16:30 on the club timer.
A gentle, relatively vanilla offering from Dean this week. Nothing wrong with that, of course: his puzzles needn’t be exquisite torture every time, and I had a bit of a hangover when solving this so was grateful for something a bit gentler than usual. I enjoyed solving it.
Happy Father’s Day to any dads reading. I have just seen it in watching England going down to an honourable defeat against Italy with my eldest son, who is nine. I have never enjoyed a football match more.
Across |
1 |
Servant concealed bags with mother |
HANDMAID – AND (with), MA (mother) inside HID (concealed). ‘Bags’ is the containment indicator. |
6 |
Cows stand up, quietly going round the bend |
DAUNTS – tricky clue this, which I didn’t understand until after I’d finished. It’s an anagram of STAND UP without the P, or ‘quietly going’. ‘Round the bend’ is the anagrind, but confused me because I thought the bend was the U, and I had to put something around it. Unsurprisingly I couldn’t make this work. |
9 |
Socket most fit before getting old Walkman? |
PORTABLE STEREO – or PORT, ABLEST, ERE, O. I think of a PORTABLE STEREO as what used to be called a ‘ghetto blaster’. A Walkman is more a personal stereo. Is it just me? |
10 |
A City love story
|
ANECDOTE – or AN, EC, DOTE. |
11 |
Smoke and ice swirling around one horse |
CIGGIE – an anagram of ICE around 1 GG. |
13 |
Mix, when that’s so right |
ASSORT – AS, SO, RT. ‘That’s’ is filler, to be read as ‘that has’. Right can be RT as well as R. You get similar behaviour from saints. |
15 |
Downright hard, or having hard shell |
THOROUGH – H, OR surrounded by TOUGH. |
16 |
I’d make good sort of theatre publicist? |
REPAIRER – REP (sort of theatre), AIRER (publicist). |
19 |
River bed polluted around waste outlet, mostly. |
DANUBE – an anagram of ‘bed’ surrounding… you can work the rest out for yourself. I wonder if Dean tried to work in a reference to the bottom of the river. |
21 |
Force to decorate nursing uniform |
DURESS – U (uniform: radio communication) in DRESS. |
22 |
Mistake – primarily, own goal. |
OMISSION – O (primarily, own), MISSION. |
24 |
Stop tap being applied to nut. |
KNOCK ON THE HEAD – double definition: one figurative, one literal. |
26 |
Overtake old car made by Kia. |
EXCEED – EX (old), CEE’D. To quote Jeremy Clarkson, ‘the only car with an apostrophe in its name’. A triumph of creovation, no doubt the product of some serious outside-the-box brainstorming and 360-degree blue-sky thinking in the Kia marketing department. |
27 |
Very good indication of loose parts |
RATTLING – double definition. If something is RATTLING, it’s very good. Or not, in the recent case of my car’s compressor. I don’t even know what a compressor is, but I can tell you that they are expensive to replace. |
Down |
2 |
Mountain plants too short to include connifer |
ALPINES – PINE inside ALSO (too short). |
3 |
One minister comes in to see governors
|
DIRECTORATE – I, RECTOR inside DATE (see). |
4 |
Massacre after all those in Mexico have left |
ALAMO – A LA (or à la, after) MO. ‘All those in Mexico have left’ tells you to remove all the letters inside ‘Mexico’, leaving you with MO. Writing this blog up, I realised that beyond its name I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the Battle of the Alamo. Now I do, so even if no-one reads this the exercise will not have been futile. |
5 |
Least interesting airport opening for travellers |
DULLEST – I did know that Dulles International Airport was named after John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State under Eisenhower. |
6 |
Bill in nightclub one way to create conflict
|
DISACCORD – AC (bill) in DISCO, then RD. The ‘one’ looks like padding to help the surface, although to be fair there is only one road in the clue. |
7 |
Advantage of American English |
USE – US, E. ODO has ‘the value or advantage of something’ as a definition of USE. |
8 |
Become upset about artist being alive
|
TEEMING – reversal of GET (become) about EMIN (artist). A reminder that living people are allowed in the Sunday puzzles. To see how TEEMING means ‘alive’, add ‘with’. |
12 |
What makes coffee good? Stirring
|
GROUNDSWELL – GROUNDS make coffee. Add WELL (good) and read ‘stirring’ as a gerund. |
14 |
Flog antiquated door
|
THRESHOLD – I was a bit puzzled by this as I thought THRESH just meant to separate grain from husks, but it also means ‘thrash’. Add OLD (antique). |
17 |
Biannual event short of horses? Bull! |
EQUINOX – EQUINE (‘of horses’), OX. |
18 |
Chicken roll with added duck |
ROOSTER – add O (duck) to ROSTER. |
20 |
Stretch of thoroughfare with mountain crossing |
BROADEN – ROAD (thoroughfare) inside BEN (mountain). |
23 |
Useless home record – heading for this |
INEPT – IN, EP, This. I wonder when setters will start feeling the need to add ‘formerly’ or ‘once’ when they clue EP or LP as ‘record’. |
25 |
Reminder of line to be said |
CUE – sounds like ‘queue’. |
Managed to get all bar DAUNTS (I was mistakenly in bovine country) and TEEMING (went half heartedly for FEELING which – unsurprisingly – I could not parse!)
ALAMO I fortunately knew thanks to that old songster Donovan: not sure about the historical accuracy of his verses, but a very pleasing little number and well worth a listen if you still have a secret hankering for cheesecloth shirts and flares.
My COD was EQUINOX closely followed by KNOCK ON THE HEAD.
And they say the Danube isn’t really blue….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_stereo
There are plenty of recognisable sequences of words not listed in dictionaries, often because the meaning is clear from the individual words – more so with “portable stereo” than “personal stereo”.
The contract of employment for Sunday Times crossword setters does not say that they are compelled to sustain a particular level of difficulty. My hope is that most solvers are willing to try puzzles from all three.
That Wikipedia page appears to have been created simply because PORTABLE STEREO appeared in a 2005 newspaper article title. The body of the newspaper article doesn’t even mention PORTABLE STEREO (but does reference personal stereo twice) so the grounds for creating a Wikipedia page for the phrase seem flimsy.
I await with keen anticipation…
If you type the word ‘portable’ into Google the first suggestion that comes up is ‘DVD player’. Times change.
Edited at 2014-06-16 09:32 am (UTC)
Quite a lot of food fits into this category. Frozen peas, frozen yoghurt, strawberry jam, chocolate cake…
Three. His left ear, his right ear and his wild front ear.