I came here to check in on the puzzle and found there was no blog. I know Jim is on his vacation, so it may have been that no sub was found or days got mixed up somehow. So I’ll throw together a quickie and if I cross with someone who is writing it up, I’ll delte this.
I found this to be a real beast of a puzzle, and it took me about 35 minutes early in the morning. I put a lot in from definition, so I was hoping to find out what I was missing from here.
Away we go…
Across | |
---|---|
1 | ENROL: R(back of door) in LONE reversed |
4 | MALL,ARME |
8 | CABINET PUDDING: Since a PUDDING(slow person) wouldn’t contribute much to the Cabinet |
10 | AN,DROMEDA |
11 | SLIGO: O, GI |
12 | GERUND: hidden |
14 | PURCHASE: CH,A in PURSE |
17 | RESERVED: SERVE in RED |
18 | SOFTLY: OFT in SLY |
20 | TE(note),LEX(law) |
22 | FOOLS MATE: a checkmate in four moves |
24 | HERO-WORSHIPPER: This is a tricky bit of wordplay – HE(man) then SH in ROW,O,RIPPER |
25 | ST, |
26 | DREGS: EG in DRS |
Down | |
1 | EXCHANGE RATE: cryptic(ish) def |
2 | RABID: AB(blood group) in RID |
3 | LANDOWNER: or LAN DOWNER |
4 | MITTEN: TT(always sober) in MIEN(appearance) |
5 | LAUDANUM: DUAL reversed, then A, NUM(ber) |
6 | ANDES: DANES with the D moved to the middle |
7 | MENDICANT: or MEND I CAN’T |
9 | LONELY HEARTS: (REALLY,HONEST)* |
13 | RESILIENT: RE, then I in SILENT |
15 | CROSS(angry),WIND(snake) |
16 | SEAFRONT: inside SEAT, FRO(not to), N |
19 | WOLSEY: YES,LOW(small) reversed, ref Thomas Wolsey |
21 | XHOSA: (HAS,OX)* |
23 | APPLE: A, then PIMPLE without I’M – the pupil of my eye… |
Edited at 2013-08-20 05:28 pm (UTC)
I only saw the wordplay for LAUDANUM, ANDROMEDA and APPLE (my LOI) post-solve. There was some good humour in this puzzle, and I smiled at LANDOWNER, MENDICANT and CABINET PUDDING. There have been plenty of candidates for the latter over the last several years.
Thank you, George, for stepping into the breach. But I still can’t see my error. Must be one of those so-obvious-you-don’t-see-it typos.
Anyway… great (Saturday!) puzzle. I loved LANDOWNER, LONELY HEARTS,
SLIGO, MENDICANT… well, all of it, really.
Like some others, I found today’s crossword a bit of a challenge.
Regards
JFR
I found this not too hard, but a steady solve, never able to get any speed up. I’m still not convinced that apple = pupil… dictionaries, what do they know?
Our network saboteur the best in a good set, with EXCHANGE RATE right at the other end of the scale. Was that really the clue, or had it just drifted in from T2?
Edited at 2013-08-20 11:24 pm (UTC)
Was anyone else totally miffed with the clue for ‘drains’ in yesterday’s Grauniad?
GeorgebClements
George, ‘runaway affairs’ for drains was one of those where one ‘needs the checkers’, no? Rather liked it eventually.
Found CABINET PUDDING fairly quickly, but was very doubtful till I had all checkers: it looked as if wordplay was anagram of DEBATE + something, but couldn’t make anything work, so probably you have the explanation.
(A couple of other problems with parsing were cleared up by comments on the Times CC site.)
Edited at 2013-08-21 10:32 am (UTC)