Off to a flying start with some easy three-letter answers but I became bogged down quite early on. I got started again when I reached the clues for the SE and then the NE flowed on from that, but I made heavy weather of some clues on the LH side. There’s really nothing difficult here although I can never remember worm words so 1dn held me up for ages. My biggest problem was 8dn, solving it and then trying to explain the second part of the clue which I’m still not sure I have understood. I’m ashamed to report I took an hour to complete this grid.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | N(ew),UMBER – UMBER is a brown earthy mineral that gives its name to the colour. |
4 | OUT,RIGHT – On edit, I didn’t explain this further before going to bed but since a number of people have queried it I’ll give my take on it now. I thought, with ‘total’ as the definition, ‘wrong’ = OUT (as in ‘I added up the figures but my answer was wrong / out by one’) and ‘on the contrary’= the opposite of wrong i.e. RIGHT. |
10 | MUS,HY PE,AS – SUM is reversed up front. Greasy spoons are cafes serving cheap fried food and other delights including such items as mushy peas. |
11 | B(lack),ASS,O |
12 | THIRD DEGREE – Double definition. |
14 | Deliberately omitted as it’s that flightless bird yet again. |
15 | D,ECIM,AL – MICE enclosed by LAD all reversed. |
17 | WAP,1,TI – IT 1 PAW all reversed. A North American red deer. |
19 | P(A)UNCH – I think a spare tyre is more usually called a muffin top these days. |
21 | SPAR,ROW |
23 | ARM – It’s a DBE, folks! |
24 | T(ER)RESTRIAL – Anagram TRIER SALT encloses Her Majesty. |
26 | PINTA – One of Columbus’s ships and a reference to a Milk Marketing Board advertising campaign in the 1960s which encouraged us to “Drinka Pinta Milka Day”. Some may remember the slogan as interpreted by Tony Hancock in ‘The Blood Donor’ along with his rendering of another slogan ‘Coughs and sneezes spread diseases’ sung to the tune of Deutschland Uber Alles. |
27 | ON THE WING – Double definition. |
29 | SERGEANT – Sounds like (John Singer) Sargent. |
30 | SLIGHT Double definition. |
Down | |
1 | N(EMAT)ODE – The New Oxford Dictionary of English encloses TAME reversed. |
2 | M(AS)AI |
3 | Deliberately omitted as we see this too often. |
5 | U,N,S,CREW |
6 | RUBBER PLANT |
7 | GA(SOME)TE,R |
8 | T(WO-W)AY – My last in and one that has given me some problems explaining. I think the idea may simply be that boats can meet in a two-way traffic system, but if that’s it then I don’t much care for it. I wondered for a while if it was something more elaborate involving CRS boat meaning face and a two-way mirror but I gave up on that idea. Maybe I’m missing something. |
9 | CEREAL – Sounds like ‘serial’. |
13 | DEMON,STRAT, |
16 | COAL MINER – Anagram of MAIL ONCE + R(ight). |
18 | TWILIGHT – Anagram of WITH GILT. |
20 | HARP O(O)N |
21 | S(LEE)TY |
22 | CAM(P)US – (Albert) CAMUS holds Power |
25 | ICING – Sounds like ‘I sing’. |
28 |
|
My COD to ICING for its &lit flavour.
Less than 14 minutes but I messed up yet again. This time with WAPATI, which I was so sure was right. Sometimes wrong, always certain.
9dn put me in mind of Barry.
Essex Man
Essex Man
I knew the name of Columbus’s ship, but I’m sure I learned it from another crossword.
Where is Barry, by the way? Assuming you were referring to our regular contributor I don’t think we have heard from him here since the last puzzle I blogged on 4th November.
By the way did anyone else have our old friend the (h) IDE at 28dn? I took a while to find out that it didn’t fit.
I fear Barry may have been on a bender since Surrey won the Clydesdale Bank 40 in mid-September.
Alas, the bladder doesn’t allow for benders these days. In fact I am going through something of a cruciverbal crisis at the moment possibly to do with having, at about the same time as Jack I reckon, taken to doing the Guardian on a daily basis. Also doesn’t help when you, who started doing these things around the same time as me, are finishing regularly in about 30 minutes. Finishing unaided remains my problem (apart from limited vocab and GK) today sticking in TWO-BAY (a double mooring!) just to complete the grid.
For all its eschewing Ximenean principles I do recommend the Guardian, Paul in particular who makes me laugh, eg from a recent puzzle:
First William’s home and not the Prince of Darkness (8).
Answer: NORMANDY.
I was reminded of Mandy by today’s MUSHY PEAS: he famously saw some in a chippy and asked for “some of that guacamole”. It’s a great story which is only slightly spoiled by being untrue.
Are the administrators of the site aware of this spam attack?
Can you please do something about it?
I remember the PINTA crusade which had no effect on me whatsoever – can’t stand the stuff. Why people use it to destroy the taste of good coffee (and tea) I shall never understand
TWO-WAY, I imagined, was a kind of gangplank, but post-solve research reveals no such thing. If it had said “pass” instead of “meet”, I’m sure we’d not have scratched heads quite so much.
I rather like MUSHY PEAS, but only with my haddock and chips, not with my bacon, sausage egg and a slice – that’s baked, beans, surely?
CoD to TWILIGHT for poetic impression, with a special mention for WAPITI.
I hesitated over SERGEANT because I didn’t know John Singer Sargent was American so thought I might be looking for an American spelling of SERGEANT. SARGEANT perhaps? Fortunately I decided that would be silly.
I should have seen a lot of them more quickly, but struggled with things like ‘unscrew’ and ‘paunch’.
After finishing, I knew this would be a tough night for our blogger. My time probably would have been dreadful if I had tried to solve it quickly.
WAPITI and NUMBER from definition alone
So just as my previous error slips into the 1 month plus bucket this one sends me hurtling down the leaderboard again.
I was held up for a bit by putting in the uncontroversial alternative answer (h)IDE at 28dn (EEL).
Clue of the Day: 19ac (PAUNCH).
Thanks for the blog Jack .
Jeremy
However, I’d bunged in NEMATODE as the obvious worm (hm! do I get the impression that this is another piece of commonplace scientific knowledge that had somehow eluded dorsetjimbo?), but wasn’t at all convinced that NODE was a dictionary, so decided to allow myself a further couple of minutes to make sure I wasn’t missing an alternative answer.
Thanks for your explanation of OUTRIGHT – much better than my more convoluted one.