Anax
Italics = words quoted from clues, < = reversal, * = anagram, (X) = container component, (x) = dropped letter/s
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | COP+E. |
| 3 | WA(i)TER TABLE Not a particularly coherent clue but wiped for removing the I from WAITER is nice. |
| 10 | IMPRECISE = SEMIPRICE*. |
| 11 | (gran)NY LON(g) Pretty easy hidden answer unless, of course, you fall into the “this can’t be as easy as it looks” trap. |
| 12 | FASTNET Sole neighbour refers to the shipping forecast area. Powerful online connection would presumably be FAST NET. |
| 13 | T(W)ITCH Little guy = TITCH – love it! |
| 15 | AGAIN + *STRAIGHTEN = AGAINST THE GRAIN Don’t know why I paused at this one, as I’m not the type to think straighten out doesn’t mean an anagram of straighten. I needed a few moments to realise once had nothing to do with EX. Or something like that. |
| 18 | BERNESE OBERLAND This one caused some consternation among solvers as the wordplay is tricky. Black=B, bird=ERNE, of muted colour=SOBER+LAND (alight) around E(vening). |
| 21 | DESPOT Clear reputation to suggest DE-SPOT is perhaps something of a stretch, but checking letters made the idea clear enough to follow. |
| 23 | (c)AROUSAL |
| 26 | CLEAR At last a bit of chicanery. The Cambridge college is CLARE, from which we take E (English) and place it in the middle. I wonder if any solvers puzzling over this and 21 missed clear at the beginning of the latter clue? |
| 27 | MILLI-CENT. |
| 28 | RETROGRADE This one is a tad tricky too. Soldiers=RE which captures (p)ETROGRAD. The def looks like wordplay, of course, just to muddy things. |
| 29 | FLAN(k). |
| Down | |
| 1 | CHIEF RABBI Personal taste – I’m not overly keen on indicated components of anagram fodder, in this case the B (book) which is ‘grammed with IF HEBRAIC. |
| 2 | PEPYS (homonym PEEPS). |
| 4 | A + RIS(TOT+L)E. |
| 5 | EVENT Hands up all who didn’t like this! Our life-span, traditionally is meant to be SEVENTY, the answer appearing in the middle of that. |
| 6 | TINTIN + G |
| 7 | BALACLAVA Fairly complicated in terms of spotting how it fits together, Endless dark molten rock is BLAC(k)=LAVA which covers A=area, another Timesy abbreviation. |
| 8 | E + D.N.A. |
| 9 | PENN + ON. Penn it was who founded Pennsylvania |
| 14 | ENID BLYTON = TINYBLONDE* – delicious anagram. |
| 16 | A GREE(MEN)T An appreciative pat on the back for the setter’s use of opening for as the container indicator. |
| 17 | HOBNAILED I only parsed this after solving as I couldn’t see how it worked at first. Worn through is HOLED and we put in A BIN* (for recycling). Very nice surface. |
| 19 | E.S.P. (ART) O. |
| 20 | ROOKIE Homonym taken from the Macbeth line “The crow makes wing to the rooky wood”. |
| 22 | TAM(p)ER. P=power – guess what; another Times abbreviation. |
| 24 | SPELL Double meaning. |
| 25 | SCAR(e) In the “old days” Cliff/Mark was a well-worn standalone double def. |
Peter
The first thing I’m saying about this one is that it will encourage me to continue checking that the grid contains recognisable answers which are words – when I did so, I found CHIEF RABBY at 1D and saved myself from plummeting down the rankings to about 19th. I did miss the hidden word at 11A on firsat look, but from haste rather than over-analysing. 18A is the kind of thing I’ve made hay from in the past, and I was interested to see that Mark mentioned it as a tricky clue. 14D is my favourite of the clues in the finals and I think this is my favourite puzzle, though I’m biased by knowing it’s by one of my favourite setters.
Based on memory … The clues I solved on first look were 13, 15, 23, 26, 27, 29, 1, 2, 14, 19, 22, 24. The ones I wrote in without understanding wordplay were 10, 18, 28, 4, 17, 20. Partial ideas noted were: 12 FISHER? (Wrong shipping forecast area), 23 possibly AL(e) for lots of beer, which would have been a flukey route to the AL at the end, 5 “35?” which means I’d understood the seventy = “threescore (years) and ten” part though not yet what to do with it, 6 ____ING, 9 QUEEN? for ‘founder of new colony”, 16 ____MEN_, 20 ROOKIE? – I didn’t know the Macbeth quote either.
This was probably the slowest of the three for me. I loved ‘Sole neighbour’ for FASTNET.