Solving time 14:59
Another very good Saturday puzzle, in a fairly long run of them. I was pretty pleased with my time too, as after six minutes I only had 2D and 18A in, but eventually my brain clicked into gear and it all fell into place.
| Across |
| 1 |
KNOCK SPOTS OFF – “KNOCKS POTS OFF”. To knock something off might not be familiar to non-Brits, not sure. |
| 8 |
PLEA – PLEA(sing). I didn’t know a plea could be an excuse, but it’s there as one of the definitions in Chambers. |
| 9 |
GATEKEEPER – I don’t get the wordplay here. GATE is A (India’s tail) inside get*, but then that leaves KEEPER = to ring??? A wicket can be a gate so “man at wicket” has to be the definition. Nice cricketing surface, but I hope someone comes up with a better explanation for it! Explained in the comments – a keeper is a guard ring, which is apparently a ring worn to keep another from falling off. Seems to me it would be better to get the first ring resized rather than buy another one, but what do I know!
|
| 10 |
LIVE WIRE – double definition. The live wire in an electrical cable is brown (in the UK at least). |
| 11 |
NECTAR – “necked ‘er” |
| 13 |
EGLANTINES – E.G. + TIN inside LANES |
| 16 |
OAKY – OKAY with the middle letters swapped round. |
| 17 |
SIGH – SIGH(t) |
| 18 |
ROLLICKING – (Lock girl in)*. First one I got. |
| 20 |
DEWLAP – L (centre of galLows) inside PAWED reversed. |
| 22 |
BLOWPIPE – PIPE next to B, LOW |
| 24 |
TRANSITION – O in (St Trinian)*. There are 40 transition elements, all metals. |
| 26 |
TOIL – “toy’ll” |
| 27 |
PREPONDERANCE – (copper earned n)* |
| Down |
| 1 |
KILLING TIME – bird = TIME as in jail time. I think we had that last week as well. |
| 2 |
OSAGE – (d)OSAGE |
| 3 |
KEG BITTER – (hoc)K + E.G. + BITTER. Not too sure about the definition – Chambers says “a frothy drink, especially champagne”. Never heard beer called fizz before. |
| 4 |
PATTERN – R in PATTEN, which is an old word for a wooden shoe. Example is the definition. |
| 5 |
TAKEN – A, K inside TEN. |
| 6 |
ONE O’CLOCK – (L, once cook)* |
| 7 |
FIE – FIE(sta). |
| 12 |
ASKING PRICE – SKIN (envelope) inside A + G.P. + RICE. This looked like it should be an anagram for some reason. |
| 14 |
ASH BLONDE – (L in BOND) inside A SHE. |
| 15 |
SHIPOWNER – P.O.W. inside SHINER. |
| 19 |
LOBBIED – LOB + (E in BID). |
| 21 |
PRIMO – PRIM + O. The first player in a piano duet. |
| 23 |
PITON – PIT + ON (working). |
| 25 |
RIP – double definition. |
GRM
Agree, today’s is a fun puzzle. These Saturday ones have been the pick of the bunch lately.
Keeper is a guard ring,as noted before.
Barbara
The first day, I got ‘piton’, ‘toil’, ‘taken’, ‘nectar’ and ‘plea’. Not much of a start!
Fortunately I had a big breakthrough on day two, and I spent day three finishing up the upper left side.
I some clues, I only understood one part, which made for slow going. ‘Ring’ = ‘keeper’ and ‘bird’ = ‘time’ I didn’t know, and for the longest time I wanted the middle word of 1 across to be ‘plate’.
Both ‘eglantines’ and ‘asking price’ were beautiful clues, tied for COD.
An example of this is:
20a where we have to place PAWED for “roughly grabbed” backwards about L – centre of gallows (I got that bit) – to get DEWLAP clued by the literal “one may hang by the neck”.
I also failed to get 16a, 14d and 19d for similar reasons.
I did get 8a PLEA from PLEA(sing) but I did not know it could mean EXCUSE?
Well done to LINXIT for deciphering this lot and to Setter for being too crafty for the likes of me.