Back to the puzzle, and I had to hoist the white flag in the SW, where I thought of the right answer at 20dn, changed it to something else, but in any event was always going to struggle with 26ac. In the end, the easy (for me) Classical stuff proved a false dawn…
Across
1 B+I+REME – the boat with two rows of oars, favoured by various Achaeans.
4 E+QUIPPED
10 SNOW LEOPARD – a snow leopard is an ounce, so the idea here must be that it weighs more than the unit of measurement but cannot weigh more than itself. Can’t say I’m mad about the clue.
11 NUN – ‘cos oop North, they’d say ‘non’ – some of ’em at any rate.
12 B(LOSS)OM[b]
14 THESEUS – after it came down to a head-to-head between Theseus and Perseus, the former had to win because only he hails from THE South-East of the US.
15 DEFENESTRATION – I thought this must mean to take a window out rather than to chuck some unfortunate out of one, but in the end it made little odds.
17 INDIVISIBILITY – HG Wells wrote a book called The Invisible Man.
21 omitted
22 DUSTMAN – the key to this is spotting that ‘refuse’ is a noun in the cryptic reading.
23 A(C)E
24 ORIENTALIST – ORIEL containing tan* + IST; ‘sporting’ here is the anagrind, with ‘in’ taking inserticator duties.
26 LAYETTES – I had a baby once, but never one of these, let alone several; ODO ‘a set of clothing, bedclothes, and sometimes toiletries for a newborn child’.
27 ITALIC – revoise hidden, as they might say in 25dn, if it also wasn’t hidden.
Down
1 BUSYBODY
2 R(I)O[w]
3 M+ALISON
5 QUARTER BINDING – ODO ‘a type of bookbinding in which the spine is bound in one material (usually leather) and the rest of the cover in another’; not sure of the wordplay here: my best bet is something along the lines of ‘taking responsibility for quarters/lodging’. My best bet was wrong – it’s BIND in QUARTERING where bind is a noun, as in ‘it was a real bind’. Thanks to Jack and Diogenes.
6 IN+D+WELT – ‘welt’ in ODO ‘leather rim sewn round the edge of a shoe upper to which the sole is attached’.
7 PAN+DEMO+N(I)UM – the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) was most famously led by Arthur Scargill, who was ultimately defeated by someone with an even scarirer bouffant hairdo.
8 DANISH – andhis*. Nice.
9 COMMISSIONAIRE – CO+M(MISSIONA)IRE; lovely wordplay – ‘Miss Iona’, indeed – but completely wasted on me till I came to do the blog.
13 OFFENSIVE+L+[awa]Y
16 HYPNOTIC – lady’s bottom, AKA Y, in topinch*. Nice.
18 INTROIT – inserting I in IN (wearing) TROT (red) will give you an introit, which is often a psalm used in a church service.
19 INSTANT – double definition.
20 AG+NAIL – the ‘nail’ did for me – it is of course what a detective does to a criminal…in time…hopefully: ‘agnail’ in ODO ‘a piece of torn skin at the root of a fingernail’, or a corn. We’ve had it before, but I hadn’t remembered it securely enough.
25 omitted double definition
39 minutes with time lost at the end working out the second word in 5dn. It’s not a term that I’m familiar with. Not sure that I knew INDWELT and certainly not the meaning of WELT required to explain the wordplay. Loved the DEFENESTRATION clue and the word itself which I first heard of with reference to the composer Handel dealing with a particularly demanding prima donna he was forced to work with. MISS IOWA was simply brilliant. A good start to the week.
Edited at 2012-11-26 02:45 am (UTC)
6dn WELT. There’s a more specific version in NOAD: “a ribbed, reinforced, or decorative border of a garment or pocket”.
11ac NUN. Despite having changed almost all of my Scouse vowels in order to be understood in Australia, I still can’t quite manage “none” as “nun”.
Two cryptic defs today: 22ac and 26ac. About average quality I’d say.
16dn HYPNOTIC. Note the double duty of “to pinch” — anagram fodder and inclusion indicator in one.
COD: toss up between Canute and Miss Iona.
Edited at 2012-11-26 02:50 am (UTC)
I don’t think it’s doing double duty. The anagram fodder is simply TO PINCH Y
And while you’re on can you also explain my other bit of ignorance: “bore”=BIND?
