DNF. I did most of this very quickly, but then came to a grinding halt at 8dn, where I didn’t know the word and the clue contains an error that makes it unsolvable. Rather annoying, but thankfully this sort of thing is extremely rare.
Other than that, this was a fairly straightforward but very enjoyable puzzle with just a couple of obscure terms to test your vocabulary and/or wordplay skills.
Sorry about the strange gap between the acrosses and downs. I’ve no idea what’s causing it.
Across |
1 |
Expecting trouble? |
MORNING SICKNESS – CD. |
9 |
Attempt to deceive an unknown person during short interval |
TRY IT ON – TR(Y)ITONe. A TRITONE is a musical interval, aka augmented fourth, diminished fifth, blue note, the ‘Sim’ in ‘The Simpsons’. I think the question of whether Y can be an unknown person (as opposed to just a thing) has come up before. It’s supported by Collins: ‘any unknown, unspecified, or variable factor, number, person, or thing.’ |
10 |
Write a crushing remark
|
PUT-DOWN – DD, although the first is very mildly cryptic in the sense that it wouldn’t normally have a hyphen. |
11 |
Strong drink at Horse’s Head |
HALE – Horse, ALE. |
12 |
Loved piece about early form of transport
|
VELOCIPEDE – (LOVED PIECE)*. An early form of bicycle, apparently. |
13 |
About to carry Spanish beer back to sink
|
RELAPSE – RE (about) containing a reversal of SP ALE. SP for ‘Spanish’ isn’t an abbreviation you see very often but it’s in Collins. |
15 |
Locks around our entrance
|
ENAMOUR – reversal of MANE (locks), OUR. |
17 |
Roman is trapped in expensive French city
|
CHESTER – CH(EST)ER, where CHER is ‘expensive’ in French and EST is ‘is’ in Latin. |
19 |
Leader departs citadel and is replaced by German troublemaker
|
GREMLIN – G (German) replaces the first letter of KREMLIN. |
20 |
Stole, say, good snack
|
POACHED EGG – POACHED (stole), EG, G. |
22 |
Ointment used in herbal medicine |
BALM – contained in ‘herbal medicine’. I love the smell of lip balm in the morning. |
25 |
Carry out ice
|
EXECUTE – DD. |
26 |
Dish made from butter by English people |
RAMEKIN – RAM (butter), E, KIN. |
27 |
Being basic geezer I try arm wrestling with dockhand |
TOM DICK AND HARRY – (I TRY ARM DOCKHAND)*. For the definition to work doesn’t this have to be OR not AND? |
Down |
1 |
Tie and hat required to go round church |
MATCH – reversal of TAM, then CH. |
2 |
Two guys down a shade
|
ROYAL BLUE – ROY, AL (two guys), BLUE (down). |
3 |
Old letter in audiotape |
IOTA – contained in ‘audiotape’. In the daily puzzles no more than one containment clue is allowed, but this isn’t the daily puzzle. |
4 |
Scots not taken in by silly people like Columbus
|
GENOESE – GE(NO)ESE. |
5 |
Pick up note about show |
IMPROVE – reversal of (do re) MI, then PROVE (show). |
6 |
Young cat heard to stir bird
|
KITTIWAKE – homophone of ‘kitty’, then WAKE (stir). |
7 |
Horny beast wants hill-dweller to run off
|
ELOPE – antELOPE. |
8 |
Council fix drains and head off |
SANHEDRIN – I didn’t know this word, and it is not solvable from the clue. As verlaine pointed out on the club forum, it should probably read ‘fix drains then head off’, which would indicate an anagram: (DRAINS tHEN)*. Even with the correct anagrist I’m not sure I’d have got the right answer, rather than (say) SINDEHRAN, but I’ll never know. |
13 |
Person getting “How to cook” books takes in first of instructions |
RECIPIENT – RECIPE (how to cook), NT (books) containing Instructions. |
14 |
Chat-up line I love about perfume
|
PATCHOULI – (CHAT-UP, L, I, O)*. I remembered this word from past crosswords. |
16 |
Crack finally found aboard suspicious oriental ship
|
OIL TANKER – (ORIENTAL)* containing cracK. |
18 |
Bigot’s angry pet |
REDNECK – RED (angry), NECK (snog, pet). |
19 |
One in the navy pursuing nutty circumnavigator
|
GAGARIN – GAGA, R(I)N. Yuri of that ilk. I’m not sure how much navigation is involved in orbiting, but you get the idea. |
21 |
Crack unit drink in the morning |
A-TEAM – A(TEA)M. Cue happy childhood memories of watching complete rubbish. |
23 |
Well contains joke coins
|
MONEY – M(ONE)Y. ‘My’ as in ‘well well’, ‘one’ as in ‘do you know the one about the rabbi, the fortune teller and the pterodactyl?’ |
24 |
A hospital takes in post-grad nurse from abroad
|
AMAH – A is A, hospital is H, post-grad is MA. Construct accordingly. Another crossword word. |
Ditto with PATCHOULI: hate the stuff. As late as the 80s, I had a “friend” with a bit of a hippy complex who knew of my dislike for the stench and insisted on putting a few drops into my nylon watch band from time to time. Took me ages to discover why the pong was hanging around. With friends like that, who needs enemas?
Couldn’t parse 9ac despite knowing TRITONE. “MA-RIA … I’ve just met …” etc. No idea why, say , c to f# should be so castigated.
If you look at the html coding after 27ac you have nine < BR > instead of one. If you delete eight of them it will come right. P.S.I have added spaces in my example to prevent LJ reading it as code and hiding it.
Edited at 2015-12-06 06:24 am (UTC)
Edited at 2015-12-06 10:42 am (UTC)
< /table > and < table cellspacing=”3″
which in your version above appear on different lines and I wonder if this could be a factor.
You might try placing the cursor after < /table > and pressing Delete until < table cellspacing=”3″ > comes up to join it …><…. Then separate the two items by putting one < br > (but without spaces) between them.
Edited at 2015-12-06 05:14 pm (UTC)
I enjoyed this crossword, either Jeff Pearce has upped his game in recent months, or I am coming to appreciate his talents more, take your pick!
Edited at 2015-12-06 08:03 am (UTC)
Patchouli and velocipede were two “foreign” words that gave me far more trouble, never having come across either in the real world and only the latter in the mental one.
A challenge, and an enjoyable one in toto.
Edited at 2015-12-06 08:17 am (UTC)
Which is a shame, because as I was closing in on my last few clues in the NE I was thinking “This might be JP’s best puzzle yet”. It’s full of concise, pithy clues and is just gnarly enough for a Sunday.
VELOCIPEDE, ENAMOUR, ROYAL BLUE, OIL TANKER and GREMLIN .. all terrific.
Edited at 2015-12-07 09:24 am (UTC)