Maybe it was a few days when German was the prevalent language, maybe it was the long wait in Amsterdam for our connecting flights, maybe I’m just tired, but I took over 20 minutes to solve, and when reviewing, can’t work out why!
ACROSS
1 MUM-BO JUMBO (BO is homophone of BEAU) – blatant self-promotion from The Times?
8 DE-(<=IRAN)-US – a denarius was an ancient Roman coin, as anyone who studied Latin at school will remember.
9 IDE-ATE – ide being a fish that only really crops up in crosswordland
11 BR-O(KENDO)WN – took longer to parse than to solve
14 LIBYA – hidden backwards in plAYBILl
19 BR(ONZE)AG-E where the E is the second letter in “lEague”. “Onze”is the French for “eleven”, therefore “french team”. By the way, it is also an excellent monthly football magazine if you can speak (or read) French.
22 FREEF(O.R.)ALL – O.R. being “other ranks”
23 G.I.-F.T.
24 CASUAL(ties)
25 INNOVATE – (on native)*
26 (p)US(h)ER – good surface
27 GENERATORS – (one garret’s)* – interesting way of indicating the anagram.
DOWN
1 MADE HASTE – (meatheads)*
3 JAIL-BA(I)T
4 MASS OBSERVATION – for some unfathomable reason, I couldn’t work out the second word, and this held me up for at least five minutes. I can’t find any link to Mass Observation and wartime, except that the project started just before WWII. It continued well into the 50s and seems to be the forerunner to advanced opinion polling.
6 BREADLINE – (diner able)*
7 PUT AWAY – double definition
13 EXCHEQUER – homophone of X-CHECKER
15 A-DEPT.-NESS
16 (<=RE-LINE-NO)
18 (<=SPA(H)RE-P)
20 AGITATO – TAT in (Iago)* – musical term for “played in a restless or spasmodic manner”
10A isn’t blogged. I wondered why (C)HEAP would be synonymous with WORTHLESS?
20d Trash stolen by devious Iago in troubled way (7)
AGI TAT O. Tat means rubbish or trash. Hence TAT inside (stolen by) devious IAGO = AGIO gives us AGITATO.
The rest of the “easies” omitted from the blog:
6a Dances to pop hits (4)
BOPS. A double definition.
10a Carbon discharged by worthless old car (4)
(C) HEAP. Some discussion above of the validity of CHEAP = WORTHLESS. Near enough wouldn’t you say?
12a Sheltering in bad weather, bird’s most lethargic (9)
SLEE PIES T
17a The ultimate in large-scale films (5)
EPICS. Think Ben Hur, the Ten Commandments and, more recently, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
2d Authorisation wanted by female seeking romance? (7)
MAN DATE
5d Character in Dickens and Hardy (6)
OLIVER. Not Olly the Obscure then?
21d Closely follow learner taking, say, difficult bend (3,3)
DOG L EG. A driving test nightmare surface?