Solving time: 4:26, one mistake (‘lannata’ for LANTANA at 20dn)
A typical Sunday Times puzzle: mostly straightforward, a couple of difficult words, some very good clues and a couple of pretty bad ones.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across |
| 1 |
ALLEVIATOR; rev. of ELL (= “L”) in AVIATOR – dreadful definition to kick off (‘Provides relief’). |
| 6 |
POLO; rev. of LOP, + O (= ‘circle’) |
| 9 |
ASSET; A + S (= ‘point’) + SET (= ‘established’) |
| 10 |
OPERATING; OPERA (= ‘Carmen, perhaps’) + TIN (= ‘can’) + G (= ‘grand’, i.e. 1000 dollars) |
| 12 |
RESUSCITATION; (CURSE ON IT IT’S A)* |
| 14 |
LAMPOONS; LAMP + (SOON)* |
| 15 |
DIVERS (2 defs) |
| 17 |
THROWN (cryptic defn) |
| 19 |
WRANGLER; W[elsh] + R[iver] + ANGLER – I’m not sure if ‘wrangler’ can mean ‘angry argument’ or if this is a partial definition, like 1ac. I wasted some time here going through various Welsh rivers. |
| 21 |
ACCOMMODATION (2 defs) – I didn’t know this could mean ‘a loan of money’ (Chambers). |
| 24 |
IN (= ‘at home’) + TENDING |
| 25 |
HEART; (EARTH)* – this is a little bit naughty (‘earthquake’ = (EARTH)*) but not too difficult… |
| 26 |
GOLF; rev. of FLOG (= ‘sell’) – …whereas this is harder and very naughty (‘Oversell’ meaning the reverse of a word for ‘sell’). |
| 27 |
LEBENSRAUM; (ENA’S LUMBER)* |
| Down |
| 1 |
A + WAY |
| 2 |
LUSTRUM; (TRU[e] + SLUM)* |
| 3 |
VOTES FOR WOMEN; (NEW SORT OF MOVE)* – pretty good anagram. |
| 4 |
AROUSING; A + (SOUR)* + (GIN)* – poorly worded with an awkward ‘of’ in the middle of the wordplay. |
| 5 |
O.B. + ELI – the daggers used to denote footnotes in printing. |
| 7 |
ORIFICE; (I,I,FORCE)* |
| 8 |
ORGANISERS; (RING-A-ROSES)* – my favourite clue in the puzzle, with a fantastic anagram and clever indicator, which appears to be a noun in the surface reading but is actually an intransitive verb. |
| 11 |
ARABIAN NIGHTS; (THINGS IN A BAR A)* – another good clue. |
| 13 |
FLAT-RACING; rev. of ALF, + TRACING |
| 16 |
TRIANGLE; (ALTERING)* |
| 18 |
RECITAL; (C[lass] + RETAIL)* |
| 20 |
LANTANA; (A + N[ew] + NATAL)* – a 50/50 guess for me, which I got wrong with ‘lannata’. |
| 22 |
O + PINE |
| 23 |
STEM (2 defs) |
‘Accommodation’, in the sense of a small loan, is a lower middle-class genteelism from the turn of the century: “If you could provide me with a small accommodation until Friday, old chap…..”
Both ‘lustrum’ and ‘arousing’ were rather awkward clues that a good editor should have fixed.
I was a bit surprised by ‘lebensraum’ – not very PC today, are we?
Another problem with ‘earthquake’ is that it requires ‘quake’ to be an intransitive verb. That’s ok, except that it’s plural, so ‘earth’ has to be read a plural. In other words, ‘earthquake’ = ‘[the letters] EARTH [themselves] QUAKE’. You see this sort of thing in advanced cryptics, in which I think in general either ‘earth quake’ or ‘earth quakes’ would be acceptable (note the spaces); I’m not quite sure what the Times rule is (and I doubt the ST knows what its own rules are).
I had never made any connection between the names “Asterix” and “Obelix” in the Asterix books other than that they were based on words ending “-isk”, and assumed that “Obelix” was just a convenient allusion to the stones he carves.
“Obelisk” also has the meaning “obelus” (the single dagger, as above), and appararently scholars used to mark (religious) texts “with asterisk and obelisk” – the former denoting defects and the second redundancy.
The Asterix books are full of meaningful references, and I would assume that Goscinny was aware of the connection (I imagine the practice would have been the same in French).
No problem for me with Oversell = FLOG backwards at 26a.
Good puzzle. Thanks setter & T for the blog.