After getting off to a flying start and completing around three-quarters of the grid I slowed right down and ended up making a dog’s breakfast of the remainder.
I had two outliers unsolved in the bottom row but the other five problem clues formed an interlinked chain of answers at 8dn, 14ac, 18ac,15dn and 24ac. Eventually I broke the impasse by revealing one of them and that did the trick. I also revealed one of the outliers. Pleased that at least I’d got to the end eventually I failed to check the parsing at 8dn where I had misremembered the writer’s name and had one letter wrong.
As usual definitions are underlined in bold italics, {deletions and substitutions are in curly brackets} and [anagrinds, containment, reversal and other indicators in square ones]. “Aural wordplay” is in quotation marks. I usually omit all reference to juxtaposition indicators unless there is a specific point that requires clarification.
 Across |
|
| 1 | Returning show restricted by extremely corny humour (6) |
| COMEDY | |
| DEMO (show) reversed [returning] contained [restricted] by C{orn}Y [extremely] | |
| 4 | Name a soft drink containing a hint of orange (7) |
| APPOINT | |
| A, P (soft), PINT (drink) containing O{range} [a hint of…] | |
| 9 | Spice Girl accompanying a legendary soprano (5) |
| MELBA | |
| MEL B (Spice Girl), A. Dame Nellie Melba. | |
| 10 | Call into question opinion given by magazine? (4,5) |
| TAKE ISSUE | |
| TAKE (opinion), ISSUE (magazine) | |
| 11 | A way of identifying weapon immediately (2,1,6) |
| AT A GLANCE | |
| A, TAG (way of identifying), LANCE (weapon) | |
| 12 | Collection of books covering standard, illusionary works (2,3) |
| OP ART | |
| OT (collection of books – Old Testament) containing [covering] PAR (standard) | |
| 13 | Instrument does maybe turn around (4) |
| REED | |
| REED (does, maybe) reversed [turn around]. The reeds are a subdivision of the woodwind family of instruments, the most common being the clarinet, oboe, bassoon and saxophone. | |
| 14 | Teacher fabricated rubbish about God (3,7) |
| THE CREATOR | |
| Anagram [fabricated] of TEACHER, then ROT (rubbish) reversed [about]. I took far too long to find this one. | |
| 18 | Bird of course mostly seen in wild gardens (10) |
| SANDERLING | |
| LIN{e} (course) [mostly] contained by [seen in] anagram [wild] of GARDENS. I wondered if the shortened course might be LIN{k} as in a golf course, but I’ve only met that meaning in the plural. The bird has appeared here only once before, in a 15×15 I blogged in 2018. I didn’t know it then but it was clued as a pure anagram and easier to work out than today’s wordplay. |
|
| 20 | Parsnip oddly lacking flavour at first? Yeah, right! (2,2) |
| AS IF | |
| {p}A{r}S{n} I{p} [oddly lacking], F{lavour} [at first] | |
| 23 | Empty spaces in front of Tate taken on by an esteemed artist (5) |
| ANTRA | |
| T{ate} [front of…] contained [taken on by] AN + RA (esteemed artist). Before I had checkers I toyed with ATRIA here for a while but the wordplay saved me from myself. Antrum is a cavity in bones or a part of the stomach. | |
| 24 | Bachelor being slimy and being inclined to insobriety (9) |
| BOOZINESS | |
| B (Bachelor), OOZINESS (being slimy) | |
| 25 | Helicopter shortly to be scrambled for law enforcers (3,6) |
| THE POLICE | |
| Anagram [scrambled] of HELICOPTE{r}. I felt the setter was playing with us here as a slang word for helicopter is ‘eggbeater’. | |
| 26 | Demonstrated, perhaps, what couturiers may use (5) |
| SATIN | |
| SAT IN (demonstrated) | |
| 27 | Continue to obtain cheap Aussie wine from here? (4,3) |
| GOON BAG | |
| GO ON (continue), BAG (obtain). This was one of my two outliers. NHO, but I eventually managed it from wordplay and entered it with crossed fingers. Goonbag – Australian informal – the plastic bladder inside a box of (usually cheap) wine. | |
| 28 | Deadhead ultimately invested in excellent selection of albums? (2,4) |
| CD RACK | |
