16:32, and showing an error. I’m hoping that as I blog it will become obvious to me where I’ve slipped up, but if not, I’m sure someone will oblige. Let us see if it’s necessary…aha, all too obvious. I fell into the trap of putting in a guess at first glance without parsing it properly, and it turned out to be close enough to the right answer that I never spotted it when I checked before submitting. Ah well. Anyway, I zipped through the top half, even if not entirely correctly, but found the southern hemisphere a much tougher prospect – a bit like a Lions tour.
P.S. I have builders in the house, so apart from the distracting noises, I have had to keep abandoning the blog to answer assorted questions, so apologies for it being a) a little late and b) possibly slightly rough around the edges. I may or may not be able to provide a little polish as the day goes on.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | CAMPSITE – [A M.P.’S] in CITE. |
| 5 | ASGARD – A + (DRAGS)rev. |
| 10 | WEAR THE TROUSERS – (THUSAWEETERRORS)*. |
| 11 | RAIMENT – AIM in RENT. |
| 12 | VERBENA – BEN in VERA. |
| 13 | DEFECTOR – DEFECT(=failing), O.R.(=other ranks). Stupidly put in DESERTER without thinking hard enough (without thinking at all, to be honest). |
| 15 | DEPOT – (TOP ED.)rev. |
| 18 | MASON – Mary and Jesus would be an example of MA and SON. |
| 20 | BLESSING – ESS in BLING. It took me a long time to see that “female ending” wasn’t E, but something looser. |
| 23 |
RIPPING – TRIPPING, as one might do the light fantastic, without the T |
| 25 | STILTON – TILT in SON. |
| 26 | PERSONA NON GRATA – NAN in (ARROGANTPOSE)*. |
| 27 | RUMMER – double def. i.e “odder” and a sort of glass (specifically “a drinking glass, typically having an ovoid bowl on a short stem”, whose name comes from the Dutch. There was a nice pub in Bath called The Rummer, but as with so many pubs, it appears to have been lost to alternative use, in this case an Italian restaurant. |
| 28 | REVERENT – EVER in RENT. I liked the “stepping into the breach”. |
| Down | |
| 1 | COWARD – CO(=firm) + WARD(=legally incompetent, i.e. one whose affairs are controlled by a court). |
| 2 | MEATINESS – AT, IN in MESS. |
| 3 | SO THERE – THE in SORE. |
| 4 |
TWEET – WEE in |
| 6 |
SQUIRED – QU. in SIRE + D |
| 7 |
ADELE – A DELE, printer’s mark for DELE |
| 8 |
DISTASTE – (ITSSAD) + TE |
| 9 |
TRAVERSE – T |
| 14 |
TOBOGGAN – BOG(=marsh) in TO GA |
| 16 |
PENETRATE – PEN, E |
| 17 | IMPROPER – M.P. + ROPER(=binder), with 1 at the start. |
| 19 | NOISOME – [1 in NOS.] + ‘OME. |
| 21 | SHINGLE where “one sounding drunk” translates as “how a drunk person would say SINGLE, i.e. one”. If you don’t like homophones, you probably like drunk homophones even less… |
| 22 |
INFANT – F |
| 24 |
PURIM – PURI |
| 25 | STOLE – double def. |
You were bit unlucky that “deserter” even fits the space, Tim
Also chucked in DESERTER (13ac) to start with — before the parsinglessness (15 letters!) suggested otherwise.
Seriously stuck in the SW with RUMMER and PURIM failing to appear to my addled brain at the end.
Re 20ac, “Female ending”. Today’s Guardian speculates on a possible woman candidate for the next Doctor Who: The Tardess. Hands up for candid-esses without looking?
Not so straightforward as yesterday for me: one that I couldn’t parse (ADELE), one that I parsed incorrectly (like ulaca, I thought DESERTER was a mere cryptic) and one blank (the unknown PURIM).
COD to SHINGLE
You explanation of ‘Adele’ is a little off; it’s simply ‘a dele’ From the Wikipedia: “A dele or deleatur is a proofreading symbol used to mark something for deletion.”
When you mentioned having the builders in, for a moment I considered that you were being euphemistic about something. But then, welcome to my world.
Quick word about Saturday’s puzzle which I can’t post to now for some techie reason: I’d moaned about the previous one being too easy, but this was just right by my reckoning, an excellent challenge with some very nice clues. As for today, I charged through in around 17 minutes, a good time for me, with something that sounded like a muffled gurgle on solving SHINGLE. Should I have laughed? Very probably.
Enjoyable stuff, so thanks both.
Chris.
On the plus side, every time we have some work done in the current house, we erase a little more evidence of the dubious DIY skills of the former owner. Wherever he is now, I’m sure he’d be delighted to know he’s still bringing grimaces of disbelief to skilled tradesmen of all specialisms…
Didn’t know ASGARD or PURIM and none too sure whether I have met RUMMER as a drinking vessel before
Didn’t know rummer as a noun and had forgotten about Asgard. Rather liked Adele, as I do the singer.
On a sombre note, the Crossword Club has lost one of its best solvers – David Ker Stout (stoutdk) who died suddenly last month at 81. He was a very distinguished economist, a really nice person and a great contributor to the Forum. I was already missing him, not having seen him around lately, when I saw the obit notice.
I had all but PURIM in 15 mins but then hit a mental block. I have come across the Jewish festival before but had forgotten it, and I was trying to lose the ‘s’ from the start of the wordplay word, thinking that I was looking for a kind of religious observance with the letters sp_r_m while grumbling to myself about the unfairness of two relative obscurities within the same clue. Then the penny dropped ……………..
One wrong answer; finding myself, like others, guilty of ‘Desertion’!
COD was ASGARD, only because I remembered it from school tales of the Norsemen.
I was toying with ROUS(T)ING, wondering whether roust (Chambers: to move energetically) could somehow translate into “dance”, and that certainly contributed to being stuck. As with today’s DESERTERs, the answer you first thought of is hard to dislodge.
Don’t think I’ve seen “female ending” = ESS before. I wonder if today’s setter has other such trix to try.
I liked the clue for TWEET today: it had a rather old-fogeyish tinge to it (these modern folk…)
I’m a great fan of Twitter so COD to Tweet closely followed by Shingle.
Made things difficult for myself in the NE corner by initially putting Disaster for Distaste.
No problems with Adele – I know her as the Skyfall and 21 songstress.