Solving time: 20 mins
Two clues, 1ac (FORWARD) and especialy 1dn (FRISIAN), took up at least half of my time on this. The alternative spelling at 1dn was the main reason, though I should really have got 1ac faster.
The rest of the puzzle was probably harder than normal, but then there was some very strange / inaccurate wordplay. On the other hand 14ac was excellent.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | FORWARD; WAR (= ‘Conflict’) in FORD (= ‘crossing’) – I tried ‘war’ at the beginning but on in the middle, for some reason; ‘out’ is slightly stretched for ‘outside’ but there’s not really much else it could mean here, although I did rack my brains for short synonyms of ‘crossing out’. |
| 5 | PEGASUS – not a great clue, since the fish (which looks like a seahorse) is named after the horse in question. |
| 9 | INCURSION; (CO + IN RUINS)* – ‘Small company’ has to be converted to ‘Co.’ before anagramming. |
| 10 | O + RATE – ‘but’ is only included here for the surface reading. |
| 11 | I’M + POST – very nearly slipped up with ‘impast’ here. |
| 12 | MIRTHFUL; (FILM HURT)* |
| 14 | NORWEGIANS; (IN SNOW GEAR)* – fabulous anagram. |
| 16 | HOLY; “WHOLLY” |
| 18 | RITE; IT in RE (= ‘about’) |
| 19 | ASTRONOMIC (2 defs, sort of) |
| 22 | PROVOSTS; rev. of OR (= ‘gold’), + V (= ‘five’), all in POSTS (= ‘offices’) |
| 23 | MENIAL; MEN (= ‘chaps’) + I[gnore] A[n] (first letters) + L (= learner = ‘apprentice’) |
| 26 | SHARK; SH (= ‘Silence’) + ARK |
| 27 | SPIRITOSO; (I TRIP)* in SO-SO – should have seen much sooner that this was an Italian musical term. |
| 28 | SCENERY (2 defs) – I didn’t know that a ‘flat’ is a flat piece of scenery lowered as a backdrop onto a stage |
| 29 | FORGOES; “FOUR” + GOES |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | FRISIAN (2 defs) – as in 5ac, this is really one definition since the cow (‘lower’) and the islander are both from Friesland in Holland. That isn’t the reason I spent so much time on this, though – I knew I was looking for a word like this from early on but having tried the Channel Islands and various other options I got stuck. Even with all four crossing letters I was doubtful, having never come across this spelling before. |
| 2 | RECAP; R.E. (= Royal Engineers = ‘troops’) + CAP (= ‘top’) |
| 3 | ARRESTED; (STEED)* after ARR[ival] |
| 4 | DRIP (hidden) – this had to be right but I still looked for other answers, thinking 1ac might be ‘warfare’. |
| 5 | PENSIONERS; (PEER’S SON IN)* – a jarring nounal anagram indicator. |
| 6 | GHOSTS; G (= ‘Force’, as in G-force) + HOSTS (= ‘landlords’) – good clue, as long as you’re happy with ‘force’ = G. |
| 7 | STAFFROOM; STAFF (= ‘walking aid’) + rev. of MOOR |
| 8 | SHELLEY; rev. of YES in HELL – pretty awful clue. The definition doesn’t make sense (‘His lines’ is supposed to suggest a poet), the comma after ‘uplift’ spoils the grammar (‘uplift agreed’, meaning ‘reverse of YES’, is intended) and ‘with content first used in 13dn’ has to be read as somehow meaning ‘containing a synonym for the first part of 13dn’ (since ‘Dis’ is the Underworld in Roman mythology). |
| 13 | DISSATISFY; DIY around (AS FISTS)* – another one that makes no sense, with ‘fly’ used intransitively as an anagram indicator when a finite verb (‘stores’) has already been used in the wordplay. In other words, this is like saying ‘Box contains apples go mouldy’. There’s a possible argument that ‘fly’ could be an adjective, as in ‘sly’, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what was intended. |
| 15 | RATION ALE – although ‘ale ration’ is what’s suggested here. |
| 17 | INTERIOR; INTER around RIO |
| 18 | RE-POSES |
| 20 | CALLOUS; CALL US around O |
| 21 | COCKLE – at first I thought this was an allusion to the phrase ‘cockles of one’s heart’, but actually a cockle is heart-shaped so that’s probably what’s meant here. |
| 24 | IROKO; (ROOK I)* – an African tree, which for some reason I always think is Japanese pottery (that’s ‘imari’). |
| 25 | LIEF; (LIFE)* – obvious wordplay but a pretty obscure answer. I don’t think I’ve come across an actual usage of this word although I’ve seen it a few times in crosswords. |
Since I’ve been tackling archival puzzles recently, I didn’t find the inaccuracies you mention too offputting. I agree with you about NORWEGIANS: first-rate.
As for LIEF, I recommend a trip to the theatre to see Hamlet, where you should pay particular attention to the speech which starts “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.” (I expect I could come up with some other quotations, but that’s the one that springs immediately to mind.)
PS: the answer to 22A is given as PEOVOSTS in the online solution. (Sigh!)
Let’s hope they don’t withhold the prize, as they did recently in The Australian (“Sunday Times”) after receiving a faulty solution. The excuse? I quote:
“We publish what The Sunday Times supplies us”.
Lief is not uncommon, particularly in literature, as a means of indicating something like the speech of
uneducated-but-proud-country-folk, etc.
One thing I do rather dislike is the rash of exclamation marks that occasionally break out in the clues, usually for no good reason.
Since this insight occurred on Friday, my time was six days.