A really good, quite difficult test, I thought, with several unusual words and some lateral thinking needed. It took me around 40 minutes, and a couple of clues had to be parsed after the answers were clear enough. I loved the billed character best, but there was much to like and a new town to discover.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Sauce and beans occasionally found in pancake (7) |
| TABASCO – TACO = pancake, insert B A S alternate letters of beans. I put Tabasco on things, a lot. | |
| 5 | Measure Juliet put into pub’s glass container (4,3) |
| BELL JAR – ELL (measure) J[uliet] all inside BAR. | |
| 9 | Sheep kills time in an easterly wind (9) |
| LEICESTER – REEL = wind as in reel in a fishing line perhaps; reversed = LEER, insert ICES T for kills time. Being in Rutland next to said county, we are surrounded by fields of Tom’s Leicester breed sheep. Very daft animals, they just stand in our road and look at the car waiting to pass. Tom’s Dad says “sheep are born to die “- but aren’t we all? | |
| 10 | Northern town taxi turned towards a centre (5) |
| BACUP – CAB reversed, then UP must mean towards a centre? I’d never heard of it but Mrs P had, when I asked her about a town with 5 letters beginning with BAC. Pop 13,000 or so, somewhere near Rochdale I gather. It’s pronounced back-up not bake-up. | |
| 11 | Showing heart, cross about conflict, one trained to attack (6,7) |
| CENTRE FORWARD – CENTRE = heart; FORD (cross) around WAR. | |
| 13 | Patent protecting firm — origin of Apple Mac? (8) |
| OVERCOAT – OVERT (patent) around CO, A[pple]. As in mackintosh. | |
| 15 | Duke ingesting MDMA joins a celebration (6) |
| FIESTA – MDMA is 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, commonly called ecstasy or E; insert it into FIST (duke) and add A. | |
| 17 | Despair initially avoided may become hope (6) |
| ASPIRE – despair, lose the D, so (ESPAIR)*. | |
| 19 | Trap a king — what’s stopping merry old one? (8) |
| CAKEHOLE – the merry old king being COLE, insert A K and EH? for a king, what?. As in “shut your trap / cakehole!” | |
| 22 | Take serious risks? Ditch the idea, bowling round wicket (4,4,5) |
| DICE WITH DEATH – insert W for wicket into (DITCH THE IDEA)*. | |
| 25 | United by wise tradition (5) |
| USAGE – U for united, SAGE for wise | |
| 26 | Daughters in coffee bar that’s contemporary (6-3) |
| LATTER-DAY – LATTE being a kind of milky coffee, (not my kind!) RAY being a bar e.g. as in sunlight, insert D for daughters. I had something DAY for a while and wanted to see MODERN but the checkers showed I was going wrong. | |
| 27 | Family outside on marks close to royal citadel (7) |
| KREMLIN – KIN = family, insert RE (on) M (marks) L (close to royal). | |
| 28 | Second sin St Anthony embodies? (7) |
| INSTANT – slightly hidden as above. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Count to play the informer (4) |
| TELL – double definition, tell as in elections, tell as in inform. | |
| 2 | Impatient exclamation from Scot splitting cheese roll (7) |
| BRIOCHE – our cheese is BRIE, insert OCH! which an impatient Scot might say. I spent a while trying to fit MAC or IAN into something cheesy. | |
| 3 | Beatles manager once leaving record for writer (5) |
| STEIN – Brian EPstein loses his EP. Gertrude Stein was a rather unattractive lesbian novelist and poet and a Nazi sympathiser, I’ve never read her stuff. | |
| 4 | Spontaneous occurrence before the public holiday (8) |
| OUTBREAK – OUT = before the public, BREAK = holiday. | |
| 5 | Whistler secured in bank that’s robbed? (6) |
| BEREFT – REF, referee, our usual whistler, inside BET which here means bank, as in “you can bet / bank on that”. | |
| 6 | Debauchee having left island, knight Edward VII embraces? (9) |
| LIBERTINE – Edward VII was known as Bertie to his friends, family and mistresses, so L for left, I for island, BERTIE with N inserted. | |
| 7 | The Fool — as shown in the cards? (7) |
| JACKASS – AS inside JACKS as in queens, kings etc. | |
| 8 | Disowned aide, put out, getting into the wine (10) |
| REPUDIATED – RED wine with (AIDE PUT)* inserted. | |
| 12 | Character billed as old and decrepit — nothing to it (6,4) |
| DONALD DUCK – took me a while to see what was going on here – and “character billed” is very good. ((OLD AND)*, then DUCK = nothing, going on the end. I don’t remember seeing decrepit as an anagrind before. | |
| 14 | Short file, kept by alliance in Somerset, that goes sideways (9) |
| CARTWHEEL – apparently a somersault can also be called a somerset; so a somerset which goes sideways is a cartwheel. A CARTEL is an alliance, insert WHE[T], where to whet a blade is to sharpen it on a grindstone. | |
| 16 | Outlaws part that’s wrapped with note (8) |
| BANDITTI – I couldn’t get this until I had the final I, then thought of the word and reverse engineered it to explain. Part = BIT, insert AND = with, add TI the musical note. | |
| 18 | Select times for admission to A&E? That’s ground-breaking! (7) |
| PICKAXE – PICK (select) A E, insert X = times. | |
| 20 | Old Greek character given support raised snakes (7) |
| OPHIDIA – O (old) PHI (Greek letter), AID (support) reversed. I knew this word, saw it recently in a GK crossword (was it weekend before last?) | |
| 21 | Taken to beer without opening tin cans? (6) |
| STOLEN – SN = Sn, symbol for tin; insert TO, [A]LE. | |
| 23 | Partners in crime? (5) |
| ABETS – cryptic definition, usually used in the phrase “aids and abets” for assisting a criminal. | |
| 24 | Crew said something at Chiswick in Boat Race (4) |
| EYOT – pronounced properly it sounds like “eight” as in rowing crew. I knew Chiswick EYOT was an island in the Thames but had to ponder between EYOT and AYOT for a while, as AIT means island too and there was scope for pondering. | |
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