Solving time: 18 minutes.
By no means difficult this morning; though it was hard to know which answers to omit. Thought there was some complex math(s) going on at 15 but it turns out to be purely to do with the letters in the abbreviation. Doh! This was the only one that gave me pause but. Fast times expected, then, from the speedsters.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | PITY. PI{ |
3 | DETER,MIN(E)D. The E is the last letter of ‘lifE’. |
9 | EVANGEL. Reversal of ‘leg’ and ‘nave’. An archaic word for the christist gospel. |
11 | CUT,I,CLE. The last bit is ‘clean’ minus ‘an’. |
12 | E(LECTOR)A,L. ‘Ea’ for ‘each’. |
13 | O,SAGE. |
14 | D(IS,PEN)SATI,ON. Don is the academic (as he so often is). Sati is suttee: the former Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. The def is ‘immunity’. |
18 | SILVER LINING. The middle letters in ‘wAGe’ give us the symbol for silver. |
21 | Omitted. The title should give it away but. |
22 | NOR(MALI)SE. |
24 | TR{ |
25 | D,IS,MISS. Final letter of ‘traineD’. |
26 | COFFEE SHOP. CO (firm) and HOP (bound), containing F (fine) and FEES. |
27 | MESS{ |
Down | |
---|---|
1 | PRE(TEND)S. TEND (nurse) inside PRES{ |
2 | T(RAVER)SE. The container is an anagram of ‘set’. |
4 | E(U)(L)ER. E’er (always). |
5 | ESCALATOR. Anagram of ‘stole a car’. |
6 | METROPOLITANS. Anagram of ‘Rome’ and ‘Platonist’. NOAD2: “A bishop having authority over the bishops of a province, in particular (in many Orthodox Churches) one ranking above archbishop and below patriarch”. |
7 | NEC{ |
8 | DIES,EL. Last two letters from the even letters of ‘wElL’. |
10 | GO THE DISTANCE. GOT; HE’D; 1; STANCE. Straight charade. |
15 | SEVEN SEAS. Cubic centimetres = cc (two Cs). 3.5 times that = seven Cs. And that sounds like Seven Seas. |
16 | FIL(1,CID)E. FILE (record). |
17 | OG,{ |
19 | M(ASTI)C. Asti is a favourite wine in these parts (when it’s not tent). MC (master of ceremonies) is the host. |
20 | Omitted. Don’t do this if your LJ account is playing up! |
23 | RA,DIO{ |
I really liked 15 down, that made me smile.
I did like ‘normalise’, that was very smooth. You see the cryptic, but what language and what country? Amazingly, it comes to you.
I think I’m with Maestrotempus on 18ac: What we find in ‘wage’ is silver, not silver lining. The word ‘wage’ has ‘WE’ lining it, not silver (it has silver lined, if anything). So what we find in ‘wage’ is WE lining AG, I guess; and that gives us the definition.
Or something. ‘Hope in depression we found in wage’ would do it, maybe.
However, having removed it I realise there is now no reference to the saying “Every cloud has a silver lining” which would have dealt with Kevin’s point. The silver lining is INSIDE the cloud as ‘AG’ is inside “wage”.
I also intended, but forgot, to make reference to the 1920 song by Jerome Kern and Bud De Sylva: Look for the Silver Lining (whenever clouds appear in the blue).
I found this on the tough side, and several answers went in with queries, so I was glad to find them explained in the blog (SILVER LINING, SEVEN SEAS – doh! – , PRETENDS).
As others, I had FILICIDE as my LOI.
COD: ESCALATOR for the well hidden anagram … another doh moment for me!
Thanks for the blog, mctext, and thank heavens there are too many letters in ‘otorhinolaryngology’ for it ever to appear as an answer. You may, however, have given setters some unwelcome ideas ….
Good to see Euler the Swiss mathematician responsible for much of the terminology used in maths. Loved “wage” and SEVEN CC.
On FILICIDE can I suggest that the word play is particularly clear. “one group of dectives” is surely I-CID which means “record” is the container and “file” is one of the commonest? If you stop trying to guess from the definition and work the clue life gets easier!
Otherwise 15 minutes, and good fun.
At least one version of lining goes on the inside, so I was happy with that, and gave SILVER LINING my CoD for being clever. I also liked “designing Christian” at 23d.
FILICIDE looks like one of those words which is only ever going to turn up in crosswords – indeed, most google hits seem to be definitions. Perhaps we should offer a prize for the most witty random alternative answer, with extra credit for making it match the wordplay. How about LINICIDE, the termination of an entire aristocratic family (or the destruction of tablecloths), file as in single file = line?
My all time favourite of the genre was “lackadaisical: a bicycle made for one”.
WIKICIDE: deleting one’s own Wikipedia entry
(or defenestrating Julian Assange – cf. Piers Morgan, above)
I started doing an alphabet search for 16dn but decided it was more sensible to think of a suitable word for “record”. By this time I’d got to DILICIDE so in retrospect not the right move.
METROPOLITAN was new to me and FILICIDE and EVANGEL were unfamiliar. OSAGE is one of those otherwise completely unfamiliar words that has appeared here enough times to be become almost commonplace. I imagine the OSAGE are very keen on NOH.
Nice to see any mathematician, but especially EULER. Good mathematicians seem to end up on banknotes with a denomination of 10, such as the (perhaps former) Swiss 10 franc note bearing his effigy.
My first comment above (currently second in the thread) deals with your other point and it’s one I keep forgetting but it’s supported in the usual dictionaries. Homicide, suicide and presumably other -icides work in the same way.
Thanks Jack.
He sobbed and he sighed, and a gurgle he gave
Then he plunged himself into the billowy wave
And an echo arose from the suicide’s grave
“Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow”