Solving time 20 minutes
Very straightforward puzzle that shouldn’t cause any problems.
Across | |
---|---|
1 | MERTHYR,TYDFIL – (thirty fled army without “a”)*; M-T is a Welsh town famous for the 1831 uprising of iron workers that was brutally put down by soldiers. This incident encouraged the formation of Trades Unions and led to the Reform Act of 1832; |
9 | RAVER – two meanings; |
10 | GERMINATE – (buildin)G-ERMIN(AT)E; “shoot” as in “green” is the definition; |
11 | IN,THE,CLEAR – IN(THE)CLEAR; “in clear” is cryptographer code for uncoded; |
12 | STOP – POTS reversed; |
14 | GUNNERA – G-(n)UNNER(y)-A; ornamental plant; |
16 | MARTIAN – MARTI(A)N; reference St Martin and the Beggar as painted by El Greco 1598; |
17 | BROWSER – two meanings – ideally “deer perhaps”; |
19 | CYGNETS – young swans – sounds like “signets” which are small seals (insignia); |
20 | REIN – reference “free rein” meaning with minimal supervision; |
21 | TERRACOTTA – (react to rat)*; Qin Shi Huang and so on; |
24 | ABHORRENT – A-B(H-OR)RENT; the London Borough of Brent includes Wembly but not Brent Cross which is in Barnet; |
25 | MOTOR – RO(T)OM reversed; T from T(raction); |
26 | CHAIN,REACTION – CHA(IN)R-E-ACTION; daily=CHAR; E from E(xpress); can’t be reversed under the laws of thermo-dynamics; |
Down | |
1 | MARRIAGE,BUREAU – cryptic definition; |
2 | RIVET – R(I’VE)T; |
3 | HARTEBEEST – (threat)* surrounds BEES; |
4 | REGALIA – AI-LAGER reversed; |
5 | YARD-ARM – reference New Scotland Yard where the Met are based; |
6 | FLIP – three meanings avoiding the most current – questionable practice by MP involving property manipulation; |
7 | LEASTWISE – L(E)AST-WISE; most unsuitable=LAST; old way=WISE; energy=E; |
8 | KEEP,ONES,HAIR,ON – two definitions – the second whimsical; |
13 | TRAGICOMIC – T-RAG-I-COMIC; |
15 | NEOLITHIC – (one)*-LIT-HIC (Latin for here); |
18 | ROEDEAN – R(OED-E)AN; expensive school for gals near Brighton; |
19 | CURETTE – minister=curate then replace “a” by (s)E(n)T; surgical scraper; |
22 | TUTTI – TUT-(IT reversed); musical term for “all the players”; |
23 | PROA – PRO-A; |
Note to setter: I am a happy subscriber to the Times crossword club. I do not subscribe to welshspellingtest.com. There is a reason for this.
While fooling around with this I was reminded of a panel cartoon
wherein an ophthalmologist reads from a report saying to his
patient ” Congratulations Mr. Davies, you’re not dyslexic, you’re
Welsh.”
Please, please do tell us why.
Also, 30000 and 55000 are different numbers. That, I think, actually would be general knowledge.
At least Nowra, similar population, critical in the foundation of the entire Australian dairy industry, could be guessed as an anagram.
It might be worth mentioning that a good proportion of the exotica you listed came from the Club Monthly crossword, an altogether different kettle of fish, and not from a Times Cryptic.
Having said that, I agree with the point being made..
I’d forgotten about “tack” as part of the horse equipment/tackle (21ac) but then the rest of the clue gives it away. No?
7dn: shades of Cilla Black talking to Brian Epstein — “I say ‘last’, you say ‘most unsuitable’ … [insult]”.
COD to 26ac — the surface reads so well.
Just checked … definately!
BROWSER: didn’t trust it. I’m with Jim on this one. The clue pushes you towards a kind of deer (we’ve already had the beest) rather than something generic that deer and lots of other animals do. I don’t usually mind DBE’s but this one jarred.
REIN: we hadn’t had a “hidden” so I was toying with drid, that less well known component in the stable compendium.
BUREAU: just couldn’t get to the word, and playing with the possible (or not) crossing letters didn’t help. Plus the clue made absurd assumptions: in my experience, the unattached go down the pub after a wedding.
St Martin (16) I took from Oranges and Lemons: for some reason, El Greco didn’t spring immediately to mind. Shows my cultural level, I guess.
Why is FLIP also “demanding?”
CoD to the spelling test at 1ac for the historical accuracy. The town has been part of my landscape since primary school, where Mr Evans (we had men teaching us in those days) was a proud denizen.
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/08/how-shakespearean-are-you/
I put in the first para of the “About this blog” for TfT and it returned 87%. PB must be very Shakespearean.
Straight DKs were PROA, CURETTE and GUNNERA. I confused E/I when spelling 1ac but rescued it just in time. Didn’t understand the cypher business at 11ac, the saint and beggar thing at 16ac or know TERRACOTTA could be used as a word meaning ‘sculpture’.
I agree ‘browser’ as a DBE is a bit of a liberty but I was more surprised by the only specific reference to deer I found, in the SOED, which has ‘browser’ as ‘a person who feeds deer in winter time’. Why would there be a special word for someone who does this? And what a strange term for it anyway.
Edited at 2013-03-05 10:43 am (UTC)
I liked the clues to 16 and 1 dn (for the misleading use of ‘after’).
PROA makes a regular appearance in barred cryptics, so was very familiar.
Proa and curette were both unknown but eminently gettable and not knowing “in clear” or the Martin/beggar connection didn’t hole me up either.
1ac was my first in but with a gap either side of DF until I got yard-arm.
OR = Other ranks = Men
My comment is related to reading about the ones that tripped some people. Apart from keeping one’s hair on, REIN was the second one I solved. Makes me happy to have beaten the experts in this regard.