A 7dn puzzle which took me 20 minutes, faster than the other two in this heat. No obscure words but a ferry port, a Crimean resort famous for the 1945 Conference and an Irish officer of the law call upon your general knowledge.
| Across |
| 1 |
CAPACITY – Cap (better, as a verb), A (second from Jack), CITY (London perhaps); def. volume. |
| 5 |
MASSIF – MASS (state, of USA, abbr.) IF (condition); def. mountain is seen in. |
| 10 |
STRANRAER – ST (way) RAN (passed) RAER (REAR – back, in the wrong direction); def. port, from whence ferries ply, or plied (until November 2011, apparently; see gasmanjack below) to Larne in Northern Ireland. |
| 11 |
GARDA – Hidden word, Beg(GAR DA)ring; a member of An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force. |
| 12 |
AMOS – AS (for example), around MO (doctor); prophetic book of the Old Testament, of which even I had heard. |
| 13 |
GIBBERISH – BIG reversed, then (HERBS I)*; def. rhubarb. |
| 15 |
CONSEQUENT – CONSENT (agreement) with QUE (Spanish for ‘what’) inserted; def. resulting. Even if you had no Spanish you might remember Manuel in Fawlty Towers saying ‘que?’ |
| 17 |
WHOA – W (wife) plus HOA(X) (a fast one, short of an X = kiss); def. stop! |
| 19 |
AVER – A (answer), VER (over = finished, not started); def. say with conviction. |
| 20 |
FALLING FOR – Double definition. |
| 22 |
BLUEBERRY – BLUE (depressed), BY (times, as in multiplied by), insert E R R (regular letters of dEaReR); def. fruit. |
| 24 |
SORT – SHORT (small whisky) loses H(usband); def. kind. |
| 26 |
OZONE – O (over) ZONE (area); allotrope of oxygen (O3), a pale blue gas with a pungent smell detectable at as low as 10 parts per billion in air; named by the Greek word for smell, ὄζειν. |
| 27 |
ILL AT EASE – ILL A (football team Aston VILLA less the V to kick it off) TEASE (synonym for guy, seen oft in these parts); def. worried. |
| 28 |
SEDATE – S E (extremely sociable), DATE (boyfriend); def. drug, as a verb. |
| 29 |
CALENDAR – (CLEAR)* indicated by ‘doctor’, around (DNA)* indicated by ‘a bit different’; def. diary. |
| Down |
| 1 |
CAST – CATS (animals) with the last 2 letters turned; def. shy, as in throw. |
| 2 |
PORTMANTEAU WORD – (WOMAN TARTED UP OR)*, def. ‘Oxbridge’ is an example of such. Lewis Carroll first used the term; Humpty Dumpty, talking about ‘slithy’ and ‘mimsy’, explains the practice of combining words in various ways by telling Alice,
‘You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.’ Oddly enough, in French it now means a coat-rack, but originally it meant a suitcase with two or more compartments. |
| 3 |
CANISTER – Took me a while to see how to parse this; obvious when you do. RETSINA (Greek wine) C (about), all reversed; def. where film may be seen. |
| 4 |
TWANG – Double def; you pluck or twang a stringed instrument, and regional speech can have a twang. |
| 6 |
ARGUED – A RED (revolutionary) around GU(N); def. fallen out. |
| 7 |
STRAIGHTFORWARD – Double def; honest, and easy. |
| 8 |
FLASH HARRY – Flash (very short time), Harry (worry, pursue); def. show-off. |
| 9 |
TRIBUNAL – TRIAL (pilot), around BUN (bung, bribe, without the G); def. hearing. |
| 14 |
SCRAP BOOKS – SCRAPS (fights) around BOOK (reserve); def. collections of cuttings. |
| 16 |
UNAFRAID – UNA (tuna, fish, without initial letter), F(ollowing) RAID (attack); def. game, up for it, not afraid. |
| 18 |
ANISETTE – Anagram of ESTAMINET without the M (Frenchman, monsieur); def. what might be drunk (in a French café). |
| 21 |
OBJECT – Double def; object = thing, object = idea, as in ‘that was the idea of going there’. Well, my best idea for it so far. |
| 23 |
YALTA – Y (unknown) A (area) around ALT (key); Black Sea resort in the Crimea. |
| 25 |
DEER – Dee (one river) R (another river); def. does, female deer. |
Like others I picked up STRANRAER from the soccer results (overheard casually at one time or another). Nice puzzle.