Solving time: 24 minutes
When I first ran through the clues of this puzzle, I thought I was in for a tough time. I could not see a single answer until I came to 27, which was the obvious anagram I had been looking for. But as more crossing letters became available, my solving speeded up. Then, too, I have become more adept at the practice of letting the cryptic guide me, and just writing in parts of likely words until the answer magically appears.
Music: Grieg, Piano Concerto, Rubinstein/Wallenstein
Across | |
---|---|
1 | PASSPORT, PASS + PORT. Simple, but ironically my LOI, just because I was expecting something far more complicated. |
6 | PLANET, PLANE + T. I put this in an erased it, not seeing how a ‘plane’ can be a ‘craft’ – isn’t it a tree? Ooops, now I see it. |
9 | POMADE, PO(MAD)E. |
10 | KNOTHOLE, sounds like NOT WHOLE to most speakers. They must have pronounced the ‘K’ at one time, but I don’t think it has persisted in any dialect. |
11 | GLAD, GLAD[e]. |
12 | SHILLELAGH, S(HILL + GALE backward)H. Other spellings are possible |
14 | SEAFRONT, SE(AFRO)NT, a promenade, that is. I had put in ‘serenade’, i.e. SEREN(AD)E, which looked good for about thirty seconds and then got erased. |
16 | PITY, PI[e]TY. |
18 | DELI, I LED backwards. |
19 | AROUSING, [c]AROUSING. |
21 | ON THE ROCKS, double definition, and quite an easy one. |
22 | CUTE, CU[ra]TE. |
24 | BLESS YOU, B[ishop] + anagram of YES, SOUL. |
26 | IDIOCY, I[sland] + DI(O)CY. |
27 | OYSTER, anagram of SET + ROY. A dated term, which I associate with the colloquial speech of the 1890-1930 period. |
28 | TAKE NOTE, T(A KEN)OTE, a clever cryptic, but ‘range of knowledge’ tends to give it away. |
Down | |
2 | ATOLL, A TO L + L. I wanted to biff ‘dozen’ as another letter-removal answer, but couldn’t justify it. |
3 | STANDOFFISH, STANDOFF + IS + [clas]H, the well-known Billingsgate establishment. |
4 | OVERSHOT, OVER(SHO[p])T. I knew this would have ‘shop’ in it somehow, but I needed the crossers to discover exactly where. |
5 | TAKE INTO ACCOUNT, double definition, one rather factitious. |
6 | POORLY, PO(OR)LY, where OR is given a more explicit definition than usual. |
7 | ASH, [b]ASH, in its slang sense of having a bash at. |
8 | ENLIGHTEN, anagram of IN THE GLEN. Recent arrivals are reminded that misleading capitalization is not considered unfair. |
13 | LIPOSUCTION, anagram of NO POLITICS + U[nusual]. I wanted to make this ‘-section’ for the longest time, but there is obviously no ‘e’. |
15 | ETERNALLY, E[x]TERNALLY, another letter-removal clue. |
17 | JOYSTICK, JOY + STICK. |
20 | PRAYER, P(-L,+R)AYER, a letter-substitution clue. |
23 | TACIT, T + AC(I)T, where ‘tango’ refers to the NATO alphabet. |
25 | SIT, S[u]IT. Yes, we finish with a letter-removal clue. |
WOD to 12ac SHILLELAGH which required careful thought – Irish spelling not being my forte.
FOI 5dn TAKE INTO ACCOUNT LOI 9ac POMADE
COD 2dn ATOLL nice!
On the remark about misleading capitalization not being considered unfair, it is worth pointing out that it only works in that direction (adding a capital where none is really appropriate). Leaving a capital letter off when it is required is not acceptable. And a warning, the setters will disguise a proper name by putting it at the start of the clue (where it gets a capital anyway) thus making it look normal.
Edited at 2017-02-13 05:51 am (UTC)
This meaning of OYSTER is something I only know from crosswords, but that is true of a very large number of things.
As with others, very grateful that SHILLELAGH was spelled out by the wordplay. Enjoyed SEAFRONT, my LOI, once I finally got there. WOD OYSTER; not a usage I’d heard, but it made sense as soon as I saw it.
46 minutes, so pretty good for me, especially considering my recent poor Monday performances.
13:38, with a Severesque clean sweep on the downs after filling in all the acrosses I could get (< half), so very easy. POMADE LOI, like others. First half of SHILL… in on first read, but unsure of the second half without crossers.
Rob
I’m in the appreciation society for ATOLL: if it had been 13 letters long, it would possibly have qualified as the meanest and laziest clue of all time.
SHILLELAGH was still hanging around in that folder in my mental file system labelled “temp”, but the excellent wordplay was still much appreciated.
Thinking about shillelaghs — and probably POMADE — I’ve just started a bit of a list of words found only in crosswords with a view to one day doing a blog post or something. If anyone wants to offer up some old favourites that would be great.
I suppose any list would really need to be called “Words found often in crosswords and rarely anywhere else” or something.
And here I was thinking it was a lyric from Brown Eyed Girl.
Edited at 2017-02-13 11:30 am (UTC)
Edited at 2017-02-13 09:40 am (UTC)
A Shillelagh is an emblem of Southern Ireland. I remember seeing an exhibition of Shillelagh fighting in Waterford and Irish regiments carry them on special occassions
I very much like vinyl’s Billingsgate pun for STANDOFFISH. I wonder if the setter will file that away for future use (or possibly it’s a chestnut that I’ve just never seen).
I only managed about half today, all the parsing makes sense except in 14a, ecstatic = sent? Sent into ecstasy would make sense.
No major holdups, although IDIOCY (my LOI) took a couple of minutes to see. And, Flashman, “sent” is a somewhat old-fashioned term for ecstatic. I don’t know the etymology behind it, but “transported” can have a similar meaning. “Sent” crops up from time to time here, as it’s a useful letter-group.
Edited at 2017-02-13 12:33 pm (UTC)
Nice way to start the week. If asked to name some faux-Irish stereotypes, SHILLELAGH would probably be third on my list after shamrock and leprechaun, so that was a write-in.
COD to ATOLL. Thanks setter and Vinyl.
Zoom zoom, must have really enjoyed a few afternoon pints as this was done in under 8 minutes, one of my fastest on the club timer, with all understood.
Edited at 2017-02-13 08:42 pm (UTC)
I still don’t know if anyone got the movie reference in my blog on Sunday…