19:30 for the last Saturday crossword of the year. I found this fairly tricky, with quite a few “General Knowledge” clues as well as some sly wordplay in places.
| Across |
| 1 |
HOME PAGE – (game, hope)*. |
| 5 |
SLIP-UP – PUPILS reversed. Bit of an old chestnut, this one – I’ve seen it many times before in various guises. |
| 10 |
SQUIB – QUI (Parisian “who”) inside S(ubur)B. I didn’t know the lampoon meaning, only the firework. |
| 11 |
RUM BUTTER – RUM + B(ishop) + UTTER. Very seasonal. |
| 12 |
THE RIVALS – H(usband) in (TV serial)*. A play by R. B. Sheridan. |
| 13 |
HOOKE – HOOKE(r). This is Robert Hooke, famous for his law of elasticity. |
| 14 |
TOLSTOY – LOT rev. + STO(r)Y. |
| 16 |
DANGLE – D + ANGLE |
| 18 |
ON HAND – ON (working) + HAND (labourer). |
| 20 |
MAJORCA – JAM rev. + ORCA (another name for the killer whale). |
| 22 |
ATOMS – alternate letters of “cArToOn MuSt”. I thought “dots” was a pretty weak definition, but both dot and atom have one meaning the same in Chambers, “anything very small”. |
| 23 |
FRANCHISE – HI’S (ways to greet) inside FRANCE. |
| 25 |
RUN TO SEED – double definition. |
| 26 |
ARIEL – “aerial”. One of the moons of Uranus. |
| 27 |
WARMTH – WAR + M(on)TH. Last one I got, not expecting the run of four consonants. |
| 28 |
PRESSMAN – RE (on) + SS + M(arried), all inside PAN. |
| Down |
| 1 |
HESITATE – I inside HE STATE. |
| 2 |
MOUSE – MO + USE. |
| 3 |
PUBLIC TRANSPORT – (porn at strip club)*. Great anagram! |
| 4 |
GERMANY – GERM + ANY |
| 6 |
LAUGHING JACKASS – LAUGHING (ref. 9D, AMUSED) + A, S inside JACKS. Another name for the kookaburra, an Australian kingfisher. |
| 7 |
POTBOILER – OP rev. + B(rass) in TOILER. I think the whole clue is supposed to be the definition here. |
| 8 |
PORKER – R in POKER. |
| 9 |
AMUSED – MUSE in AD. |
| 15 |
LANDOWNER – DOWNER after (c)LAN. There was a very similar clue to the same answer in last Sunday’s Times crossword too (i.e. the following day). Pure coincidence of course – they don’t have the same editor. |
| 17 |
MAGELLAN – LL in (manage)*. |
| 19 |
DUFFER – DUFFEL with L changing to R. |
| 20 |
MEANDER – MEAN + DE(e)R. |
| 21 |
JARROW – ROW underneath JAR. A town on the Tyne, once a big shipbuilding centre, famous for the Jarrow March in 1936. |
| 24 |
ILIUM – I + I inside LUM(p). |
My general knowledge failed me only on ‘laughing jackass’, but what else could it be?
My time was probably not great, since I did it over several days from Tuesday to Thursday. As usual, I found some clues immediately obvious – ‘Majorca’, ‘Hooke’, ‘franchise’, ‘ariel’, and ‘Magellan’ went in at first glance – while others that should have been easy were not. ‘Home page’, ‘rum butter’, and ‘pressman’ gave me considerable difficulty.
I particularly liked RUN TO SEED and WARMTH.
Like Sotira, I did it in bits during the general Christmas turmoil.
(As the Wikipedia link says, Hooke was the particular victim of the very unpleasant Newton. It is said that Newton’s famous remark about “standing on the shoulders of Giants” was a deliberate insult directed at Hooke, who was a small man with a twisted back, denying any debt to him for his work on optics.)
I like the note about poor old Hooke and the awful Newton. Like so many super-talents Newton was brilliant in his own areas of expertise but not a very pleasant person. Human nature really doesn’t change.
I was sorry to find out about Robert Hooke’s run-ins with Isaac Newton.
It is sad to think that such an intellectual giant might also be quite an unpleasant character – Newton that is. Hooke is familiar to me from having studied A level Physics and also as the architect of the very fine church at Willen (now in Milton Keynes) which is just down the road from Newport Pagnell. I read that he also contributed a building technique to the Dome in Wren’s St Pauls. It looks like Hooke vs Newton could be a good basis for a blockbuster historical biopic!