Solving time 17:05, which makes it above average in difficulty for me, but not a real stinker. Actually I was probably just off form, as it doesn’t seem all that difficult in hindsight now. Mind you, the diabolical “homophone” at 5A may have had some English people struggling, let alone Americans and Australians etc.
| Across |
| 1 |
CHOW CHOW – one dog, two portions of food. |
| 5 |
WIDNES – Cheshire town that supposedly sounds like the way Americans pronounce “witness”. |
| 9 |
BEATRICE – BE A TRICE |
| 10 |
GUNG-HO – GUN + GHO(st). I think the “for war” bit was just to help the surface reading – Chambers just gives it as excessively enthusiastic or zealous, no hostile connotations at all. |
| 12 |
GOVERNMENTAL – GO MENTAL around N(ew) + REV reversed. |
| 15 |
AGREE – A GREE(n) |
| 16 |
TOODLE-PIP – “poodle tip”. Stereotypical Englishism for goodbye. I’m sure you colonials think we all talk like that… |
| 18 |
SIMULCAST – (musical)* + ST. Last one I got, and took a long time to realise most of it was an anagram. |
| 19 |
ACTOR – part of unsatisfACTORy. Simple but good. |
| 20 |
WHAT’S-HER-NAME – HE inside (harem wants)*. |
| 24 |
AS WELL – A(ce) + SWELL |
| 25 |
BIG NOISE – double definition. |
| 26 |
TIRING – T(ime) + I + RING |
| 27 |
ENTREATY – EAT inside ENTRY. |
| Down |
| 1 |
CABS – C(ome) + ABS (anti-lock braking system) |
| 2 |
OKAY – (t)OKAY. |
| 3 |
CORPOREAL – PORE in CORAL. |
| 4 |
ORCHESTRATED – O.R. (men) + CHEST + RATED. |
| 6 |
IN USE – IN U.S. + (Baltimor)E. |
| 7 |
NIGHTSPOTS – NIGH (close) + [STOPS (bars) + T(ake) reversed] |
| 8 |
SPOILSPORT – SPOILS + PORT |
| 11 |
IN CONTENTION – CON inside INTENTION. |
| 13 |
WARSAW PACT – WAS reversed + “packed”, after WAR. |
| 14 |
CRIMEAN WAR – CRIME + ANWAR (Sadat, Egyptian president 1970-81) |
| 17 |
LEAF MINER – (meal fern I)*. |
| 21 |
SOLON – SO LON(g). A chance was missed to link this to 16A, I think. Solon was an ancient Greek statesman. |
| 22 |
LIMA – A + M(illion) + 1 + L (pounds), all reversed. |
| 23 |
BEVY – sounds like “bevvy”, short for beverage. Although it would work without the “say”, as Chambers gives the single-v spelling for the drink too. |
Perhaps ‘American with a head cold’ would have made more sense. I still don’t quite get it. See=witness fine but the rest…?
Another couple of dog clues which fitted in nicely with my spell of dogsitting starting the day before the puzzle came out. COD to WHATS-HER-NAME for an interesting surface that must have taken the compiler ages to construct. Sometimes we under-estimate these efforts.
Well, we’ll need the homophone-critic par excellence to chip in here (Jimbo, that is). But God knows how Dorsetians (?) might imagine Americans (with all of their different accents) might pronounce the name of a northern English town!
And on homophones …
I once knew a compiler who insisted that homophony should observe what he called “The Queen’s English”. So I thought about HM’s own peculiar pronunciation and asked him about the following possible clue:
Verse heard in place of partridge (4,4)
My general dislike of homophones is well catalogued because with regional accents so few words do really sound alike and I think that’s unfair. Just as there is no such thing as an English accent so there is no such thing as an American one. I’ve sat in on conversations when a Bostonian and a Texan have struggled to understand one another. To try and guess how “an American” might pronounce the name of an obscure English town simply should never have been passed by the Editor.
I’m the wartime product of a Cockney mother and a Canadian father. I grew up in South London (Brixton, Balham, Streatham) and only moved to Dorset 25 years ago. So my own accent is probably unique!
The old accents of the English south coast from say Hampshire through Dorset to Devon are slowly being lost, swamped by foreigners like me. If you’ve heard a Somerset burr they all sound quite like that but with individual differences. Such people wouldn’t have a clue how “an American” might pronounce Widnes and would care even less!
I also had ‘cars’ instead of ‘cabs’ for a long time in 1 down, thinking ‘ARS’ was some abbreviation for something mechanical. Then I saw ‘Beatrice’ and realized that is was barking up the wrong acronym.
I considered ‘simulcast’ and ‘toodle-pip’ quite witty at the time.
A good puzzle in general, were it not for that dreadful homonym. I am glad to report that this weeks Saturday puzzle is quite free from such deficiencies, although I doubt if anyone will zip through it. Andy, you’ve got a week, good luck.