Phew! Got an easier one on blogging day after harder than usual puzzles on Monday and Tuesday. A pretty standard effort I found with a few bits of tricky wordplay holding me up in the NE corner. Only two bits of vocab were unknown (25ac, 4dn), but the wordplay landed them.
Across
1. BUSHCRAFT. Reverse CH (Companion) inside BUS and RAFT.
6. ANGUS. ANGUIS{h} minus the I (one needing release).
9. SUNLESS. {spiceles}S + UNLESS (if not).
10. WALPOLE. Reverse LAW + POLE (European). Def = PM many years ago.
11. A,LACK.
13. STEAMSHIP. S (second), TEAMS (side’s), HIP (bit of a cheer). S.S. Great Britain is now a major tourist attraction in Bristol.
14. DIS,CUSSED. DIS is a standard for the underworld.
16. BASS. Two meanings: the singing voice and the fish.
18. HIND. Two meanings: the female deer and the adjective (as in ‘hind leg’).
19. OLD MASTER. Anagram: art models. What Romanian mothers burn in their ovens when the police arrive.
22. THE SOLENT. SOLE (fish) inside THEN (after that) + T{rawler}.
24. ADD-ON. AD (notice), DON (member of university, aka JAFA).
25. PAISANO. AS (when) reversed inside PAIN (agony) + 0 (love). Even the US Oxford doesn’t give this meaning of the Spanish for ‘peasant’. But it’s in Chambers: someone from the same town … hence a friend.
26. TOADISH. A DI (little woman) inside TOSH. Did try to justify ‘toryish’ as our annoying Shadow Treasurer was screaming his box off, as always, on the radio during the solve.
28. RUMMY. Two rather obvious meanings. Paradoxically rummy is one of the least peculiar card games. Makes cribbage seem like quantum mechanics.
29. DEMEANOUR. {hostil}E and MEAN inside DOUR. The def is ‘look’.
Down
1. BASTARD. STAR inside BAD. May have offended some solvers, though it’s a term of endearment down here.
2. SIN. SI{g}N.
3. CHECKOUT. Two meanings, the first usually split into two words.
4. APSIS. A, PS (note at end of letter) IS. I quote: “either of two points on the orbit of a planet or satellite that are nearest to or furthest from the body around which it moves”.
5. TOW-HEADED. Anagram: dead hot we.
“And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay …”.
6. AFLAME. A, FAME inc L (litres). ‘Drinking’ is the indicator of inclusion.
7. GOOD-HEARTED. Because it’s found in the centre of {din}GO OD{dly}. Bet I wasn’t the only one looking at the letters from DiNgO.
8. STEPPES. STEPS (walks) inc PE (exercise).
12. ABSENTEEISM. Anagram: it means bees.
15. STONE COLD. TONE inside SCOLD.
17. MAHARAJA. Reverse: a jar, a ham.
18. HOTSPUR. HOUR (time) inc TSP (teaspoon, a little medicine). Another drink-type inclusion indicator. Sir Henry Percy, aka Harry Hotspur. Well known from Henry IV Pt 1.
20. RANCHER. RAN (controlled) + {ar}CHER. Ref to the long-running radio series The Archers, the theme from which every English person of a certain age can hum at the drop of a hat.
21. ROTARY. ROT + {v}ARY.
23. TOTEM. TOT + reversal of ME.
27. I,DO. This was in a fairly recent Graun puzzle where I learned that it’s a development of Esperanto.
I believe ‘paisano’ in the US is of Italian, not Spanish, origin, and was common in New York in the early twentieth century to indicate someone from the same region of Italy who spoke the same dialect.
‘Hind’ was my last in, and I had to go through the alphabet to get it.
“a peasant of Spanish or Italian ethnic origin.
ORIGIN [of the word] Spanish”.
native; esp: a native of the state of California of mixed Spanish and American Indian ancestry.
But what would I know? I just follow the American dictionaries (and the mutli-ethnic Chambers) in such matters and they’re often out of sync with usage.
Edited at 2013-08-14 05:28 pm (UTC)
Not offended, but a bit surprised by 1dn where I lost a few minutes making absolutely sure it wasn’t the somewhat more likely “dastard”. Enjoyed the reference to the farming family, and indeed its two leading members, Dan and Doris, have been absent now for many a year.
Never heard of PAISANO since the last time I said I never heard of it.
… and that one was TOADISH, where I had tradish, and sadly didn’t have Paul’s confidence that it wasn’t actually a word…!
Didn’t know of the SS GB, nor that PAISANO meant American friend (or does it…?), APSIS, Sir Henry Percy or the language IDO, although I’m sure it must have come up before, but the cryptics for those seemed pretty unambiguous.
Can’t believe I didn’t stop to parse RANCHER – am a big fan of the goings on in Ambridge!
I knew I should remember who the famous Percy was, but couldn’t while Tim McInnerny’s immaculately gormless version kept intruding. And I was at White Hart Lane on Saturday.
I don’t think of the Solent as being particularly narrow – last time I needed a hovercraft to cross it – and it was big enough for the Navy to display in when the Navy was really big. But Wiki says it’s a strait, so I suppose that counts.
DKK (OHF) IDO, APSIS, BASS as perch, and PAISANO, which is quite a high concentration; cryptics meant BASS was the only one that felt like a pure guess given the numbers of words for fin and feather.
CoD to BASTARD for chutzpah.
We have had a few words recently that don’t look like they should be real words, and TOADISH is another, but I decided to trust the wordplay.
I might have been a little quicker but the SW held me up slightly. There was a clue somewhere very recently that contained Percy (nice Blackadder reference by the way) and the answer was Shelley, although I didn’t enter it here because of its complete lack of parsability. However, it put me off enough for me to not be able to think of the HOTSPUR Percy until I got the H checker from HIND. I then saw THE SOLENT, PAISANO and ROTARY, and then I went back up to the NE for my LOI, AFLAME.
And yes, I know parsability isn’t a recognised word, but it should be.
Shakespeare is a blind spot of mine and I’d never heard of Sir Percy.
Thanks to Jack for the chuckle about ‘paisano’ – I know the feeling exactly: now, where did I leave my glasses?
George Clements
At least the wordplay to PAISANO, an unfamiliar word, was transparent, so no error there.
Chris.
My first thought for “Percy” was THROWER.
I thought IDO was an African language, but that’s Ibo.
No problem with the definition for 22ac. Narrowness is relative, of course, and the narrowness of THE SOLENT relative to the English Channel is the reason for dramatic tidal patterns that make sailing in it a lot of fun.
ARSOS doesn’t look very likely, does it? I just followed the wordplay and didn’t really think about it very much. In my defence, “arsis” is a word. Guess what the plural is…
Time? Usually similar to you and jackt, 30-40mins but today a DNF. Needed aids for ROTARY, PAISANO, HOTSPUR (not much in Shakespeare is well-known to me) and then HIND fell.
Rob