Solving time: 55 minutes
Once again, I am attempting to solve a holiday puzzle in the wilds of Connecticut, with nary a reference book to be had. Fortunately, I was able to guess a few of the words I didn’t know, and I confirm them later on through the internet.
Music: None available
Across | |
---|---|
1 | DUCKBILLS, DUCK + BILLS, in different senses. Should have been easy, but I was trying to make ‘hornbills’ fit for a while. |
9 | CHIMERA, CHIMER + A. |
10 | DWELL ON, D(WELL)ON. If you think ‘source of water’ = ‘w’, you’ll be solving with the imaginary Dellon River. |
11 | HOGAN, HOG + A[bandoned] N[issen]; the trick here is to have a non-golfing ‘hogan’ in your vocabulary. |
12 | MEADOW RUE, MEAD + anagram of WE + OUR. Playing around with ‘we’ and ‘our’, I got ‘rue’, and the answer was suddenly obvious. |
13 | CONQUER, CON + QUER[y]. |
15 | ELVER, E(L)VER, my first in, not difficult if you know the word. |
17 | SOLID, SO + LID, with a very smooth surface. |
18 | BADDY, BA(D[ecoye]D)Y, another early answer. |
19 | LOWER, double definition, where ‘Hereford’ is a cleverly disguised cow. |
20 | CHENNAI, CH(ENNA)I, Queen Anne backwards providing the inner letters. |
23 | DISCOMFIT, DI’S COMFIT, where ‘first’ is merely a tricky positioning indicator. |
25 | EVOKE< EV(OK)E, where the literal is well hidden and an elaborate phase is used to refer to Eve. |
27 | DELIVER, double definition, where 90% of solvers will be looking for some specific type of ship. |
28 | EXCLUDE, EX(CL)UDE, where a word that may not jump to mind immediately is needed for the cryptic. |
29 | DEMITASSE, anagram of TEA MISSED, a relatively simple anagram if you know the word. |
Down | |
1 | DODOMA, DODO + M[odern] A[frican]. I had never heard of it, but the cryptic very strongly points to it. I didn’t expect it to actually be in Africa, though. |
2 | CLEM ATTLEE, CLEMANT[-is][+ T LEE]. I was a little surprised by this, because it seems disrespectful to refer to Attlee as ‘Clem’, but I have no idea if this was generally done in the newspapers of the time or not. The substitution clue is perhaps overly complex. Not surprisingly, this was my last in. |
3 | BALLOTED, B(ALLOT)ED, i.e. a degree of B.Ed. |
4 | LONER, L(ONE)R, a neat &lit. |
5 | SCARECROW, S (CARE) CROW. |
6 | WITHIN, [s]WITHIN, admittedly not the first saint most solvers would think of. |
7 | DENG, hidden in [forbid]DEN G[round]. |
8 | MANNERLY, MAN + NE[a]RLY. |
14 | UNDER FIVES, UNDER + FIVES in different senses. Actually, UNDER + FIVE + S[mall] is probably better. |
16 | VALIDATED, VAL I DATED. From the ‘Rebel, Rebel’, or ‘Lola’ era. |
17 | SECRETED, SEC + R(ET)ED. I saw the answer first, and figured out the cryptic later. |
18 | BROOKLET, B(R)OOKLET, easy in retrospect, but not obvious without crossers. |
21 | NAEVUS, N(A + E + V)US, the enclosing letters being a well-known redtop upside-down. |
22 | STERNE, S(TERN)E, where the enclosing letters are S[pac]E. |
24 | SODOM, [quasi]MODO’S upside-down. |
26 | OUCH, [p]OUCH, an easy starter clue. |
Otherwise … I enjoyed this one!
Edited at 2014-04-21 06:51 am (UTC)
CLEM ATTLEE has come up here before as I remember commenting that I had never heard him called that and the newspapers in his day would surely have referred to him as Mr Attlee or simply Attlee. Still, a quick Google reveals there is a biography on sale entitled CLEM ATTLEE so maybe the name was in use. Incidentally I can’t find the previous reference as the search facility above seems no longer to work properly.
Talking of which, the button to the Times Quickie is currently linked to #26 (i.e. last Monday’s puzzle) and changing the url doesn’t work so I shall be unable to blog #31 until the facsimile newspaper becomes available sometime later this morning. (Now done
Because of the broken link at the Times I’ve temporarily put up today’s Quickie #31 here: http://jackkt.livejournal.com/
Edited at 2014-04-21 08:03 am (UTC)
CHENNAI is what used to be called Madras, which I’m sure pretty much everyone has heard of. BENGALURU for Bangalore is a step too far.
I read this as “a few” = FIVE, “small” = S; with the def being “tots”.
Edited at 2014-04-21 04:09 am (UTC)
Does anyone know what the problem is with the front page of the TOL on Firefox. Since Friday it has been the 28/09/11 page. IE8 also wouldn’t work until Saturday and to make things even more confusing the BBC (on their own site) were reporting on the death of Gaddafi (also at the end of 2011) on Saturday.
On Friday I noticed that some readers were commenting on this but the comment stopped from that day.
I’d like to know if any of you are still experiencing the same problem. Enjoyed today’s crossword as well as the two at the weekend.
30 minutes to solve. Thank you setter and Vinyl both.
For a while I was thinking that 4dn was going to be ALONE with “individual” as the definition because I could see wordplay of A-ONE (right) outside L (left), but I wasn’t confident so didn’t enter it, and once I got the checker from DUCKBILLS I was able to see the &lit and the right answer.
I thought the hunchback clue was rather clever.
Dragged 1d & 20a from the recesses of my mind – though I would have been hard pressed to say where they were. Didn’t know 11a but Hogan seemed more likely than Pigan or Sowan! Delighted not only to get but also parse 24d.
COD to 5d – excellent! Closely followed by 29a.
Good puzzle, good blog.
I enjoyed this one, especially hunchback when I finally realised how it worked.
Nairobi Wallah
Loved the hunchback clue.
FOI ELVER, LOI (of the “all my own work”) WITHIN (my COD), thought DENG well hidden, and 12ac had me vainly looking for something-RYE, before I realised the drink was at the other end!
The capital rang a faint bell, though I couldn’t remember the country.
I’d wanted the second word of 12ac to be RYE, so was grateful that the wordplay reminded me that there was a plant called MEADOW RUE – and that an alcoholic drink called MEADOW RYE probably didn’t exist!