ACROSS
1 ANTICLIMAX ANTICS (stunts) LIME (tree) AXE (feller) minus the last letters
6 PITT Rev of T (first letter of take) TIP (advice)
8 LOOSENER *(ONE’S ROLE)
9 VORTEX Ins of R (first letter of romance) in VOTE (proposal) X (kiss)
10 NABS NA (symbol for sodium) BS (Bachelor of Surgery)
11 OLIVE-SHELL Ins of LIVES (everyone’s existence) in O HELL (no hell, therefore heavenly)
12 TAXIDERMY T (time) + *(MIX READY)
14 KNITS Sounds like NITS (fools) with picked up as homophone indicator Thanks to diogenes44
17 NAXOS SAXON (old German) with N and S interchanged for a Greek island
19 HEXAMETER Ins of X (times) A (article) in HE (fellow) MET (had audience) with ER (Elizabeth Regina at Buckingham Palace)
22 IN GOOD NICK *(DOING + O, nothing) NICK (prison)
23 ATOP AT OP (operation) or performing surgery
24 TYPIST cd for a stenographer typing out a dictated piece; depressing keys, indeed 🙂
25 IDOMENEO Ins of OMEN (indication) + E (European) in I DO (one act) Idomeneo is an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
26 EDGE LEDGE (shelf) minus L (length) as in He edges/inches painfully to the telephone to call for help.
27 MEMORY BANK Ins of YB (rev of BY) in MEMO (message) RANK (class)
DOWN
1 ARLINGTON DARLINGTON (quaint little town in the North-East of England, clued as first railway destination as it was the Stockton-Darlington stretch that Stephenson’s locomotive first ran on) minus first letter, D (departs) for Arlington National Cemetery, in Virginia, directly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Thanks to ulaca & mctext for pointing out the railway history
2 TOOLBOX Cha of TO O (circle) L (lake) BOX (boxwood, anyone?)
3 LONDONER Ins of DON (fellow) in LONER (someone not happy with company)
4 Anagram of (RAN SIX MILES IN) placed within M-M deliberately omitted
5 XAVIER X (cross) A VIER (German for 4 which is a square of 2) St Francis Xavier, (1506–1552) was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary
6 PERCHANCE PERCH (rod) + ins of N (north, point on the compass) in ACE (cracking)
7 THE FLAT Ins of EFL (English as a foreign language) in THAT (which)
13 IRON OXIDE Ins of ON OX (farm animal) in I RIDE (travel)
15 Anagram of BACK POOR Son deliberately omitted
16 BACKDOOR BACK (stern of a ship) + ins of OO (spectacles) in DR (doctor or GP, general practitioner)
18 ANNOYED Ins of NO (rev of ON) + YE (middle letters of layers) in AND (with)
20 TITANIA TITANIC (mammoth) with last letter C replaced by A for Titania, the queen of the fairies in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
21 ADYTUM ha for the most sacred part of a temple; the chancel of a
church.
Key to abbreviations
dd = double definition
dud = duplicate definition
tichy = tongue-in-cheek type
cd = cryptic definition
rev = reversed or reversal
ins = insertion
cha = charade
ha = hidden answer
*(fodder) = anagram
The Stockton-Darlington Railway was one of the first lines to open in England, if not the first. I believe (too tired to Google) that Stevenson’s Rocket ran on this line.
Many thanks to the setter and to Yap Suk for sorting out 27 for me.
“The first locomotive to run on the S&DR was Locomotion No 1, built at the Stephenson works though, in the absence of Robert …”.
A good work out, but not for the faint hearted.
Uncle Yap: Darlington is the place in 1dn because it was the destination of the Stockton-to-Darlington railway; the first route in England.
On edit: ulaca mentioned this while I was writing. But this also changes the parsing such that the D is from “departs” (not from “first”).
Edited at 2012-02-23 04:46 am (UTC)
Thank you Darling!
I quite liked 0 LIVES HELL for ‘everyone’s existence heavenly’ but there was lots of other very good stuff too.
Well done on your blog, Uncle Y. I’m hoping you’ve taken the only bullet this week and there’s not another one up the spout with my name on it ready for delivery tomorrow!
Lots of unknowns today, but the difficulty was all in the cunning wordplay and oblique definitions. Super puzzle, thanks very much setter. Now I need a very strong coffee.
Paul S.
But this was fiendish stuff, and the (?)simple KNITS eventually went in without understanding the cryptic. “Picked up” made it STINK backwards, which made no sense, but at least KNITS meant purse (not that one).
I thought this was definitely one for taking time unravelling the cryptics: OLIVE-SHELL (my only unknown as a combination) HEXAMETER and IDOMENEO especially, but several others.
One mischievous suggestion: Trevethick’s “Pen-y-Darren” and its train made it from Penydarren to Abercynon in 1804, more than 20 years before the Stockton-Darlington run, but then you couldn’t get a ticket.
It seems churlish to pick a CoD from a host of smooth-surfaced contenders, but perhaps SCRAPBOOK edges it.
Thanks to Uncle Yap for a most excellent blog.
Edited at 2012-02-23 10:27 am (UTC)
I got TYPIST relatively quickly from an experience I once had as a tutor in an Excel lab, where the instruction “Depress the return key” had one student completely mystified.
On a happy note for those in the UK, my flowering cherry has come into blossom!
Managed about three quarters. Am glad I came here to discover the rest, as I don’t think there’s any way I’d have finished it. Too much unknown vocab and GK.
Don’t know what all the Xs are about. Was it supposed to have been published on Valentine’s Day?
Why wasn’t this one kept back for the 2012 Championship?
A tour de force by the setter and much too tough for me. 14 out of 29 and only a few more with aids. I did at least spot the hidden word … which I’d never heard of.
Well done Uncle Yap and anyone else who finished this with or without aids. Loved the construction of Annoyed.
Roger C
This one even harder, took 3 sittings for over an hour. LOI knits, a guess – was looking at STINK picked up rather than the homophone. Everything else understood.
Isla