Solving time : 20:12 on the club timer with a silly typo and a few minutes break in the middle. Nothing too too difficult, though I needed to look up the wordplay on 25 across in order to get the blog written.
With a J, a Z and a V appearing early on I thought we might have been in pangram territory but I believe this crossword is missing a Q and an X.
Quite a few tricky ones in here, it’ll be tough figuring out what to omit for the blog.
Away we go…
Across | |
---|---|
1 | DE,PENDANT |
6 | F,ETC,H: F(following), ETC(with the rest), H(husband) |
9 | ALOOF: A then FOOL reversed |
10 | ROUNDSMAN: S in ROUND,MAN |
11 | BELLY UP: or BELL YUP |
12 | AMPULLA: P in A MULLA(h) |
13 | A SHROPSHIRE LAD: anagram of L, HARSH, PARODIES (L coming from pound) |
17 | JUDE(book), THE(article), OBSCURE(make unclear) Edit: didn’t know Jude was an epistle, so got my letter and book mixed up |
21 | LEGATES: ATE in LEGS |
23 | EN CLAIR: N in ECLAIR |
25 | BLACKMAIL: got this from the definition, but Edward III’s son was the Black Prince, so presumably he’d wear the BLACK MAIL |
26 | A, NIT, A |
27 | TA,ST |
28 | our across omission |
Down | |
1 | DEAD BEAT: E in DEAD BAT(in cricket, play with a loose-hand defensive stroke) |
2 | PROW,L |
3 | NO-FLY ZONE: double def, one cryptic |
4 | A,PROPOS |
5 | TSUNAMI: AN in I MUST, all reversed |
6 | FED UP: PUD(yorkshire) and alternating letters in bEeF all reversed. Cue the DBE anger |
7 | TAMIL NADU: anagram of 1,MAN,ADULT, and a place I mostly know from cricket commentary |
8 | HANGAR: NG in HAAR |
14 | our down omission |
15 | EASY CHAIR: EA(each) then |
16 | NEAR GALE: (A,GENERAL)* |
18 | H,US,BAND |
19 |
|
20 | ALL BUT: L,L (liberals) in ABUT |
22 | T,OKAY |
24 | ADIEU: DI(girl), E(first letter in Evesham) in AU(gold) |
As Mct has so nearly pointed out, ‘book’ is the definition of the whole answer at 17ac and JUDE is clued by ‘letter’ with reference to the book of the New Testament. How fitting that some of the apostles wrote epistles!
Edited at 2013-02-14 06:18 am (UTC)
Derek
Dear Paul,
Nice weather today. Wish you were here.
The Ephesians
Derek
J. Lennon, A Spaniard in the Works.
He (Lennon) later explained that he meant Valentine Dyall. George H (ours!), of course, with his vast comic repertoire, would know this.
Enjoyed this one a lot, and managed all but one in pretty good time, despite not knowing the Jude, Edward III, or cricketing (!) refs.
Ended up with two in the NE, and put in HANGAR from def (haven’t come across HAAR), but couldn’t get AMPULLA.
FOI 13ac (the letter count kind of gives it away…)
I solved this from almost the bottom up, getting to EN CLAIR on second whizz through as first in. Spent most of the rest of the time tut-tutting my way through clues that looked perfectly innocent once solved, particularly the two long ones.
DEAD BEAT would have fallen much quicker if I had bothered to write it down, when the wordplay became instantly clear. Must try that more.
CoD to the Black Prince’s knitted vest
No real problems here. The two long ones are virtual cliches that go in on word length and a scan of the clue. Solved 6D from definition so the DBE didn’t worry me – and Yorkshire for PUD is really no problem
A rather unbalanced offering in terms of literature; history; religeon as against more rewarding fields of endeavour but a pleasant enough 20 minutes for all that
I solved this in two sessions: in the first I struggled mightily and only managed about a third in 20 minutes. In the second I had recovered a bit from my hangover and drunk a large, strong coffee and finished it in just over 10 minutes.
Didn’t get any of the downs until FOI Near Gale. LOI Ampulla – that took a while to crack. Thought No-Fly Zone was a fun clue.
Re 8dn Hangar: as a postgrad I spent a couple of years living in Edinburgh and remember haar fogs rolling in off the Firth of Forth.
Odd coincidences can sometimes get me off to a flying start: earlier today, I was reading Amity Shlaes’s history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man”. In the introduction, she describes a tragic incident from the autumn of 1937 when a young boy, regarding himself as a burden on his family, hanged himself. This immediately brought to mind the suicide of “Little Father Time” in Jude the Obscure: “Done because we are too menny.”
I imagine we are due a Friday stinker as it has been a fairly gentle week.
Here’s a useful tip for less experienced solvers. Since the indefinite article is generally omitted in a definition, the word “A” at the beginning of a clue is almost certainly part of the wordplay, and it’s odds-on that the answer begins with A. This works for APROPOS, ALOOF and ANITA, and helps with the parsing of NEAR GALE.
(Supply suitable valediction)
Ulaca