Solving time: 8:48, one mistake (17dn)
Not the easiest Sunday Times puzzle although a better grid than usual, with only 1dn and 18dn breaking the rule that half or more letters in a grid entry should be checked by crossing answers. There were some good clues, e.g. 10ac (FIRE DAMP), 23ac (TANGIBLE), 1dn (HABITUE) and 6dn (INAPT), and a few strange ones. Well done if you knew the Ugandan city of ENTEBBE at 17dn.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across |
| 4 |
COURIERS; (CRUISER)* around O |
| 8 |
WALLET; ALL in WET – a curious (partial) definition (‘No help if empty on that rainy day’). |
| 9 |
MEDIATES; (DEEM IT A)* + S – I don’t think ‘Saint’ = S is allowed in the daily Times puzzles, although it’s in the dictionaries (Chambers, at least), so I was slow to spot the anagram here. |
| 10 |
FIRED A M.P. – I was surprised to learn that firedamp can also be two words, but Chambers confirms. Using ‘down under’ to indicate ‘underground’ was nicely misleading. |
| 11 |
TITBIT; (TITI + T[ree]) around B (= ‘bee – they say’) |
| 12 |
RUTH + LESS – this is a weak clue; the girl’s name ‘Ruth’ (probably) comes from the old word ‘ruth’ meaning ‘pity’, and the ending ‘-less’ is in the same sense as ‘less’ = ‘smaller’, so the wordplay is really just the definition again. |
| 13 |
SINOLOGY; (LINGO SO)* + Y |
| 16 |
RENEGADO; (GREEN)* + A + DO – not a variant I’ve seen before (it’s obsolete, hence ‘former’). This is also the Spanish spelling of the word, through which the normal version ‘renegade’ is derived. |
| 19 |
NINEPINS; (PENNIES IN – E)* |
| 21 |
STOLEN; (TO LENS)* – a clumsily worded clue. |
| 23 |
TANGIBLE; TABLE around (N.G. + I) – good clue which took me longer than it should have and involved a bizarre dalliance with ‘tungsten’. |
| 24 |
OBSTACLE; (T[he] + LOB ACE’S)* – hard to pick out the anagram fodder here. The surface doesn’t make a lot of sense either, despite the multiple tennis references. |
| 25 |
GREENS (2 defs) – another of those partial definitions of which this puzzle is so fond: ‘For putting on’ = ‘Things for putting on’ = ‘Things on which you would putt’, i.e. golfing greens. |
| 26 |
REFINERY; (INFER RYE)* |
| Down |
| 1 |
HABITUE; (A BIT) in HUE – excellent clue. |
| 2 |
ELSEWHERE; (HEELS WERE)* – I tried to anagram ‘were clean’ at first. |
| 3 |
STRAFE; (FEAR)* after S[tree]T |
| 4 |
COMPASS + ION + AT + ELY – solved backwards, since ‘English cathedral’ is (nearly) always ELY; good to see ‘item charged’ = ION, rather than the usual ‘charge’. |
| 5 |
UPDATING; (A DUNG PIT)* – nice anagram. |
| 6 |
I(NAP)T – another good clue, with ‘it’ a subtle element of the wordplay. |
| 7 |
REEKING; (IN GREEK)* |
| 14 |
LOOP LINES (2 defs) |
| 15 |
BARNACLE; BAR + (CLEAN)* – I think ‘check’ and ‘bar’ can both mean ‘to hinder’. |
| 17 |
ENTEBBE; (BEE BENT)* – the tenth biggest city in Uganda(!). With E?T???E in place I wrote down what I thought were the likeliest possibilities for the anagram; this was not among them. Even with the extra letter I still got it wrong, guessing ‘Ebtebne’ by analogy with… I don’t know. Mbabane maybe? Zimbabwe? |
| 18 |
INK + LING – nice definition of ‘ink’ (‘squid’s defence’). |
| 20 |
NONAGE; rev. of (E.G. + A NON) – this clue is iffy: ‘in Paris a refusal’ might be ‘un non’, but ‘a non’? Writing ‘…a refusal in Paris…’ would perhaps have been better, although the surface reading would have suffered a little. |
| 22 |
LATH + I – two difficult bits to this, ‘lath’ meaning ‘a thin strip of wood’ and ‘lathi’ being an Indian word for a heavy stick. This comes up a lot, though, so worth remembering. |
21:55 for me. Sundays have definitely become a lot more interesting and challenging of late, sometimes surpassing the Saturday puzzle. I thought this one made good use of the greater license given to the Sunday setters. I loved the anagrams for ELSEWHERE and UPDATING, and I learnt something with RENEGADO. I’ve a feeling I’ve been caught out by the ‘oil producing plant’ before, and sure enough spent a long time here looking for a botanical answer. Fool me once… etc.