Solving time: not taken. 1dn missing.
I helped someone solve this so didn’t take a time, but it seemed mostly very straightforward, with a couple of trickier answers, CROWDIE and SIKA DEER probably being the most likely to catch someone out; I couldn’t get the former but correctly guessed the latter.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across |
| 4 |
COMATOSE; (SO CAME TO) – very good anagram, though ‘but’ as a link word isn’t ideal. |
| 8 |
BREEZE (double definition) – I think this is a reference to ‘breezeblocks’, which are made in furnaces called ‘breezes’, but that doesn’t mean ‘breeze’ = ‘block’. Perhaps there’s a better explanation? |
| 9 |
TOTALITY; TOT (ITALY)* – another unsatisfactory definition (“all in”). |
| 12 |
SIKA DEER; (I ASKED)* + ER – an Asian deer. |
| 13 |
IN TENT L[a]Y – ‘hard’ has to be read as an adverb here, with ‘it’s’ meaning ‘the answer is’. |
| 21 |
PETREL; “PETROL” |
| 23 |
EXPLICIT; (LIPS EXOTIC – SO)* – this requires removal of OS (‘outsize’) from ‘Lips exotic’, despite the letters not even being in the right order, let alone adjacent; why not “Exotic lips…”, so at least the order would have been correct? |
| 25 |
INURED; (RUINED)* |
| 26 |
MAIL (= “MALE”) BAGS (= ‘trousers’) – one of those hard clues where one half (‘bags’) is easy but the other is trickier, especially since ‘Containers’ is such a vague definition with no clue as to the ‘mail’ part of the answer. |
| Down |
| 1 |
CROWD IE – I couldn’t fathom this, not knowing the word. Unless I have misinterpreted the clue, ‘Ireland’ gives IE which I can only justify as the Internet suffix for Ireland. I’m not sure I like this; can we expect (for example) ‘Germany’ = DE to start appearing as well? |
| 2 |
HEARTACHE; (A TEACHER)* after H – ‘taken to’ meaning ‘after’? Hmm. This clue also uses ‘of’ as a link word which makes me cringe. |
| 4 |
CATHERINE WHEELS – I had to check the spelling of ‘Catherine’ to be certain, but got it right; these fireworks are named after St Catherine of Alexandria, who survived torture on a wheel (see here). The wordplay here is nothing more than the component parts clued in the same sense as the answer, which is a bit of a cop-out. |
| 5 |
MI TI(GAT)E – if I were being really picky I might say that ‘draw gun in’ to mean ”draw’ with ‘gun’ inside’ isn’t quite right, but the surface reading is very good. ‘Gat’ for any gun (not just a ‘Gatling gun’) is still common Army slang. |
| 6 |
TILER (cryptic definition) – not quite as easy as 18dn but still transparent. |
| 7 |
SIT WELL – see here. |
| 14 |
NEFARIOUS; (A FINER)* O US |
| 15 |
SRI LANKA; (A LARK IS)* around N – I’m not a big fan of ‘here’ to mean ‘a place somewhere in the world’, but this is seen in daily puzzles too sometimes. |
| 17 |
AM ERICA – a stilted cryptic reading (“…claim is to be a girl”). |
| 18 |
DECIBEL – very easy cryptic definition. |
| 20 |
YUP PIE |
| 22 |
RAT EL |
This week’s errors in the on-line (non-interactive) solution are IDTENTLY for 13A and HEARTHACHE (possibly meaning “nostalgia” 🙂 for 2D (and SIKADEER and MAIL BAGS, despite the word lengths given with the clues); but (surprisingly?) this time it doesn’t seem to have broken the interactive puzzle where the solution gives SIKH DEER (well, it did say “oriental” in the clue ;-), IDTENTLY, CARHFREE and HEARTHACH.
I’m generally less concerned about the imprecisions, since I’ve come to expect then in the ST puzzle.
I must try to do better next time x 100
There are 6 omissions from the blog. Thankfully (I hope) I have those ones correct:
10a Draw out trout, perhaps, but it’s on the small side (8)
DWAR FISH
11a Fish retreat to fertile region (6)
GAR DEN. Starting to smell something fishy now!
16a Jaunty if no charge follows caution (8)
CARE FREE
19a (Far) and (weary)* migration for bird of passage (8)
WAYFARER
24a Girl has position calling for standoffishness (8)
DI STANCE
3d About six points for student to go over again (6)
RE VI SE