Very pleasant and steady solve, on which I stopped the clock at 13:55; this time involved going down a few blind alleys along the way, and having to trust the wordplay on a couple of occasions where the definition wasn’t necessarily part of my regular daily vocabulary. As I have no errors, it would appear the wordplay deserved my trust, so I can have no complaints.
Across |
1 |
SECOND-IN-COMMAND – SECOND INCOM{e}, MAN, D{irector}. |
9 |
AUTOCLAVE – (COATVALUE)*. As I remember it from school, some sort of pressure cooker which sterilises your laboratory glassware and the like. Our medical correspondent Dr Thud is possibly even now using one as a flat surface on which to solve this puzzle. |
10 |
COPRA – P{ower} in COR(“My!”), A{rea}. The oil being coconut oil. |
11 |
ABSENT – i.e. “out”. It took a while for the penny drop moment to arrive, when I suddenly remembered that absence is, of course, what makes the heart grow fonder. |
12 |
ON COURSE – double def. |
13 |
TOILER – (ELIOT)rev., R{uns}. The most surprising thing I learned this week is that T.S. Eliot and Groucho Marx were both great fans of the other’s work and had a regular correspondence in the 1960s. I am now hoping to discover that Seamus Heaney spent his twilight years exchanging e-mails with Robin Williams. |
15 |
MUST HAVE – MUST(=mould), AV(the Authorised Version of the Bible) in HE. |
18 |
ET CETERA – [A R{epublican} {D}ETECTE{D}]all rev. |
19 |
LAMENT – AMEN in LT. Here I spent some time attempting to find the complaint which featured AYE or YES inside the COL or GEN. |
21 |
COME TRUE – COMET(an ominous sign to people with less astronomical knowledge than we have now) RUE. |
23 |
PORTER – SUPPORTER minus the SUP. Foolishly I started by taking out the PORT, which doesn’t work at all. |
26 |
TREND – {flai}R in TEND. |
27 |
A BIT THICK – double def. One of those phrases which you can imagine Bertie Wooster using regularly (edit: I’ve checked. He does). |
28 |
SET GREAT STORE BY – SET(=class) GREATS(what the rest of the world calls Classics; Oxford loves having its own name for things) TORE BY. |
 |
Down |
1 |
STATANT – STAT(=fact) ANT(=one with six legs). I can’t honestly claim to have known this heraldic term describing animals standing on four legs, but it’s pretty easily worked out, especially if you know rampant and couchant and the like. |
2 |
CUTIS – CUT 1’S. |
3 |
NO CONTEST – (CONSENTTO)*. |
4 |
IVAN – I, VAN(=front). |
5 |
CLEAN OUT – (ALONE)* in CUT. |
6 |
MACHO – Move Army Commanders Hurled Orders. |
7 |
ASPARTAME – A SPAR, TAME. I am not a devotee of diet products, as my waistline will testify, but this sugar substitute has crept into my mind somewhere. |
8 |
DEADEYE – DEAD(=”dull”), EYE(=”look at”). Another where I had to trust the wordplay and checkers, as I was unfamiliar with this circular wooden block with a groove round the circumference to take a lanyard, used singly or in pairs to tighten a shroud. I was looking for the Geoffrey Boycott style block instead, along the lines of DEADBAT, but like him I got there in my own time. |
14 |
INCUMBENT =”INCOME” BENT. |
16 |
TEA FOR TWO – cunningly concealed in devastaTE A FORT WOunding. A number which is surviving pretty well in the public consciousness given its 90 year vintage. |
17 |
BROUHAHA “BREW” HAHA. As I recall, the last time this appeared, it caught various people out who’d always thought it was spelled BROOHAHA, and therefore were undone when the first half was clued as a homophone. Happily, this time the checkers fall in the right place to make that mistake less likely…or do they? |
18 |
EXCITES – CITE(=quote) in (SEX)*. I say. |
20 |
TURNKEY – TURN(=become) KEY(=vital). |
22 |
TUDOR – TU(=Trade Union), (ROD)rev. |
24 |
TWINE – T{emperature} + WINE. |
25 |
OILS – {T}OILS minus the first letter. The ever-reliable Chambers has it as a colloquial abbrev. for oilskins. |
In combination with the unknown STATANT, this made the NW a bit tricky. (Our heraldry expert would have biffed it perhaps?) After working it out, I did wonder whether a STAT is a fact. Koro would know. Be nice to hear from him again.
