (thus), inside INN (pub)
58 DROVERS – {fiel}D (edge of field) + ROVERS (Folk wandering around)
Down
1 NOSEY-PARKER – (A KEY PERSON)* + {grovelle}R (groveller ultimately), defn: “One who wants to know”. None of the usual dictionaries have this spelling/hyphenation combo but no doubt it has been used somewhere.
2 DRANK – D (little daughter) + RANK (Row)
3 SOLIDER – SO (Thus) + IDLER*
4 SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT – (RIGHT HOT TRADE SECRETS)*
5 SUITCASES – CAS{t} (thrown, with little time wasted) inside SUITES (hotel apartments?)
6 APPAL – A + reversal of LAPP (Northerner)
7 FIRE DRILL – FIRED (got rid of) + R (right) + ILL (Bad)
8 CHEAPIE – HEAP (pile) + I, all inside CE (church)
10 APPLAUD – A + PP (very quiet) + LAUD (old archbishop, referring to William Laud, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 17th century). I’m sure I must have heard of Laud at some point in my life but he didn’t ring a bell and I in fact wrote in the answer assuming that “laud” was an old word for an archbishop.
11 BARRICADE – CAD (Rogue) in BARRIE (Scottish author)
12 BOURGEOISIE – O (Love) + URGE (desire) inside BOIS (French wood) + IE (that is)
15 ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD – dd, the first relying on a literal interpretation of the phrase
20 BRAVADO – BRA (Support) + V (very little) + ADO (fuss)
21 FLORIDA – F (Loud) + LOR (expression of surprise) + IDA (feminist princess, referring to the Gilbert and Sullivan work Princess Ida)
24 LEWDEST – (SWEET L{a}D{y})*
26 TIREE – TREE (Large plant) around I (one), for the island in the Inner Hebrides
28 GLITTER – G{oods} (goods primarily) + LITTER (rubbish)
30 SCOFF – dd, though with regards to food “scoff” is perhaps more often encountered as a verb rather than (in this case) a noun
32 TUSSORE – T{h}US (so not hard) + SORE (painful). Chambers: “A fawn-coloured silk from wild Indian silkworms”. Didn’t know this. Nor which meaning of wild is intended in Chambers’ definition.
33 ACONITE – A + CONE (dry fruit) around IT, for a plant such as wolf’s-bane or monk’s-hood
34 PLAY ON WORDS – (SON + ROWDY PAL)*
36 SWEETHEARTS – WE inside SE (Home Counties, i.e. South-East) + THE ARTS (theatre, music, and suchlike)
38 OPEN-FACED – O (old) + PEN (writer) + F (fine) + ACE (star) + D (departs). Not sure I knew this expression.
40 CLIMBABLE – LIMB (leg or arm) inside CABLE (rope), defn: “Like mountain that can be got up”
41 SEA URCHIN – SEARCH (Look) around U (university), + IN (home)
44 TURNOUT – TOUT (push) around URN (Ashes trophy, in cricket)
46 SUNDOWN – reversal of NUS (Group of students), + DOWN (away from university)
48 RIPIENO – RENO (US city) around I (one) + PI (very good), for the musical term meaning all (or nearly all) the orchestra rather than just the soloists. A word vaguely recalled from my Music O-Level.
51 CANES – dd, the first referring to the Latin word for dogs
53 LITHE – B (Bishop) + this word for graceful would give us BLITHE (gay). We don’t often see this kind of clue.

7 comments on “Jumbo 1180”

  1. RIPIENO was a new one to me, and I toyed for a while with ‘repleto’ until Reno finally came to mind. I didn’t stop to wonder about amber corn, but if corn=(US) wheat, there’s justification in the anthem ‘America the Beautiful’: ‘amber waves of grain’. Then again, it goes on to mention ‘purple mountains’. I wasted time at 45ac thinking of shoes instead of the uni; the ‘dreaming spires’ (I didn’t know it was Arnold) is a cliché with reference to Oxford.

    Edited at 2015-12-19 01:48 am (UTC)

  2. I thought that perhaps it was a reference to “walking on ice” and “wafer thin” – both meaning not reliable or weak (of argument)?
    Adrian Cobb
    1. I’m not sure I’ve heard of the expression “walking on ice”. There’s “skating on (thin) ice”, but that seems to have connotations more of danger/difficulty than unreliability.
  3. Well, AMBERGRIS only has one A (and 9 letters), whereas “smear a brig” has two (and 10 letters).

    Sometimes you just see what you want to see!

    Edited at 2015-12-19 08:31 am (UTC)

    1. I normally check the anagrams with the Chambers app so I don’t know what I was playing at with this one, especially having already been alerted that something was up with the clue! You just can’t get the staff these days.
  4. Quite a tame one, but still don’t understand 13a despite mohn’s explanation, why’one not easily found’? (Ong’ara, Nairobi)
    1. “They seek him here,
      They seek him there,
      Those Frenchies seek him everywhere” yatta yatta.

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