38:34 on the Club timer, which is just a little above average for me with the Jumbo. If I had to sum up the solving experience in one word, it might be “steady”: by no means the easiest puzzle, but nothing very obscure or tricky (except the plant – I never know the plants), so I worked my way through at a regular pace without getting bogged down anywhere. On re-inspecting it for blogging purposes, there are plenty of elegant clues, though it seemed, oddly, as if they were nearly all Downs, though I don’t imagine this means two different setters did each half of the puzzle.
With Jumbos, which attract a far smaller audience than daily puzzles, I generally confine myself to discussion of answers which I think are a) less straightforward for inexperienced or non-UK based solvers, or b) especially elegant / questionable. In other words, unless it’s an exceptionally interesting puzzle, the coverage is unlikely to be 100%; however, as always, if a particular clue is not discussed, please feel free to raise it in comments for explanation or discussion.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | TYPEWRITTEN – IT in (PRETTYNEW)*. |
7 | PLAIN-SPOKEN – i.e “PLANE”, spoken. |
13 |
PROSTRATE – R |
15 | RUNIC – NI in RUC; the Royal Ulster Constabulary was the police force of Northern Ireland until a reorganisation a few years ago, hence “recalled” means you have to remember what once was, rather than reversing anything. |
17 | PENTAGON – the internal angle of a pentagon is 108°, which is an obtuse angle (that is, between 90° and 180°). |
20 | POLITICAL CORRECTNESS – “speaker’s care in naming” (with a misleading capital for the sake of the surface) would be the plain definition, while people who behaved in a PC manner would presumably not leave themselves open to a rebuke from, as it happens, the parliamentary Speaker, with a capital. |
26 | RUBICON – cryptic def. “Crossing the Rubicon” is another way of saying you have made an irrevocable decision, as in “burning your boats”. |
29 | GOURMAND – MAN in GOURD. |
32 | COVERSLIP – COVER and SLIP are the obligatory fielding positions for today; the whole thing is the glass (hence “clearly”) which covers samples being examined on a microscope etc. |
37 |
WISH – I confess I struggled a bit here: we have desire (def.), IS (=”exists”) between W and H, which are a “married couple in short”, so presumably short for W |
39 |
HOTSHOT – i.e. POTSHOT with the P replaced by H |
44 |
RECEIPT – R |
45 | COLLECTIVE BARGAINING – COLLECT(part of religious service), I’VE, BAR(=”staff”), GAINING(=”making profit”). |
50 |
TURNCOAT – [URN, C |
51 | PAGODA – hidden in worshiP A GOD At &lit. |
56 | DISCOURTESY – (D,R,USSOCIETY)* &lit.; one of those clues where you can see what it’s getting at, even if it doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. Even in an era where there is a great polarisation between the two main parties in US politics, that surely doesn’t mean that their interactions can be entirely characterised by discourtesy? |
57 | CONNOISSEUR – CON, NO, [IS in (RUES)rev.]. One of those words which is much easier to spell correctly when you have checking letters and wordplay to help. |
Down | |
2 | PHOTOJOURNALIST – cryptic def.; if a picture is worth a thousand words… |
3 | WATERTIGHT – (WITHTARGET)*, and a nice surface. |
4 |
IMAM – M |
5 | THEME PARK – M.E.P. in THE ARK, which is where you would be if Noah had saved you from the deluge. Unless you were a duck, perhaps (see Eddie Izzard for details). |
6 | NEPOTIC – reverse hidden in illiCIT OPENings. |
7 | PANEGYRIC – E.G., YR., in PANIC. |
10 | PARALLEL BARS – an equation demands the use of the equals sign (=), which could be described as two parallel bars, as also used in a gymnastic work-out. Very clever play on the two sorts of working out. |
11 |
KINLESS – |
12 |
NICETY – ICE, T |
21 | EVINCES – more classics! “sex” is Latin for “six”, written in Roman numerals as VI, thus VI in (SCENE)*, and another excellent surface reading. |
23 |
MIDNIGHT – (DIM)rev. NIGH, |
25 | REACH – R (as in the three ‘R’s: Reading, Riting and Rithmetic – no, I’ve never understood that, either), EACH(=”a head”). |
33 | VALERIAN – double def., one a plant which has apparently had uses in medicine for centuries; the other an Emperor of Rome, which was the one I knew. |
34 | MICHELANGELO – I,(CHALLENGE)* in M.O. (modus operandi=way of working). |
40 | THEORISER – 0 in THE RISER (the upright part of a stair). |
43 | DORSAL FIN – (FORLADSIN)*. Another reminder that crossword clues don’t always stand up to scrutiny, but we should probably just enjoy the obvious idea and not be pedantic. (For those who can’t resist pedantry, my point is that if I am shipwrecked and being circled by a Great White shark, which I think is the picture the clue wants to paint, I am probably going to be scared; less so if I am happily scuba diving off a coral reef and observing the dorsal fins of various small tropical fish). |
45 |
CHAMOIS – (IOM)rev. (i.e. the Isle of Man) in CHAS |
46 | BACCHIC – (CAB)rev. + CHIC. |
48 | GANDER – double def., the bird, and “butcher’s” as in the similar phrases “let’s have a butcher’s” and “let’s have a gander”). “A butcher’s” is today’s piece of Cockney Rhyming Slang, where “butcher’s hook” = “look”. |
52 |
HALO – HAL |
Re 23dn, practically nobody whatsoever in London recognises the existence of “elsewhere” or so it seems
Overall I thought this was a nice jumbo, with a scattering of very good clues