I solved this one yesterday after finding that the expected blogger was too busy and seeing that …
“Jeff”, the setter of the same day’s Sunday Times puzzle, said in comments here that there were links with this puzzle. I solved this puzzle after seeing that statement, but hadn’t done the ST one and I don’t think I remembered any ST answers from the blog. The answers PLAIN, NOVEL and HORNET appear in both puzzles, but I can’t see anything else remarkable in this one – no Jeff, Paul or Chubber (joint pseudonym of Jeff & Paul) in the grid for example.
For once my guesses about words I didn’t know all turned out to be correct. I’ve marked as S=’starter’ the clues that I solved in the first of the two sessions – about 10-15 minutes. As these included three of the four 12-letter answers, it’s not suprising that the second session was plain(!) sailing.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | NUT,CRACKER – it turns out that a nutcracker is a type of crow. |
| 11 | BL,A,(taplas)H – term = “the end of something” is a fairly common last letter indicator in barred grid puzzles. blah means ‘insipid’, and taplash is stuff that you don’t want from a barrel – the dregs or poor/weak alcohol such as stale beer |
| 12S | BAN(SHE)E |
| 13S | IMMASK = miasm*,K – Chambers confirms that this is a ‘bardism’ for ‘disguise’ |
| 14 | RI(GO)LL – a borrowed Fr. word for a gutter or water channel |
| 15S | QUARTER FINAL = (a tranquil ref)* – I was going to quibble about whether a QF really had eight competitors, but the Chambers def is “the round before the semi-final”, rather than a match in that round. |
| 19 | NAN(ny),Du. – the rhea in one of the local languages |
| 21 | O,CAR,INA = ani rev. – the ani is a bird called the black cuckoo |
| 22 | INFER,NO – ref. Dante’s poem |
| 23 | NOVEL – 2 def’s, one the book by Kipling. |
| 27S | CHESTERFIELD = (heretics fled)* |
| 28 | HO(R.N.,E)T – RN = Registered Nurse, Vespa = the wasp genus |
| 29S | SO(CIA)L. – Cia. = ‘compagnia’ = It. for company |
| 30 | EVOL=love rev.,UTE=truck |
| 31S | A,LIT. – nice to know that the ‘literally’ in “&lit.” is in Chambers … |
| 32 | SPR(INK,L)ING |
| Down | |
| 2S | ULMUS – hidden word – the elm genus |
| 3 | TAM,A,L – Scottish hat, N African dish |
| 4 | CHAR,ADES – the def. being a reference to the clue type |
| 5 | REST,AU(R.A.)TEUR – not sure exactly how Oliver fits in. On edit: it’s Jamie, as George points out |
| 6 | CAR(e),RYCOT=(to cry)* |
| 7S | KNIFE AND FORK – a trencherman in Dickens |
| 8 | R,HONE(st) |
| 9 | D,ELAINE = a Fr. version of Helen if you look in the ‘some first names’ section of C. |
| 10 | TELL=a mound,(s)TALE |
| 16 | KNITCHES – move the N in kitchens |
| 17 | C,ONFETTI=(it often)* & lit |
| 18 | T(R)OPICAL = like a trope = a figure of speech such as irony |
| 20 | ANCHO(r),V(aguel)Y – brit = a young herring/sprat etc – the anchovy is in the herring family. |
| 24 | C,EROS=sore rev. – sore = a hawk in its first year Corrected from ‘CELOS’ post-comment. |
| 25S | CEILI – hidden – the dh can be dropped |
| 26 | PLAIN – 2 defs |
This week’s is a bit of a record for me though, but I’ll keep that for next Sunday
Another to ponder here might have been 7D. If you suppose the 3-word phrase has middle word AND or THE (pretty likely), then given those two 12s, you must have one of four choices: ???F/AND/?F???, ???F?/AND/F???, plus the two equivalents with THE. That in turn means that 23 may well start with N,D,H or E – which might be enough to get strange = NOVEL (or EERIE!).
Now I’m off to try 2497…