Solving time: 29:32
Probably spent too long trying to construe some clues when the answers were obvious from the definitions (and/or checking letters). By the same token, the only answer I’d never heard of was today’s giveaway hidden answer. On balance then: all’s fair in love and war.
I’ve omitted the two obvious 3-letter answers from the down clues.
| Across |
| 1 |
LOGICALLY. GI (one fighting) & CA (accountant), all inside LOLLY (money). Is the ‘unevenly’ doing anything special? A five-letter word can hardly be split evenly. |
| 6 |
ACTED. Anagram of ‘cadet’. |
| 9 |
CALZONE. C{an}AL, ZONE. A kind of pizza named after and looking like a trouser leg. Often mis-spelled ‘Calzoni’ on menus. If you see it, demand a serve of at least two. |
| 10 |
USEABLE. SEA in an anagram of ‘blue’. |
| 11 |
IN,GOT. |
| 13 |
HEADDRESS. H{eatwav}E, ADDRESS (hail). A sort of &lit, but any headdress of use in a heatwave probably wouldn’t be much good in hail. |
| 14 |
GUACAMOLE. OLE (expression of approval) after GUAM containing AC (current). A dip: literally ‘avocado sauce’. |
| 16 |
TEXT. This is TENT with X (ten) substituting for N (noon). (Yes, I know!) |
| 18 |
ALTO. The {r1}ALTO is the island in Venice that contains the old mercantile quarter. Might be a bit obscure for some, but A_T_ (singer) gives it away. Doubt if they traded food there but. And almost certainly not calzone, guacamole, entrecôte, or … |
| 19 |
B,UTTER,NUT. NUT (teachers’ union). Most will enter this straight from the def. |
| 22 |
TENTATIVE. TEN (half of score, 20), {artis}T, reversal of EVITA. |
| 24 |
R(ES)OW. The inserted letters from {gu}ES{ts}. ROW from ‘series’. |
| 25 |
BOU(QUE)T. The inserted letters from ‘that French’. ‘Que’ is very handy given its possible translations as: ‘what’, ‘how’, ‘than’, ‘that’ and ‘whether’. |
| 26 |
INFERNO. IN (stylish); then reverse ON, REF (official). Suppose we now have to add ‘blazer’ to ‘butter’, ‘flower’, etc? |
| 28 |
SKYE,R. Don’t think of skyers as going to gully somehow. More likely to a deeper fielding position. But I guess it’s possible. |
| 29 |
ENTRECOTE. A cut from the sirloin. ENT (otorhinolaryngology — why do I always get this one?); R{evenu}E; COTE (as in doves). |
| Down |
| 1 |
LACKING. LING is our cruciverbal heather (when it’s not one of our fish). Insert ’ACK — ‘hack’ as in cope with (handle). |
| 2 |
Omitted. |
| 3 |
CROATIAN. Here’s our GROAT from yesterday, minus G and plus 1; in a CAN. (An insertion-type, or Split clue.) |
| 4 |
LEECH. HEEL (reversed) around C (for ‘cold’). |
| 5 |
YOU NAME IT. Yo! Una! Then anagram of ‘time’. |
| 6 |
AGENDA. AGEN{t}, DA (lawyer). |
| 7 |
TABLE TENNIS. TABLET (drug); E{scalatio}N; reverse SIN. (More likely cycling?) |
| 8 |
DEEP-SET. Reverse SPEED; ET (a sci-fi film). |
| 12 |
GLASTONBURY. Anagram of ‘sat long’; BURY often sounds like ‘berry’ (though probably not in this context). |
| 15 |
OUBLIETTE. 0; anagram of ‘but elite’. Another slight &lit. |
| 17 |
PEA RIFLE. It’s our hidden answer and a word of some interest. Collins just has ‘a small rifle’ but web searches turn up various other possibilities. Go ogle! |
| 18 |
ANTI,BES{t}. Surely another giveaway? |
| 20 |
TOWROPE. Anagram of ‘row’ inside TOPE. Nice play on the two AAs. |
| 21 |
JAGUAR. If you can have a {g}roat in a can, you can have an agu{e} in a jar. |
| 23 |
EDICT. Take the PR (priest) from ‘predict’. |
| 27 |
Omitted. |
I also never heard of PEA RIFLE but it wasn’t much of a stretch from the more familiar ‘pea shooter’. I think the traditional sola topi would be quite effective in a hailstorm. I wonder it we shall ever see Boris’s ‘wiff waff’ for 7dn.
Edited at 2013-01-16 02:13 am (UTC)
Edited at 2013-01-16 09:09 am (UTC)
After 45 minutes, I was stuck in the SW, and resorted to my usual tactic of calling my mother. About 15 minutes of idle conversation cleared my brain, and I was able to write in ‘skyer’, ‘bouquet’, ‘Antibes’, and ‘jaguar’ in less than a minute.
One quibble, though – isn’t ‘butternut’ a kind of squash, and not a pumpkin?
COD to ‘guacamole’, where I spotted the literal early on and still had to work for it.
But the same thing: Cucurbita moschata.
Edited at 2013-01-16 02:20 am (UTC)
But the main purpose of such a call is to clear the brain. I have found that reading doesn’t work, but actively talking about unrelated topics does the trick.
Thanks to Macca for the parsing of TENTATIVE (I couldn’t get past Tati for the artist – darned synapses!) and YOU NAME IT. I was also puzzling over what sort of canal CAL might be before McT threw back the curtains. ‘Split clue’ didn’t go unnoticed (:
Many balls are skied into the gully region – the thing is, the wicket-keeper usually takes the catch.
Edited at 2013-01-16 02:59 am (UTC)
I’m trying to get my mind around ringing my mother in the middle of solving a puzzle (not that I could unless I had supernatural powers). Does mum know she is being used in this way? What happens if she introduces a serious topic into the meandering banter, such as the demise of HMV and the vinyl logo?
Entered TENT at 16a after careless reading of clue: ‘book’ was NT as usual, definition obvious, and didn’t think about relevance of ‘noon’.
Edited at 2013-01-16 10:46 am (UTC)
I did notice it’s a pangram, though the high scoring letters for the most part are not checked, which makes it less obvious.
LOI Guacamole, hot on the heels of You Name It.
Our local ristorante serves its calzone pizzas with a delicious tomato sauce poured on top. You need to eat them fast or else the bread shell goes soggy!
This was one of the rare occasions that I have solved a puzzle analytically rather than in my usual style of getting the answer from the definition or other bits of the clue, then justifying the wordplay. It’s quite rewarding, isn’t it, when the required word emerges? I can now see why so many people here enjoy this way of solving; I wonder if this old dog can master the new trick.
Whenever I see GUACAMOLE, the apocryphal story of Peter Mandelson ordering mushy peas in a Sedgefield fish-and-chip shop always comes to mind.
I just love the word ‘oubliette’ and the brutal simplicity of the thing itself. In you go … what? who? where?
My local (U.K.) Waitrose sells butternut squash, but this is a completely different shape to a pumpkin, and would make a very odd Hallowe’en lantern.
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