Times 24671 – Excudebat Vivianus Ridler, architypographus academicus

Solving time: 65 minutes

Music: Ravel, Daphnis and Chloe, Munch/Boston Symphony, RCA LSC-1893.

I hope you all have a couple of OCTs in your book bag as you view the amphorae in the Ashmolean, because otherwise you don’t have much hope. Even an over-educated old boy like me needed to think hard at every turn, and finally got stuck for quite a while. I thought this was a brilliant puzzle with many highly original clues, but if it is all over your head you may not be so appreciative.

Beginners are reminded that obvious clues are not blogged. I will try to find an obvious clue and not blog it, but don’t get your hopes up.

For those who are interested, the music is part of a Living Stereo traversal I am blogging in Audio Karma.

Across
1	EUROPOP, RUE backwards + O + POP. In this type of puzzle, I was expecting some obscure 16th-century musical form, and even wrote in and erased the correct answer without recognising it.
5	GRANGE, [Percy] GRA[i]NGE[r]. This was obvious to me, but I imagine it may not have been obvious to everyone. Grainger was a very strange fellow indeed, and not a composer we have had lately.
8	PARED DOWN, anagram of POWDER AND. I was certain this was going to be a word meaning ‘powder’ and a word meaning ‘shot’ with the last letter removed from each, and finally put it in from the literal.
9	ADD ON, ADD[is]ON. I tried every trick I could think of with ‘Elia’, and got nowhere.
11	EQUAL, [lak]E QUA L[and]. I wanted to do something with ‘earl’, and for a long time miscounted the letters in ‘lakeland’ and thought ‘e’ was the centre.
12	ASHMOLEAN, ASH + MOLE + AN. I saw this right away, one of my first in. Easy if you have heard of the place.
13	SWEATING, anagram of IN A STEW + G[ood]. A relatively easy one.
15	GLADYS, G + LADY’S. So simple, so elegant, and so hard if you don’t see it.
17	OPEN UP, O(PEN)UP. Oxonii, e typographeo clarendoniano, in case you were wondering.
19	AMPHORAE, anagram of A HAMPER + O. When you suspect a plural answer and there’s no ‘s’ in the anagrind, what to do? Try some foreign or classical plurals.
22	INDO-CHINA, IN DO CHINA, where ‘wearing’ = ‘in’, ‘fleece’ = do’, and ‘pal’ = ‘china’ in CRS. A very clever and original clue.
23	CANST, hidden word in [Ameri]CAN ST[ate]. Since I am from Connecticut, and I had the ‘c’ and the ‘t’, I wanted to put ‘craft’ for the longest time, but I couldn’t see how ‘raf’ could mean ‘able’. Then I couldn’t see how ‘ans’ could mean ‘able’. Then I saw it.
24	TARSI, RAT backwards + IS backwards. Not too hard, if ‘3’ doesn’t send you to ‘pedal’. Fortunately, I didn’t have it yet. The comments point out that this actually is a cross-reference to the root meaning of ‘pedal’, i.e. foot bones.
25	AQUILEGIA, AQUIL(EG I)A. ‘Appearing nightly’ is a bit misleading, since Aquila will appear nightly only in the summer, at least at the latitude of the UK and the US. I had to get this one from the cryptic.
26	MEANIE, MEAN + [n]I[c]E.
27	LIONESS, anagram of LOSES IN. Not hard if you know who Elsa is.
Down
1	EXPRESSIONIST, EXPRESS + [z]IONIST. I put in ‘Impressionist’ at first, then saw how the clue worked.
2	RE-ROUTE, RE + R(OUT)E. I was expecting two completely different sorts of soldiers, and got the same thing twice, our old friends the Royal Engineers.
3	PEDAL, sounds like PEDDLE. My inability to see such answers instantly is always slowing me up, this was one of my last in and I needed all three checking letters.
4	PTOMAINE, P[lain] + TO MAINE. The literal touches on the etymological meaning of the Greek root ‘ptomos’.
5	GUNG-HO, GUN + G(H)O. Here ‘go’ is used as in the phrase ‘make it go’. Another expression with an interesting etymology.
6	AYATOLLAH, AYA(TOLL A)H. I wasted a lot of time with ‘amah’ before I saw the obvious.
7	GODSEND, DOG backwards + SEND. One of the few starter clues.
10	NON-ESSENTIALS, NONES + anagram of ELSA ISN’T. More classical learning for you solvers out there.
14	T-JUNCTION, T[om] J[ones] + UNCTION. Here, ‘unction’ has the metaphorical meaning of ‘excessive suavity or affected charm’.
16	EMMANUEL, EMMA + UN and LE backwards. Luckily, ‘Emma’ was the second novel I tried. It’s at Cambridge, not Oxford, and this is about as scientific as we’re going to get tonight.
18	ENDORSE, E + N(D)ORSE. Another of the starter clues, I would say.
20	RENEGUE, R + EUGENE upside down. An alternate spelling, with a non-PC meaning of ‘Welsh’ to boot.
21	OK, I finally found an obvious one, omitted!
23	CELLO, CE(L + L)O. I got this from the literal, but it took me a long time to see that ‘head of company’ is not ‘c’, but rather ‘CEO’. The two usual indicators for ‘L’ complete the clue.