Solving time: 26m
My downfall is always the cryptic defs. — bugger them all! — and there were two together in the long across clues. Otherwise, I might have been just a bit quicker. Shaky start as well. Nothing in until I saw the obvious at 11ac. And once completed, I needed another coffee to get the conceit in 2dn.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | RI(SIB)LE. With just the S from SAINT in place, it was obviously going to be SON or SIS. But it wasn’t! |
5 | M(IN)(I’M)UM. Should have seen this one sooner but didn’t have a clue without the terminal M. |
9 | AXIOMATIC. Start with A and reverse TAX. Insert IOM into that. (In the Times, many Mans are frequently islands.) Then I and C (note). |
10 | TU(T)OR. Reversal of ROUT (of which Waterloo may have been an example)*; T from the last letter of ‘WesT’. *On edit: but see jackkt’s remarks on the matter in the comments. |
11 | Omitted. (Drunk expression of surprise.) |
12 | T(ESTIM)ONY. Anagram of ‘Times’ included in TONY — The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre. |
13 | ANTICLOCKWISE. Our first cryptic def. |
17 | ALLITERATIONS. Our second. |
21 | P(A,RADIS)AL. That’s almost a RADIS{ |
24 | DRILL. Triple def., the second of which is (NOAD): “A dark brown baboon with a short tail and a naked blue or purple rump, found in the rain forests of West Africa. Compare with mandrill. Mandrillus leucophaeus, family Cercopithecidae”. |
25 | LEVEE. A homophonic number — cf. ‘levy’. |
26 | FLY,W,EIGHT. Pilot (FLY); with (W); crew (EIGHT). Very tidy indeed. |
27 | TOLS,TOY. Anagram of ‘lost’; play (verb) = TOY. |
28 | DES,TROY. des is French for ‘of the’. Paris was a bloke who used to hang out in Troy. |
Down | |
---|---|
1 | RE-ALLY. Really? |
2 | SAINT PAUL. The conceit is a play on ‘paint Saul’; the chap who wrote lots of epistles but didn’t seem to get many replies. “Dear Paul, Having a lovely time. Wish you were here. The Ephesians”. |
3 | BUM,BOAT. Our tramp here is the American one. Cf. the short-legged cowboy. He was a low-down bum. |
4 | ESTATE CAR. Insertion of STATE (say) into RACE (rally). |
5 | MACES. Two defs. The first must be a verb though I have not heard it used as such. |
6 | NIT,PICK. The first part is a reversal of TIN (money). |
7 | MOTTO. Reversal of { |
8 | MO,RAY EEL. MO (second), RAY (fish); reversal of LEE (side of boat). |
14 | OUTPLAYED. O (old); the quiet song is P+LAY; put that inside an anagram of ‘duet’. |
15 | INSWINGER. IN (batting); WINGER (attacking player); with these two including (‘collaring’) S (second). |
16 | P(A,MPH)LET. |
18 | TIDIEST. ‘That is’ = ID EST. |
19 | ODDNESS. Two defs., one alluding to the odd numbers on both sides of the clue: 19. and (7). |
20 | FLAT,LY. First and last letters of ‘LandladY’. (Can’t quite imagine Oxbridge dons referring to their rooms as a ‘flat’.) |
22 | Omitted. You can un-tangle it from the crossers. |
23 | SOFT{ |
I must say, the answers were rather mundane. I would rather have a puzzle with a few you’ve never heard of, just as long as they are possible from the cryptic
Some really crafty clues, but COD to FLYWEIGHT – beautifully done.
Fortunately, I knew ‘anticlockwise’ –in the US, it’s ‘counterclockwise’. And I believe that in a fairly recent puzzle someone objected to calling Waterloo a rout.
50 minutes for this, somewhat hampered by starting at the bottom and working up.
I didn’t know SIB as a word in its own right and just assumed it was an abbreviation.
‘Waterloo’ is now in the language as a defeat or rout, so not just an example of one. Lots of songs for this. Here’s the first one I remember from 1959 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDeOoS8b0zQ
There are c ouple of partial anagrams at 12 and 27, but I can’t remember a puzzle without a complete anagram.
Not full understanding: ODDNESS
Thanks McT for informative blog, much appreciated.
Perhaps again an old-fashioned type of crossword, not out of place in the 60’s. CoD to PAMPHLET for the best and most misleading of the surfaces.
COD to 28 for the splendid French/Paris wordplay. And I can’t believe there’s such a thing as a bumboat!
Without bothering to pause to consider alternatives I thought that 25 was a dodgy backwards homophone of evil (love of money being the root thereof) and that 19 should have been an even-numbered clue with odd numbers hence either side.
Agree that the surface for flyweight was spot on and that the Paris clue was a great spot by the setter.
Edited at 2011-06-22 08:01 pm (UTC)
Thank you, mctext, too for a great blog, in particular the explanations of ODDNESS and DRILL (my route to this answer was obscure – for some reason I was thinking of the use of a drill [bore] in a dental practice).
Another type of medium-paced ball (and in this case also the bowler who delivers it) is a seamer, one which deviates off the grass upon landing. The most common types here are leg cutter and off cutter. (Watch out for variant punctuation/enumeration!)
Slow deliveries include leg spinner (also the bowler), leg spin and leg break, and off spinner (ditto), off spin and off break. Other types of slow ball include googly and, especially in an Australian context, Bosie or Bosie (capitalised, as it is named after the player Bosanquet).
There’s a pretty good list here, to which one might add ‘arm ball’.
What a completist nerd, me? Oh, OK then.
AK
do you search for a [url=http://loans–payday.com] Cash loans[/url] ? here on this page you can easily find a lender without trouble !
This ease of use is achieved by the application of web forms resembling the normal hard copy application forms, the only difference being the fact that they are digital and look more appealing!!!
Oaj26Bt6Kb0Gc4Tt5