…you might do well. But I found this one rather chewy. While there are a few easy clues to get you started, there is some difficult vocabulary and some tough parsing here. So while you can write in obvious answers like passim, apse, IMAX, ninjas, shut-ins, basinet, etc, you will soon be thumbing through your copy of Chambers.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Year chap’s at sea in tub, a submarine vessel (11) |
| BATHYSCAPHE – Anagram of Y CHAP’S inside BATHE – with tub as a verb. | |
| 12 | Group of porpoises mainly fine crossing choppy ocean (8) |
| PHOCAENA – PH(anagram of OCEAN)A[t]. Wide-ranging vocabulary, to say the least. | |
| 13 | Profitable source of revenue extracted from titanium oxide (5) |
| UTILE – [r]UTILE. The appearance of TI in the middle of this word is purely coincidental | |
| 14 | Make gathers in lining of top (4) |
| SHIR – [t]-SHIR[t]. | |
| 15 | Twisting hand to enable throw of double six? (6) |
| DUPLET – PUD backwards + LET. Pud can mean a paw. | |
| 16 | Thick black liquid turning silver brilliant (6) |
| GASTAR – AG backwards + STAR. | |
| 17 | Bats urinated poisonous alkaloid (8) |
| DATURINE – Anagram of URINATED. | |
| 19 | Cinema’s presentation’s very long promoting independence (4) |
| IMAX – MAXI with the I moved to the front. | |
| 21 | Search screening a rector’s ecclesiastical successor (6) |
| COMARB – COM(A,R)B. | |
| 22 | Term for hitmen in Japan for instance (6) |
| NINJAS – [hitme]N + IN + J + AS, an &lit. | |
| 24 | Muslim leader rebuffed in agreement (4) |
| MEER – [ag]REEM[ent], a backwards hidden. | |
| 26 | Diet abroad ruined sober Jan? (8) |
| SOBRANJE – Anagram of SOBER JAN. In Bulgaria, to be precise. | |
| 28 | False gods almost struck in false tale (6) |
| BAALIM – BA(ALI[t])M. Look up alight – strike is the very last meaning. | |
| 29 | French team last to smile after online gibe? (6) |
| EQUIPE – E-QUIP + [smil]E. | |
| 31 | Take off around start of summer recess (4) |
| APSE – AP(S[ummer])E. | |
| 32 | Spot in Scotland, a week there by quiet loch (5) |
| PLOUK – P + L + OUK. | |
| 33 | Food smothering marks over old coat (8) |
| GAMBESON – NOSEB(M)AG, all backwards. Nosebag evidently had a slang meaning of food. | |
| 34 | NZ celebration to attend I would always follow in English (11, two words) |
| WAITANGI DAY – WAIT + ANG + I’D AY. Ang. is a valid abbreviation for Anglice, which means in English. | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | No limits to ritual about demigod (4) |
| AITU – Anagram of [r]ITUA[l]. | |
| 3 | Aviation fuel? Whack in poor stuff (8) |
| TRIPTANE – TRIP(TAN)E. | |
| 4 | Husband quite close to wife’s big toe (6) |
| HALLUX – H + ALL + UX. Most hardened Mephisto solvers will biff this one. | |
| 5 | Hints working with US people confined to home? (7, two words) |
| SHUT INS – Anagram of HINTS + US, often hyphenated. | |
| 6 | Number chasing projection about international money once (5) |
| COIGN – CO(I)G + N. This spelling more often means the projecting corner of a building, but is also a variant spelling of coin. | |
| 7 | Hunter to operate a long time (7) |
| ACTAEON – ACT + A + EON, or, perhaps, ACT + AEON, depending on whether you are an American or British solver! | |
| 8 | Transmit internet messaging everywhere (6) |
| PASSIM – PASS + I.M. I.M. usually stands for Instant Messaging, but it is conducted over the internet. | |
| 9 | I can finally replace defective legacy computer (5) |
| ENIAC – Anagram of I CAN + [defectiv]E. Very legacy, indeed. | |
| 10 | Scottish sailors rest on first sign of breathing fumes (11, two words) |
| TARRY BREEKS – TARRY + B[reathing] + REEKS. | |
| 11 | Performing gig band’s following sweet pieces of good fortune (11, two words) |
| PUDDING BAGS – PUD + anagram of GIG BAND’S. | |
| 18 | About to get the better of worry that’s consuming one, like a tapeworm? (8) |
| TAENIOID – D(I)O IN + EAT, all upside down. | |
| 20 | Helmet’s base moulded with tin (7) |
| BASINET – Anagram of BASE + TIN. | |
| 21 | Food-fish caught with a beak round Australia repulsed (7) |
| CABEZON – C + A + N(OZ)EB backwards. | |
| 23 | Judge response after beer and snack (6) |
| JALEBI – J + ALE + BI, the old Chinese medicine trick. | |
| 24 | Muslim teacher to attack with a lot of energy (6) |
| MAULVI – MAUL + VI[m]. | |
| 25 | Fruit pulp — yuk! (5) |
| PAPAW – PAP + AW! | |
| 27 | Stomachs old dough (5) |
| OMASA – O + MASA, a dough used in Mexican cooking. The stomachs belong to a cow. | |
| 30 | Hindu festival, are millions leaving bound to be taken aback? (4) |
| PUJA – A + JU[m]P backwards. | |
Certainly harder than last week’s! I got a lot filled in last Sunday, but had to return to it last night to finish up. Five-sixths of NINJAS is spelled out inside the clue, which was distracting enough that I never properly parsed it; I even came close to suspecting an error, as it was so obviously a hidden… almost. Thanks, V.
And thanks to Robert Teuton!
Fortunately there were quite a few words that drew on my areas of knowledge including taenia (tapeworm), datura (devil’s thorn apple), omasum (one of the four stomachs of a cow), hallux and plouk. I hadn’t realised that plouk was Scottish. It was in common use in the office when I worked in Hull 40 years ago. Maybe we picked it up from watching Rab C. Nesbit?
E-quip raised a smile.
I didn’t find this too bad – like Richard, I found several words that were in my recognising vocabulary. I thought 20dn was a weak anagram and 11dn seemed a weak clue, with PUD = sweet appearing as part of the word PUDDING. (Of course, PUD = hand had been used at 15ac, but there were other options.)
Back to normality, with “wide-ranging vocabulary, to say the least.” I knew the -SPHERE version of the BATHY, and assumed I hadn’t quite worked out the wordplay until it wouldn’t work. The crossing Moslem leaders helped each other by beginning with M, like most do, but neither was familiar. I assume the unlikely SOBRANJE (which looks as if it should be from South Africa) is there to provide the final piece of the pangram. I tried to make GOODY BAGS fit, but they wouldn’t, and I took the PUDDING on trust. A good workout, with clues it was good to work out.
Sobranje might just as well be written with a y, rather than a j – there isn’t a “j” sound in the Cyrillic alphabet. It seems to be just a convention to use a j in the transliteration of this and other words and names.
I found this mostly reasonably approachable but got badly stuck at the end on a couple of clues, one of which was the rather obvious MEER!
‘Internet messaging’ looks like an error to me.
Possibly not because the wording of the definition of instant messaging in Chambers refers to passing messages via the internet. One could argue that IM is being referred to indirectly.
Hmm, possibly. But it lacks the usual precise alignment with Chambers, and there’s no obvious reason for not just using ‘instant’.
True. One does come to expect that.