Solving Time: About 20 minutes, roughly average for a blogging day though it felt quicker. The need to parse everything slows you down a bit. Overall I thought this was good clean fun, not particularly hard, with only one or two slightly unusual words, and some very neat clues.
We may see some quickish times today, though still a bit early to say, perhaps. Maybe I am just a 20dn 13dn today..
cd = cryptic definition, dd = double definition, rev = reversed, anagrams are *(–), homophones indicated in “”
ODO means the Oxford Dictionaries Online
|
Across |
|
|---|---|
| 1 | sockeye – lettuce = COS, rev., + essential = KEY and (vitamin) E, a useful antioxidant |
| 5 |
cockpit – mate = COCK + very good = PI + T |
| 9 | on the spot – actor = THESP, in O + NOT, the def. being “Where it’s at?” A clever clue |
| 10 | poser – a = PER, (as in a/per person), containing mOrSe. Tricky! |
| 11 | sweet – sounds like “suite,” as in The Peer Gynt Suite for example |
| 12 | cyclamate – C(Y) + CLAM + ATE, Y being an unknown. Sodium cyclamate is an artificial sweetener, widely believed to be a carcinogen but in the absence of proof, still on sale in most countries, though it is banned in the USA. Why bother banning it, when proven carcinogens like tobacco are legal? |
| 14 |
break ones heart – holiday = BREAK + *(NORTH SEA + E), the E coming from |
| 17 | as the case may be – a cd, those being the two options available for a case taken on an aeroplane |
| 21 | apathetic – one’s = I in A PATH + others = ETC. Cleverly worded clue, the insertion indicator being “Taking part in” |
| 23 | lager – girl = GAL rev., + bEeR |
| 24 |
sapid – fluid = SAP + I + D |
| 25 | grounding – I suppose this is a dd, a grounding in a subject is rudimentary knowledge and an aircraft, for example, would be hampered by grounding.. I might have preferred (eg) “boat” to high flier, myself |
| 26 | address – A + D + DRESS, the def. being treat as in negotiate or, well, address oneself to |
| 27 | surfeit – SURFE(D) + IT |
|
Down |
|
| 1 | scouse – S + CO + USE.. Scousers being Liverpudlians |
| 2 | cats ear – *(SEAT) in CAR. Another neat clue – not a plant I was familiar with (but this is true of most plants), fortunately the wordplay is clear |
| 3 |
eventuate – still = EVEN + tense about = TAUT rev., + |
| 4 | expectorant – in the club = up the duff = bun in the oven = pregnant = EXPECTANT, containing men = OR. A medicine designed to make you cough, though why anyone would want it is unclear to me. Is unaided coughing really that difficult? |
| 5 | cut – TUC rev. |
| 6 | cuppa – copper = CU + PP + A. Another neatly worded clue, it’s nice that the number of pennies required is spelled out |
| 7 | passata – PASTA containing it = SA = sex appeal.. “it” and “sa” surely are long extinct in the wild, surviving only in captivity, here in crosswordland |
| 8 | torrents – hills = TORS containing burst = RENT |
| 13 |
clever clogs – C |
| 15 |
headliner – HE + bill = AD(vertisement) + band = LINE + R |
| 16 | Malaysia – postgraduate = MA + sounds like “lazier” |
| 18 | trapped – without money = (S)TRAPPED |
| 19 |
big-time – broadcast = EMIT + rock = GIB |
| 20 |
bright – B |
| 22 |
hedge – H |
| 25 | gas – hidden in makinG A Stew |
I was amused by the MALAYSIA homophone clue, as, on my frequent visits to the land of Madasahattir, I always smiled inwardly at their TV ads that referred to the country in this, to me, rather pedantic way. Then, on a recent visit, I noticed that they’d switched to my more ‘Anglo’ prounciation, ‘Malaysha’.
There is a Kipling “Just So” story (from memory I think it’s “The Crab that played with the Sea”) which has a pun on Malaysi = lazy.
