I thought this was going to be an easy one as I raced away with the long anagrams at 4 and 11 and the partial one at 12 but my confidence was soon dented and I struggled with a word or two in every quarter, the NW being the most troublesome. In the end I needed 52 minutes which was rather on the slow side. There were no unknown words today and only a couple of meanings to look up before starting on the blog. I don’t expect to be around to deal with matters arising after mid-morning UK time as my Christmas Day has been moved to the 28th this year.
Across | |
---|---|
1 |
BARBARY APE – |
6 | CAST – Double definition. Plaster casts are called ‘pots’ apparently. |
8 | MAINMAST – MA,IN,MAST. I wasn’t familiar with MAST as pig-feed. It’s the fruits of various woodland trees such as chestnuts. |
9 | TORERO – TORE (lacerated) + OR reversed. |
10 | LUSH – Double definition. |
11 | OCEAN LINER – Anagram of IN CAERLEON. |
12 | BANGALORE – Anagram of ALONG inside BARE (exposed). |
14 | BOULT – U (Uranium) inside BOLT (lightning). This is Sir Adrian Boult 1889-1983. I saw him conduct a number of times. |
17 | EAGLE – Hidden |
19 | OPPOSABLE – OPPO (friend), SABLE (black). |
22 |
RAGAMUFFIN – A, MUFF (mistake) inside RAGIN |
23 |
PLEA – P |
24 |
EDDIES – |
25 | HOT WATER – The definition is simply ‘trouble’ but the other angle is that HOT WATER is what one has inside a copper boiler. |
26 |
ANTE – |
27 |
DUTCH BARNS – DUTCH (wife in slang) BA |
Down | |
1 |
BUMBLEBEE – BUMBLE (the Beadle in Oliver Twist), BEE |
2 | REINS IN – Anagram of SINNER + I (current). |
3 |
READ-ONLY – AD |
4 | AT THE DROP OF A HAT – Anagram of POTATO FATHER HAD. Delightful memories of Flanders and Swann. |
5 |
EXTANT – |
6 |
CARNIVORA – CAR (wheels) then IV (four) inside NO (number), R |
7 |
SURREAL – SURRE |
13 | GALVANISE – VAN (vehicle), I’S, all inside GALE (air force). |
15 | THESAURUS – ESAU (Rebecca’s son – Genesis) inside anagram of RUTH’S. There’s a tongue-twister about Esau sitting on a see-saw. |
16 | TOP-NOTCH – TOP (spinner), NOTCH (nick). The definition is A1. |
18 | ABANDON – A,BAND,ON |
20 | BOLSTER – S (seconds) inside BOLTER (runaway). I’m reminded of the character in ‘The Pursuit of Love’ who is referred to throughout as ‘The Bolter’. |
21 | BUSSED – Sounds like ‘bust’ |
— Caerleon (11ac), home to the (to English eyes) vowelless Ffwrrwm. Honest. Will it ever appear in the Times?
— Ragamuffin (22ac) which was taking second place in the Sydney to Hobart as I was solving.
Is there an extra “in” in 13dn?
Edited at 2012-12-28 04:29 am (UTC)
Could anyone explain to me how exactly yesterday’s homophonic CAESIUM clue works? Can’t see it at all.
Incidentally, ‘cast’ in the verbal sense would involve molten material, metal typically, would it not, while verbal ‘pot’ refers to making stuff from clay?
Edited at 2012-12-28 06:24 am (UTC)
The pointy-haired boss also has trouble when his cursor freezes when the mouse reaches the end of the pad. He calls tech support (Dogbert), who suggests moving the desk. I can say with pride that I recognized that as a joke.
Edited at 2012-12-28 06:49 am (UTC)
On another matter,is anyone else using Firefox 17.0.1?
Whenever I open LJ these days the rotating green “loading” indicator on the webpage tab churns away incessantly indicating that the page is not fully loaded. This doesn’t affect my use of the site in any way but it’s starting to irritate me and I might be more relaxed about it if I knew I was not alone in experiencing it. Has anybody got the same, or similar with another browser? It seems okay when I use IE but I hate IE.
Edited at 2012-12-28 07:05 am (UTC)
Edited at 2012-12-28 01:01 pm (UTC)
Far more irritations than grins. Pot=CAST is surely an obscure usage that reduces a 3 word clue of a 4 letter word to a guess based on “shed” and checkers. 25A simply doesn’t work for me. The strange additional “in” at 13D which, whatever it’s meant to be, is very confusing. And the awful homophone – yet again!
Interesting to read people confessing their ignorance of technology. I wonder if Tony S will give them a small lecture of admonishment.
1ac was going to be vegetable rather than animal, and in 1d I expected the Dickens character to be the whole answer. CAST on the basis of “shed” alone. BOULT was FAUST (lightning=fast) for a while, for the conductor of experiments or something.
Bumblebees never looked like social animals to me, as they always seemed to be flying around on their own. Now that I think about it, that’s ridiculous.
AT THE DROP OF A HAT should make this Flanders and Swann reminiscence day.
Edited at 2012-12-28 01:20 pm (UTC)
Esau always reminds me of Alan Bennett’s hairy brother in Beyond the Fringe.
COD to ‘ragamuffin’, with its well-concealed extended literal.
Edited at 2012-12-28 10:26 pm (UTC)
Re 16, I used to be very relaxed about X’s for X has, but I’m less so now in certain contexts, as here. Off-hand I cannot think of an analogous phrase to justify interpreting “Nick’s spinner on…” as “Nick has spinner on…”. It’s not as if the surface is all that great to justify the awkwardness.
I liked “Shuffle along” for the anagram fodder in 12.