But I did appreciate the three different uses of “front” in the clues (15ac, 4dn, 6dn). They went well with the slightly military theme.
On edit: oh and … your poet in the blog at 13ac is the great SeaMus. Buy his CD of Beowulf. Makes the bloody old thing sound great.
Edited at 2015-11-17 03:42 am (UTC)
Edited at 2015-11-17 03:46 am (UTC)
This probably shows how forgiving the high Anglican American was of the low Anglican Irishman. This extract from a letter Lewis wrote in 1953 gives a flavour of the type of things he’d been saying and writing about Eliot for 30 years. Having praised the American poet SV Benét, Lewis continues, ‘I wish your bad poets weren’t so exportable! You sent us Eliot in the flesh and Pound in the spirit.’
As for the crossword, I found it very hard, clocking in at 80 minutes, even if there was the odd interruption.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read”. Can’t beat that.
I spent the last five minutes agonising over 8dn. Is it:
> DRABEYE: fits the wordplay better, or
> DEADEYE: looks a more like a word, although not particularly like a word meaning ‘block’?
In the end I followed my usual policy of trusting the wordplay and put in the wrong answer.
Other than that a very enjoyable puzzle.
Edited at 2015-11-17 12:42 pm (UTC)
I think TEA FOR TWO deserves a round of applause, if not a standing ovation. Top notch clue.
DNF as I was convinced that 23 across was GOONER the name given to those folk who once hailed from Highbury – beaten by the Arse!
STATANT a toughie but it couldn’t be SEAL-ANT, which tempted me.
COPRA should be said with a husky tone
IVAN was terrible.
Did not enjoy this one much!
horryd Shanghai
Comets seen as bad omens are historically very interesting. The best known is probably Halley’s which was blamed for the Black Death and excommunicated by the Pope no less.
Can’t take ASPARTAME, so almost all “sugar-free” drinks are a no-go area. It’s astonishing how few that leaves in my local T***o. And soon, I’ll be taxed on this disability. Lovely. But at least it made the clue easy.
CoD to the best “hidden” I’ve ever seen (or at least can remember) at 16, only revealed when I got the referencing 17 first.
As well as 3 fronts, toil turned up twice: I’m not sure that made solving easier or harder.
My error was a classic Verlaine: seeing “Russian front” and something probably beginning with I, pencilled in a whimsical IRAN for 4dn, vowing to change it when I discovered either of the *actual* crossers. This of course never actually happened. Would have been less embarrassing if either (a) the wordplay worked or (b) Iran actually shared a border with Russia…
Tricky one today.. after about 45 mins or so I had to go out leaving much of the NW corner unfilled. Came back and finished it off in a few mins. STATANT/ABSENT were last to go in.
TEA FOR TWO gets COD from me too.
Which meant I had to juggle solving with cooking the barbecue, but I doubt that I’d have finished much within the hour anyway.
Like several others, took too long to spot ABSENT and DNK STATANT. Also took a while to see the hidden, which was indeed a classic.
Another excellent puzzle. Thanks setter and Tim.
I don’t have him down as one of the greats, but he was one of my favourites, mainly for the way he handled adversity. And he produced six or seven of the most thrilling spells I’ve ever seen. (OK, maybe some of the worst as well, but let’s not mention that today).
And England fans will always have a soft spot for a man who merited his own song 🙂
I honestly didn’t see the container for 16d until 20 mins after I’d finished the puzzle (having biffed it in based on 17d!); bravo!!
Not my cup of tea, but respect to those who completed.
Aspartame is bad, sugar is worse.. just give up sweet things, the curse of our age!