I’m not sure that an expectorant is a soother! In answer to jerry’s question it loosens congestion in the lungs and enables the sufferer to expectorate (lit. “out of the chest”) the phlegm.
If you take an expectorant, it’s presumably because what you are trying to dislodge is bothering you, so if it does its job you would be soothed, no?
I enjoyed MALAYSIA, CLEVER CLOGS and POSER especially.
Please see the post here.
Didn’t understand On The Spot or Sweet so thanks Jerry for explaining those twp.
Although Address was FOI the rest of the SW corner (Trapped, Sapid and Hedge) took a long time to unravel.
GROUNDING was my LOI after the excellent &lit PASSATA. I didn’t think twice about the COCKPIT/Wellington association once I’d parsed the clue, even though “flight deck” might be more technically correct.
Haven’t decided whether to volunteer yet, as I don’t often have good ideas for clues.
I’d initially been irritated by what I had thought were some excessively woolly clues, but now realise that there was brilliant word-construction at play which defeated my lurgi-addled attempts at parsing. Well done setter, more please, preferably when I’m better! And now back to the hot drinks …
Cyclamate was my LOI as a guess after the penny eventually dropped on the marvellous clever clogs. At 15 I thought it was just band=headline so thanks to Jerry for spotting that it was another fine &Lit.
I actually heard someone use “eventuate” in a meeting the other day and just assumed they’d made the word up. Maybe they did and just got lucky, but hats off either way.
That was exactly my thinking. And we were right, but we were obviously thinking of Late Latin rather than the earlier Classical …
Origin of INSIPID
French & Late Latin; French insipide, from Late Latin insipidus, from Latin in- + sapidus – savory, from sapere to taste
52 minutes, two or three unknowns holding me up in a good but tricky solve.
I can’t believe any genuine Wellington bomber pilot would use the term “flight deck” (obviously, if he does, he’s not a genuine….). I wouldn’t call it anything else either.
Most sweeteners – Aspartame in particular – have a strongly bitter taste for me, so I won’t be getting cancer from any of them. I just put up with totally harmless sugar.
Thanks to Jerry for spotting the thesp, which I didn’t. LJ seems ok now after being virtually inaccessible this morning. I wonder if that’s why there are so few neutrinos on the leader board as yet?
I fell for “sipid”, not knowing “SAPID” and trying to shoehorn “sip” into it. Ah well; win some, lose some, as we say here in the bloodbath. I’m far too tired to tackle anything complicated until my body clock catches up, so it’s as well I spent half the day standing around in theatre up to my wrists in a nice warm thorax. I’ve now had the chance to change into evening attire, and am kempt and hevelled.
Failed also to parse PASSATA, I agree with our blogger – “it” and “sa” belong to a bygone era. I believe the term these days is “fit” (or, in Norfolk, “still warm”).
Quick note for our blogger – most things cause cancer, including good old fashioned sugar (though it’s more likely to cause diabetes, or to add to your accumulation of dud glycosylated proteins). There was a very nice paper about 15 years ago where someone had tried to identify as many as possible of the small molecules (ie, not proteins or nucleic acids etc) in a fresh strawberry. Of those they identified, most had of course never been tested in any way. Of the ones that had been tested, about 40 percent were considered toxic in one way or another, and about half of those were known or suspected carcinogens. Plants want you dead, and have had millions of years to think about it.
(a) Its sweet taste was discovered by a chemist who, having rested his cigarette on the bench where he was working, discovered that it tasted sweet. Those were the days.
(ii) The original discovery of possible carcinogenesis involved giving rats a quantity of cyclamate equivalent to a human drinking just over 100 litres of diet fizzy drink per day.
Good to see you back, thud.
…not for her to analyse or anything… I just don’t like the woman.
I agonised for ages over PASSATA, which came up in No. 25,917 (2 August 2011) with a similar but rather more helpful clue (“Tomato sauce? It fills ravioli etc (7)”), but which I’d almost completely forgotten about, though there was the faintest of faint bells ringing.
Edited at 2013-12-12 01:01 am (UTC)