A nice, if oblique, Homeric reference at 27 across will please my fellow classicists, who may be tickled by the fundamental humour of 24 down, while we have a quaint fabric for the Georgette Heyer aficionadi at 14 across.
ACROSS
1. PAPERCHASE – E in anagram* of SCRAPHEAP, where ‘prepared’ is the anagrind.
6. WARM – ‘eager’; W[ith] + ARM. I can’t find ‘eager’ as a meaning of ‘warm’ in any of the usual sources, but ‘ardent’ is there, and a host of other words in the same lexical field, so perhaps it’s close enough.
10. UNLOVED – VOL (book) in DEN (study) both reversed after U.
11. ILL WILL – WILL WILL minus a W; I think this would have worked better as ‘Nastiness of Shakespeare twice shrugging off first wife’, but since he only owned up to the one spouse, the setter had not that option.
12. BUCKS FIZZ – ‘bucks fizz’ is the drink of champagne and orange juice, where the latter arguably improves the taste of the former; it is made here by taking BUCKS (cheers as in ‘she bucks me up every time I am down’) + FIZZ (close enough to a hiss if you’ve had enough bucks fizzes).
13. GISMO – GO (meaning of green) in ISM (distinctive if unspecified theory).
14. TIMID – ‘shrinking’ as in violet; DIMIT[y] reversed.
15. GLENDOWER – AKA Owain Glyndŵr, who is most famous for the liberties Will Will took with him in Henry IV, Part 1; LEND in GOWER. A clue with a Cambrian flavour, as the Gower peninsular is west of Swansea.
17. CONCEITED – CON + a soundalike of SEATED.
20. ANGLE – [t]ANGLE; tangle is a seaweed (oarweed) also known as tangleweed.
21. INDUS – IN + DUS[t] gives us the River Indus, a crossword ‘flower’, because it, well, flows.
23. PARTHENON – ‘classic tourist attraction’ that has lost its marbles; PART + HEN + ON.
25. GUMBOOT – ‘protective gear’; MB + OO in (signalled by ‘to probe’) GUT.
26. CIRCLET – RELIC* in CT; the sort of thing worn by Hugo Weaving as Elrond in LOTR before he turned to cannibalism in ABC’s excellent cross between Minder and Rumpole called Rake.
27. NODE – ‘make small error’, as in the expression ‘Homer nods’; NOD + [simpl]E. Here’s the full monty: ‘Derived from the quote by Horace in Ars Poetica (c. 18 BC), indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus (“I become annoyed when the great Homer is being drowsy”). The English translation “Homer nods” has become standard following Pope (1709), but is due to Dryden (1677).’ In his Essay of Criticism, Pope wrote: ‘Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.’
28. PROSPECTUS – PROSPECT + US.
DOWN
1. PLUMB – PLUM (suspect professor – in Cluedo) + B (bowled).
2. POLICEMAN – a fairly innocuous cryptic definition.
3. REVISED VERSION – ‘good book’ (English translation of the Bible published in 1881–95); VERSION is an anagram (revision) of VIN ROSE, or indeed vice versa.
4. HEDGING – H (hard when describing pencil lead) + EDGING
5. SWIZZLE – not swindle as I had at first; SWI (Westminster code) + ZZ (mathematical unknowns) + [al]LE[ge] (central letters of the word ‘allege’).
7. ARIES – ARISE with the S (succeeded) moved down.
8. MELBOURNE – William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, who as PM was to Victoria what Churchill was to Elizabeth; BOURN (archaic word for boundary, goal, end, most famously used in Will Will’s description of death as ‘the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns’) in MELE[e].
9. FLOG A DEAD HORSE – the literal appears to be ‘plug vainly away at course’, which leaves ‘lashings of meat’ to signify flogging of said deceased animal, with the ‘involving’ and question mark smoothing things out.
14. TUCKING IN – double definition, the second to be taken transitively.
16. WAGONS LIT – ‘sleepers’; WAG ON (keep moving about – nice) + [peacefu]L in SIT.
18. TIPSTER – a cryptic definition of no great nocuousness.
19. DIRECTS – ‘works in theatre’; DIRE + C + the outside letters of S[hor]T reversed. My COD.
22. DOMED – ‘like St Paul’s’ [Cathedral]; DO (work] + MED (sea). I have a slight quibble, as ‘do’ typically means work ON or AT in travailing contexts.
24. NATES – ‘part of body’ – the setter is too discreet to say which, but it is in fact the lower cheeks; SENT A*, with ‘for dissection’ performing the anagrindational function.
Comments are closed.