Completely mea culpa – I was not able to get to this last night and forgot to put up a placeholder. Blog coming soon, really. Fortunately I don’t think there’ll be too much controversial here.
Solving time: 8 minutes, and it really should have been a little quicker, I was not seeing many obvious across answers, but with only one checking letter in most case these came to light. I was left in the end with the top right corner, where there is a long anagram of a word which I think I’ve only run across once in a crossword (possibly a Mephisto) leaving a name, fortunately the name that came to mind was correct even though I didn’t know the wordplay.
Away we go…
Across | |
---|---|
1 | HIT(badly affected), THE SACK(dismissal) |
6 | S |
9 | SAFE-BLOWER: A,FEB in SLOWER |
10 | I,RMA: I didn’t know Sandhurst was the Royal Military Academy, hence RMA |
12 | MAID,ENVOY,AGE: nice charade |
15 | RING(call),CYCLE(round): Wagner’s very long opera of four operas (themselves usually performed in parts) |
17 | AVAST: or A VAST |
18 | SUPER: P in SUER |
19 | OB,SESSION: OB for obiit is popping up fairly regularly |
20 | our across omission |
24 | TOG,A: a TOG is a unit of thermal insulation – got this from definition |
25 | EVISCERATE: (TEA,SERVICE)* |
26 | RUNE: take the first letter from PRUNE |
27 | BRANDY SNAP: BRAND is the wood on fire, then PANSY reversed |
Down | |
1 | HASP: hidden ins whicH A SPindle |
2 | T |
3 | HABEAS CORPUS: ABE(Lincoln) in HAS, then CORPUS (Christi College) |
4 | SNOOD: Lorna DOONE’S reversed then the E removed |
5 | CLEANNESS: (CAN,LESSEN)* |
7 | MORGANATIC: anagram of G, A, ROMANTIC |
8 | GRAVESTONE: (VETERANS,GO) – they aren’t crossing each other, but it’s a little strange to see three anagrams in a row |
11 | ROYAL SOCIETY: double def |
13 | PROSECUTOR: cryptic def |
14 | SNAPDRAGON: NAP(sleep),DRAG(bore) in SON |
16 | CROSSOVER: the thane of ROSS (Macbeth) in COVER(shield) |
21 | our down omission |
22 | FAIN: 1 in FAN |
23 | HEM,P |
Yes this was easy though 8 mins is an impressive time George.. some nice clues though
Snood and tog both very familiar. I thought of RMC (college) for 10 on the first pass which I couldn’t make a name of so moved on.
Without the helpful wordplay at 3 I’d probably have gone for habeus…
I knew MORGANATIC from sitting through innumerable accounts of the abdication crisis on stage, TV, film and radio. Nice puzzle.
Edited at 2013-03-14 01:47 pm (UTC)
I remembered Avast from Moby Dick: at some point Ahab or Ishmael or Queequeg shout “Avast the main!” (or something like that).
Initially had Royal Fellows for 11dn which caused a lot of bother in the SE corner.
So TOG isn’t physics but duvets. No wonder I didn’t know it – we don’t do duvets in NY.
Never heard of MORGANATIC, but it seemed more likely than MORNAGATIC.
No problems with SNAPDRAGON at least. These puzzles are so useful for learning the names of plants. I’m grateful for this because the knowledge is terribly useful for solving crossword puzzles.
I did have HABEUS until the penny dropped on The Titanic.
I liked HIT THE SACK, but it got me thinking again about an episode of Father Brown I saw recently (the TV series sort of ‘updated’ to the early 50s), in which three times people referred to someone getting “fired”. Did anyone get fired in Britain in the 50s? I thought Brits were always ‘sacked’ until Alan Sugar (channelling Donald Trump, gawd help us) came along.
This joke is so ancient it must date back at least to the fifties.
ps. Something peculiar’s occurring with this editor. To navigate around in this edit box, the left and right arrow keys seem to function ok but the down arrow goes directly to the end of the text that I’m typing and the up arrow does b****r all!
Mike O, Skiathos aka tzaneria on LJ.
I too got MORGANATIC by lucky dip of the remaining letters.
Hadn’t heard of the President, either, but that was easier to get.
Edited at 2013-03-14 04:21 pm (UTC)
The word “avast” was first documented in 1681, and likely originated from a Dutch sailing term, houd vast, which means to hold fast. The term could refer to military action or the necessity to hold firmly onto ropes and lines aboard a ship. Avast has been widely used in the maritime community ever since as an interjection much like stop or halt.
Like other nautical terms, avast has been integrated into the speech of other communities of individuals. Along with phrases like “me hearties,” “weigh anchor,” and “arr,” the term has been adopted by a portion of the counter-culture movement which values the freedom traditionally associated with piracy.
As you can no doubt tell ours is an intellectual household.
I hope this posting will work — I succumbed to the temptation of installing Internet Explorer 10 and can no longer use it to solve puzzles online. Has anyone else had this problem?
Yes, the only peculiar thing here was the clutch of three anagrams at 5,7,8dn. Though the best of the bunch was “tea service” => EVISCERATE at 25ac. And … no one seemed bothered by the DBE at 12ac. Every ship that ever sailed had a maiden voyage; but few would be quite so memorable I guess.