I’ve solved it but I’m too tired to write a coherent blog and I think one or two of you might notice the difference. I’ll get this up tomorrow sometime.
And now it is tomorow sometime so here comes the blog. I made an unusual mess of this one to begin with, inventing some wonderful words like IN-SETTER, SNEDU, SNICK-OR-SEE and UNNY which all turned out to be hysterically incorrect. Don’t do crosswords late on planes, kids, you invent new words.
Away we go…
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | OOHS: SHOO |
| 4 | PAST,1,C,CI |
| 10 | SITTER(lounge),IN(at home) |
| 11 | COREGONINE: OREGON inside CINE |
| 12 | EPENDYMA: anagram of (MAY,NEED,P) |
| 15 | S,MALT |
| 16 | TI,PT |
| 17 | HETAERAE: tarts being ladies of the night here, anagram of THE followed by AERATE missing the |
| 19 | SNAKE EEL: NAKE |
| 21 | SIGN: I think this is ‘S, |
| 22 | AT(before),TAP |
| 25 | ACHERNAR: CHER(Sonny Bono’s one time partner), in A,N,A,R |
| 26 | SNICK-A-SNEE: NICK with (AS,SEEN)* around it |
| 27 | SKIN-DEEP: KIND in SEE,P |
| 28 | ASS,A,MESE: the note being a musical one |
| 29 |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | OSTENTS: STENT(day’s work, see STINT) in OS(mouth) |
| 2 | OIL PAINTINGS: anagram of INITIALS,PG,ON |
| 3 | STONK: KNOTS reversed |
| 4 | PER,DU |
| 5 | SIG,MATED |
| 6 | IN NAME: take the first letters from each of FINN GAME |
| 7 | CNIDARIAN: CNN(cable news network) surrounding A,D,ARIA |
| 8 | CONFLAGRATES: CON and S |
| 9 | IDENT: DEN in IT |
| 13 | EU,PAT,RIDS |
| 14 | BEEF,CAKE |
| 18 | ENTROPY: the usual abbreviation for entropy (say in Gibbs’ free energy relationship dG = dH – TdS) is S, the last letter in Physics |
| 20 | KAC |
| 22 | A1,SHA |
| 23 | RENNE: I am not sure I see the wordplay here, there seem to be a lot of french resorts with RENNE in the name, so is it also a french term for an alpine pass? |
| 24 | BRED,A |
I thought 18D was weak – it could just be a non-cryptic straight definition. Other than that a reasonable puzzle.