Solving time: Gave up on the last 4 (starred) after 45 mins.
Very tough this one, although I’m sure more cultured solvers will have known 1ac and so found the top left much less of a trial than I did. I’m not sure about the explanation (or indeed the answer) for 33dn. Best of luck to all competing at Cheltenham on Sunday.
Music (4dn): Bang by Blur – what a great video.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| *1 | SAL + TIM + B.O.C.C. + A – apparently an Italian dish of ham and cheese. I just couldn’t unravel this, despite sorting out most of wordplay, though I didn’t consider that ‘by’ might be part of the initial letter grouping so maybe I should have got it, especially as I suspected that 4dn might begin with a B. |
| 13 | BAR + GAINING + COUNTER – not a phrase I knew, and the -GAINING bit took me ages. |
| 14 | RUN N.Y. |
| 17 | A + EROS + O + [fai]L |
| 19 | INGEN(U for I)OUS – one letter substitutions are often tricky; cf 5dn. |
| 21 | OBS + TRUC[k] (= ‘wagon carrying goods in short’) + T[ons] – the verbose (but fair) indicator for TRUC[k] made this a hard wordplay to fathom. |
| 30 | EVERYMAN; VERY in rev. of NAME |
| 41 | S,E,N + O[u]R – references the Graham Greene novel Our Man In Havana. |
| 44 | EP + [t]HEM + ERA; &lit – but the surface (definition) reading is a bit tortured. |
| 48 | PLUM + AGE |
| 55 | SK(YET)ERRIE[s] + R |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 3 | ITALIAN; rev. of NAIL + A + T + I |
| *4 | BANG – this was the best I could think of while solving (from “Sudden impact” and “drug”), but I couldn’t explain the second bit (“…on one of the senses?”). I’ve eventually realised that the drug can also be spelt ‘bhang’, hence “drug on one of the senses?” (i.e. hearing), so the clue is a kind of a triple indicator; “Sudden impact”, “drug on one of the senses?” and also the whole clue (‘bang’ can also mean ‘a drug injection’). |
| 5 | CON(C for F)ESSION |
| 9 | CARP + [aj]ACCIO – another of those pesky Italian mean dishes, but luckily I knew the port (Ajaccio is the capital of Corsica) so got this one. |
| 10 | AURORA (double definition) – the ship turns out to be this Russian cruiser which sparked the 1917 Revolution in Russia. |
| 11 | KING SOLOMON’S MINES (cryptic definition) – a novel by H. Rider Haggard (of She fame). |
| *18 | ROUGH AGE – really should have got this. I thought there might be a Bridget Jones reference or something so probably gave up earlier than I should have. |
| 22 | RUINED; DINE with the first letter moved, after RU |
| *26 | DRY RISER (cryptic definition) – I guessed the fire connection but didn’t know (or couldn’t remember) the second word. |
| 29 | ECCLESIASTICUS; ECCLES + (IS CUT AS I)* |
| 33 | ST(R)OKE? – I think this might be something to do with Stoke(-on-Trent) being famous for kilns, but I’m not sure. |
| 37 | RE(BELL)IOUS – referring to the Boxer Rebellion. |
| 39 | SE(P + T)EM + BE + R; &lit – like 44ac, I don’t think this attempted &lit quite works. |
| 42 | JET LINER |
| 47 | SALYUT – good job for me that the wordplay to this was easy. The Salyut programme was the Russian Space Station programme of the 1970s. |
| 49 | BAHAI; rev. of I + AHAB |
| 52 | SE[d]ER |
Good observation about those one-letter swaps. Even ones I’ve seen a few times before can still fool me.
SALTIMBOCCA came very quickly and almost in error as the name reminded me of what I thought was a show staged by Cirque du Soleil. That’s actually Saltimbanco, and how easily I could have made a mess of the puzzle from the off.