Connectivity from work has been limited recently, so I thought it best to do this at midnight, and hope that a) the club was working, and b) I didn’t find myself still struggling to finish at half past one. Happily, a) it is, and b) around 15 minutes required: the longer words were among the first to yield, which meant that once they were solved, they yielded useful hints on lots of clues at once.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 6 | EMIT – backwards reflection of TIME, which, when it isn’t The Enemy, is that which heals all wounds. I spent rather too long looking for variations on DOC, MO etc. |
| 10 | INSIGHT – I = scientific notation for current, and “various things” was a less obvious way than usual of indicating (THINGS)*. |
| 12 | RUN UP – the obligatory cricket reference to confuse non-Commonwealth types, the “approach” in question being that of the bowler to the wicket. “Run” in the sense of laddering in tights etc. |
| 14 | NOT-WITH-STANDING – a nice &lit which caught my eye and was first to go in. |
| 17 | PULCHRITUDINOUS – (LOUD URCHIN IS PUT)* = an unusual synonym for “pretty” which comes much more easily if you’ve read a bit of Latin (pulcher=beautiful is very early vocabulary in that language). |
| 21 | EMBER – I couldn’t help picturing Gordon Brown, who is good at the glowering – this of course is a disguise; just as a FLOWER is also a river because it’s something that flows, so a GLOWER is something which glows. |
| 25 | DIET – I liked this, DIE = stop + T, the heading of T(AKEAWAYS) with that injunction to lose weight by avoiding the latter. |
| 26 | DEATH SQUAD – (HADSET)* + QUAD, as one of four children, who are now apparently the victims – a somewhat morbid note in a cheery puzzle, I thought! |
| Down | |
| 2 | LENIN – excellent. L(eft)+ upwards figure NINE; the man of the Left in question famously lies on his back at the centre of Red Square, embalmed and on show for all who wish to queue. |
| 4 | DOLTISH – DOSH containing L(ieutenan)T + 1; nobody gets called a DOLT these days, really, do they? |
| 5 | WHIPPET – cat as in the Naval one with nine tails + PET. Beloved of Northern stereotypes along with flat caps and racing pigeons. |
| 7 | MAGNIFICO – I kept expecting the poem to be ODE, but it turned out to be IF surrounded by N(ew) and MAGIC+0. If I was more cultured, I’d think of Lorenzo de Medici, but instead I find myself humming Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.. |
| 11 | SPLENDIFEROUS – another long anagram (DEPRESSIONFLU)* with a nice surface reading. |
| 16 | GASTROPOD – DO+PORT+SAG reversed, to follow escargot from my last puzzle. |
| 19 | UPRIGHT – “particular type” meaning “chap who is fussy”, thus PRIG in UHT, which is the preferred method in continental Europe of making milk last for ages (and taste vile – this is one reason it is impossible to get a proper cup of tea in France). |
| 20 | BIPED – (PI) rev. inside BED. Outside the world of crosswords, I suspect good people are rarely described as PI(ous) these days. In another nod to Kipling, and his exceedingly good stories, the heroes of his Stalky & Co. described a ticking off by headmasters and such as pi-jaw. |
Lots to like here, I thought, such as 2 down, but I’ll say 20 down as my COD, as I like the “Man finds uprising good” part of it an excellent shorthand for describing the evolution from dragging one’s knuckles to walking upright.
11 gets my nomination, not so much for COD as for the answer which is itself splendiferous.
Only problem was with Magnifico – I too looked for Ode as the poem. And I’d forgotten that Time was the healer as well as the enemy, so that one took longer than it should have done.
5D as COD as I have a cat and, being a Yorkshireman, own whippets!
More good clues today: 1a, 23, 25, 26, 2 all stood out for me. 2 is my nomination for COD; a neat &lit that conjures up that image of Lenin perfectly.
Although pretty straightforward, there were some very nice clues, including 6a and 2d, but I’ll follow the crowd and nominate 25a today.
15 minutes not bad considering
JohnPMarshall
19d. I’m quite partial to UHT milk, having drunk little else for 20 years now. But they do say it’s an acquired taste, and I do go for the skimmed milk…
Jon
Muses on ultimate political revolutionary – him?
So same breakdown but different execution.
Your original analysis ended up with an impossibility of a kind that it’s worth being able to identify. Most cryptic puzzles, including the Times, follow the rule that (&lits excepted!), the def and wordplay do not overlap. So if ‘heading for takeaways’ = T in the wordplay, ‘takeaways’ cannot also be the definition.
Edited at 2008-03-04 05:56 pm (UTC)
5:31 to solve, but this was a bit of a missed chance for a very fast time – I just couldn’t see 1ac (not aided by a hypothetical, incorrect, ‘C’ from 4dn, from ‘cash’ rather than ‘dosh’) and it was my last entry, which always slows things down.
Ali
Never mind, I’ll probably go and solve tomorrow’s puzzle in 18:40 or something.