Solving time: 26:12
Filling in for Jerry today. He’s off to France.
Didn’t really understand ACCLAIMERS or VANITY until a pleasant phone call with one wiser in words than I. Otherwise, plain sailing.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | SAW DOCTOR. Anagram of ‘towards’, including OC (reverse of CO). |
6 | FLUNG. Last of ‘meN’ in GULF (reversed). |
9 | A PASSAGE TO INDIA. ‘A pa’s saga’ including an anagram of ‘edition’. |
10 | EATERY. Hidden in ‘dEpArTs EaRlY’. |
11 | CON,SERVE. On edit: see ![]() |
13 | BEER CELLAR. BAR (another place of refreshment) including E’ER (always, ever) and CELL. |
14 | CODE. Reverse of e-DOC. |
16 | D,IRK. |
17 | ACCLAIMERS. Couldn’t parse this without my phone-a-friend. Turns out it’s this: drop the RE (about) from ‘eclairs c{RE}am’; anagram the resulting letters. |
19 | AM,USABLE. Anagram of ‘a blues’. |
20 | S.E. WAGE. |
23 | KEEPING ONES HEAD. Two defs, one slightly humorous. |
24 | Omitted. |
25 | TWO-SEATER. Anagram of ‘tots were’ inc. A. |
Down | |
---|---|
1 | S,LAKE. |
2 | WEAR THE TROUSERS. Two defs, one slightly humorous. |
3 | OB,STRU(C)T. |
4 | TOGA. TO{o} GA{y}. |
5 | Omitted. |
6 | FL(IM,S)Y. |
7 | UNDER,COVER A,GENT. |
8 | GRA(CELE)SS. CELE{b}. |
12 | B(LACK) LIGHT. |
13 | BEDJACKET. Reverse DEB; JACK (honour card); reverse T{ens}E. |
15 | C(IN,E)ASTE. E{ntertainment}. On me dit que ‘cinéaste’, en français, désigne un film-maker. |
18 | VAN,{c}ITY. There is nothing (love perhaps?) in that which is in vain, I’m told. Vanity: “The quality of being worthless or futile” (US Oxford). |
21 | EIDER. Sounds like IDA. |
22 | INFO. IN F{oreign} O{ffice}. |
About 50 minutes all told.
The only unknown today was BLACK LIGHT but the wordplay was fairly obvious. I struggled a bit at 16 where for ages I could only think of DART, and at 13ac where thoughts of BEER PALACE got in my way.
SAW DOCTOR (as opposed to ‘sawbones’) was new to me and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of BEDJACKET.
A strange mixture this of the very easy (the last three acrosses were entered in a Sever-like 30 seconds) and the rather more tricky. My COD to FLUNG for having me searching vainly at the wrong end. LOIs CODE and SEWAGE.
We have such different tastes, Jimbo. Must be why we get on so well!
Edited at 2012-07-11 01:30 pm (UTC)
INFO and BEER CELLAR put in without parsing, I see now. Liked CODE.
Edited at 2012-07-11 07:45 am (UTC)
Edited at 2012-07-11 02:46 pm (UTC)
An awful lot of these clues went straight in without understanding. At 9ac for instance I read “Novel – a Father’s” and starting writing the answer in without even looking at the enumeration.
However I came a cropper on 21dn. The clue points so clearly towards a mountain that is a homophone of a bird that I didn’t even spend that long wondering where Mount EYDER might be. Drat.
I imagine you would have difficulty finding a SAW DOCTOR these days. Cheap imports of good quality tools make it uneconomic to sharpen old saws: just use ‘em and throw ‘em away, like safety razors. What a terribly wasteful world we live in.
Lots of clever stuff here – I quite liked the e-doc but can well understand that the NHS Direct reference might not be useful for for everyone. Perhaps the easiest and most generous clues were the four long ones.
DIRK was very nearly DART, though how art=needle worried me enough for a revisit. Last in was EIDER, because I couldn’t work out from the clue which way the homophone went until I dredged mount (and not princess) Ida from the dark recesses.
CoD to SEWAGE, not least because the majority of said commuters’ earnings are wasted on the commuting itself.
SAW DOCTOR is what we used to be able to say before the emergence of NHS Direct and its equivalents. Those were the days …
Enigma
Thanks mctext for explaining the three I didn’t understand at the time: Saw Doctor, Beer Cellar and Eider. LOI Saw Doctor.
Not having any means of checking the answers, and having two tiny grandchildren to keep under control, two or three clues went in without clear understanding, though it seems I got them all correct. I liked this crossword.. good surfaces, mostly, and about the right level of difficulty.