Solving time: 29 minutes
Music: Eric Clapton, UnpluggedThis should be pretty easy for most solvers, unless there is something crucial that you just don’t know. Fortunately, the definitions and the cryptics are pretty straightforward, so if one doesn’t work for you the other is likely to.
Music: Eric Clapton, Unplugged
Across | ||
---|---|---|
1 | OVERSHOT, OVERS + HOT. Our cricket bit for the day, easy enough even for US solvers. | |
6 | REAGAN, RE(A)GAN. One of my last in, as I thought ‘dramatic’ was the literal. | |
9 | MAGNETIC NORTH, double definition, one jocular – and not historically accurate, either. Lord North was far from charismatic, although to be fair nobody was going to be popular pushing George III’s policies. | |
10 | ROSTRA, double definition. I didn’t quite get the second one, but there is really only one word that fits. You could look it up: the ‘beaks’ refer to rams mounted on the prows of ships. | |
11 | INFESTED, IN + FE(ST)ED. | |
12 | PENICILLIN, PEN + ICIL + NIL backwards. I really don’t quite where ICIL comes from, since ‘current’ is only ‘I’. Audience participation invited. Jack has come up with the solution, it is PEN(I)CIL + NIL backwards, of course. | |
15 | OMEN, [w]OMEN. The literal is a little loose, a bit of definition by example. The writing on the wall may be an omen, but so are many other things. | |
16 | AVID, [d]AVID. | |
18 | COQUETTISH, anagram of CHIT QUOTES. | |
21 | BUDD[-h](+LEI)A. A overly-clever substitution clue – fortunately, I knew the bush. | |
22 | BANANA, BA(NAN)A. | |
23 | TREASURE TROVE, TREASURE + anagram of VOTER. | |
24 | ODIOUS, double definition, the second one a literary allusion to Bottom’s famous malapropism, the sort of clue you seldom see nowadays. | |
26 | LONESOME, L(ONE’S O[rder of]M[erit])E. | |
Down | ||
2 | VAMOOSE, V[ide] A MOOSE, originally from the Spanish ‘vamos’. It works much better with the moose. | |
3 | RIGHT MINDED, double definition. | |
4 | HYENA, either a cryptic definition or a double, depending on how you look at it. | |
5 | TRIVIAL, TRI(V[erse]I)AL. A mundane clue, too. | |
6 | RING FENCE, double definition. | |
7 | AYR, sounds like AIR. | |
8 | ATHLETE, anagram of HAT + LE([ki]T)E. | |
12 | SPONTANEOUS, anagram of PASS ON NOTE around U. | |
14 | INCREASES, double definition. | |
17 | VAULTED, double definition. | |
19 | QUARREL, double definition. Notice a pattern yet? | |
20 | SUNBEAM, SU[-ri]N(+BE)AM. | |
22 | BATON, BAT + ON. | |
24 | EGO, E.G. + O[ne]. |
18A. I believe there is a typo – …isH
vinyl – I think you’ve got your <table tag in a strange place – before your intro. Move it down to just above the first table row and maybe that’ll sort things out.
Now for “The One After 9:09”?
Edited at 2013-06-24 02:03 am (UTC)
I took 9a to have a single literal (‘that is regularly point at’), with the first part of the clue comprising the wordplay.
Edited at 2013-06-24 12:53 am (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_writing_on_the_wall
The point I was struggling to make was that any omen can now be called “the writing on the wall” by extension from this paradigm case.
On the spacing, as mct says. There are about 40 x < br > after “I can’t find it” before you get to < table cellspacing=”3″ > at the start of the table. If you delete all these it will come right.
Edited at 2013-06-24 01:29 am (UTC)
I did spent some time on 15ac having missed the obvious and wondering if an (c)OVEN was somehow “writing on the wall”!
Otherwise an easy 12 mins.
Edited at 2013-06-24 01:47 am (UTC)
Edited at 2013-06-24 03:39 am (UTC)
My fastest ever by far, with all bar one finished in 13 mins, and another 4 or 5 mins to have a guess at ROSTRA. Didn’t know the second def of QUARREL, and hadn’t completely worked out PENICILLIN (ie had PEN rather than PENCIL as the writer), but what else could it be? Good, fun puzzle, but, at the risk of sounding churlish, I think, on balance, I find it more satisfying when I take between 30mins and an hour to finish a puzzle. More of a sense of achievement, I guess.
Andrew R
My last in was BUDDLEIA, and I came to it with a sense of foreboding. Fortunately I thought of “lei” quite quickly, and then much to my surprise found that the answer was a shrub I have actually heard of. I’ve no idea what they look like, mind.
The phrase RIGHT-MINDED means “in possession of conventional opinions with which I agree”. Not to be confused with bien pensant, which means “in possession of conventional opinions with which I disagree”.
Edited at 2013-06-24 08:07 am (UTC)
I did appreciate some clues while flying by: MAGNETIC NORTH for its complete disregard of history, SUNBEAM for its neat use of the unlikely fodder Surinam, and INCREASES for its evocation of Christmas cracker humour and hence ten bob notes. Happy to know both ROSTRA and the shrub. I think I have some of the latter in my personal jungle – it attracts butterflies if there are any.
(Oops – that wasn’t supposed to be a reply)
Edited at 2013-06-24 09:48 am (UTC)
ps I thought Saturday’s puzzle (22 Jun) was absolutely superb.
I agree that Saturday’s puzzle was top-notch.
Edited at 2013-06-24 12:32 pm (UTC)
Jane
This is clearly a case of the compiler deliberately setting an unfair clue in order to give solvers only a 50% chance of a perfect solution.
Rob