On edit: have now read ulaca’s version of “bore”=BIND. Isn’t the latter a dilemma and the former not? Maybe a colloquial I don’t know.
On further edit: Chambers has it, but as a verb. “to bore (old fashioned slang)”. Total unknown to me.
Edited at 2012-11-26 03:22 am (UTC)
Edited at 2012-11-26 07:05 am (UTC)
I did have ‘Perseus’ for a while before I began to doubt it – ‘per SE U.S.’ is not exactly what is required here. I also completely failed to recognize Miss Iona, just putting in the answer from the definition.
‘Defenestration’ is most widely known in the ‘Defenestration of Prague’ of 1618, which started the Thirty Year’s War.
Edited at 2012-11-26 09:53 am (UTC)
This really irritated me. Most of the clues were very easy and where they weren’t it was only because of obscurity (AGNAIL, MALISON, INTROIT, QUARTER BINDING, INDWELT) or absolutely awful cryptic definitions (SNOW LEOPARD, DUSTMAN, LAYETTES).
Harumph.
I can’t imagine in these (or any) days “summoning” dustman. Lonnie Donegan said it:
“Now one day while in a hurry
He missed a lady’s bin
He hadn’t gone but a few yards
When she chased after him
‘What game do you think you’re playing’
She cried right from the heart
‘You’ve missed me…am I too late’
‘No… jump up on the cart’.
Some decent clues: Miss Iona, The SE US, and the blink-and-you-miss-it anagram for DANISH made up for some slightly dodgy stuff, including the above. I wondered whether the “in the south” bit for NUN was redundant, as I’m not convinced that northern folk pronounce “none” and “nun” with much distinction. Differently from us southerners, of course, but isn’t it pretty much the same difference in both cases?
I’m pleased to be informed that there’s another DEFENESTRATION apart from “of Prague”. Perhaps a modern use could be “to stop using Microsoft”. Sorry.
Edited at 2012-11-26 09:35 am (UTC)
Australia is very much “in the south”, isn’t it?
For the last three decades I’ve been carrying my rolling tobacco in an old Three Nuns tin. Always wondered why the motto on the tin is “None Nicer”. Now I know!
NUN is surely a word for which a clue based upon a homophone is most unsuitable. I wonder if the Crossword Editor added the clumsy “in the south” in an attempt to head off the critics?
The Times of London is from London, so London pronunciation must be the default.
I don’t speak with a London accent but have no problem with (most) homophones being in a default accent different to mine.
I find it annoying when for instance Scots complain about homophones… poor and pour apparently have totally different pronunciation to each other up there, but who cares? It’s a London paper, not an Aberdonian one.
Rant over. I thought “in the south” was unnecessary.
Rob
Any ideas anyone?
NUN –none. We still keep this pronunciation throughout in nation in “Monday”, for example, but I remember when “Coventry “was “Cuventry” and George Dixon was addressed as “Cunstable”. Prince Charles, however, is unusual in speaking of “wun’s hice”, meaning Clarence House.
I remember “Cuventry” (I think may still pronounce it that way myself occasionally) and I certainly still say “cunstable” – I hadn’t realised that had gone (or is going) out of fashion. And I say “wun” (all those years in the soft south have taken their toll :-), but not “hice”. (Wasn’t Princess Margaret supposed to have described Buckingham Palace as “a nice little hice”?)
29 minutes of pleasure, had to check agnail as LOI, my COD to Miss Iona. And also Danish for its neat brevity.
28:17 … Bottom half went in fast but I was completely topless (ooh, matron!) for nearly 15 minutes before finally wising up to EQUIPPED, from which all else flowed.
I was so frazzled that I threw COMMISSIONAIRE in without parsing it. But that’s what this blog is for – to make the slapdash among us appreciate the finer points.
Cheers
Chris Gregory.
I thought of SNOW LEOPARD straight away, but felt there had to be something more to the clue (I’m not mad about it either, but I liked 22ac (DUSTMAN) and 26ac (LAYETTES)). And I spend far too long trying to think of a Greek hero fitting FL‑‑‑GA.
After finally getting going, I was held up at the end by QUARTER BINDING, which was only a quarter familiar.