| {deadhea}D [ultimately] contained by [invested in] CRACK (excellent). My other outlier for which I eventually resorted to aids as I never considered the possibility that the two letter element may be an abbreviation. | |
| Down |
|
| 1 | Guy friends draw parallels between adopting daughter and son (9) |
| COMPADRES | |
| COMPARE (draw parallels between) containing [adopting] D (daughter), then S (son). Although the answer was write-in I puzzled a while when preparing the blog over the presence of ‘guy’. A little research reveals that a ‘compadre’ is specifically a male friend, and the female equivalent is ‘comadre’. One lives and learns! Amusing, given that in English the term ‘guys’ no longer necessarily makes that distinction. | |
| 2 | Virile guards fighting Trojan? (7) |
| MALWARE | |
| MALE (virile) contains [guards] WAR (fighting). A DBE. | |
| 3 | Departs too soon, at significant cost (6) |
| DEARLY | |
| D (departs), EARLY (too soon) | |
| 4 | Racehorse runs into lake, uncontrollably (5) |
| ARKLE | |
| R (runs) contained by [into] anagram [uncontrollably] of LAKE. Arkle won three Cheltenham Gold Cups and a number of other top races before his career was cut short by injury in1966. | |
| 5 | Ready to keep on getting corrupted (8) |
| POISONED | |
| POISED (ready) containing [to keep] ON | |
| 6 | Time for a quick coffee? (7) |
| INSTANT | |
| Two meanings | |
| 7 | Action of lifting the foot (5) |
| THEFT | |
| THE, FT (foot) | |
| 8 | Writer gets rising pulse (8) |
| STENDHAL | |
| NETS (gets) reversed [rising], DHAL (pulse). My LOI and I was careless here. After really struggling with this clue I thought I remembered a writer called Stenthal so I bunged it in, parsed ‘gets / NETS’ and assumed the rest of it fitted somehow. I know nothing of the man’s works. | |
| 15 | Cheered up after games machine finally arrived (8) |
| CONSOLED | |
| CONSOLE (games machine), {arrive}D [finally]. This should have been easy but I was looking for something more specific for a games machine, possibly a brand name that everyone but me would know. | |
| 16 | Dissident about to join family heading north (9) |
| REFUSENIK | |
| RE (about), FUSE (join), then KIN (family) [heading north] | |
| 17 | Love in Macbeth represented great sacrifice (8) |
| HECATOMB | |
| 0 (love) contained by [in] anagram [represented] of MACBETH. A word I knew but couldn’t have told you what it meant. |
|
| 19 | Emissions target number set up. It means nothing! (3,4) |
| NET ZERO | |
| TEN (number) reversed [set up], ZERO (it means nothing) | |
| 21 | Colourful arrays of Bond baddies very nearly dead just before the end (7) |
| SPECTRA | |
| SPECTR{e} (James Bond baddies) [very nearly], {de}A{d} [just before the end – tricky!] | |
| 22 | Film, we’re told, wasn’t a hit (6) |
| MISSED | |
| Aural wordplay[we’re told]: “mist” (film) | |
| 23 | Type of suit that’s partially water-resistant, I guess (4-1) |
| ANTI-G | |
| Hidden in [partially] {water-resist}ANT I G{uess}. Collins: A garment for fliers and astronauts designed to exert pressure on the abdomen and thighs to prevent or retard the pooling of blood below the heart under the influence of excessive head-to-toe acceleration forces. | |
| 24 | Aerospace company dismissing old person (5) |
| BEING | |
| B{o}EING (aerospace company} [dismissing old] | |
I would’ve expected something more today being Christmas Eve but I found this quite drab. No more to say.
Don’t forget there are puzzles online tomorrow, Christmas Day, and perhaps they are saving the seasonal goodies for them.
Good. I’d already printed out two jumbo cryptics to keep me amused tomorrow as I didn’t know there would be anything online. I’ll look forward to something more festive.
Thank you.
And another Jumbo to follow on Boxing Day!
The latest Sunday Times cryptic is chock-full of Xmas references. Next Sunday’s will be the seasonally themed jumbo—which it will be, for a welcome change, Keriothe’s turn to blog (not mine).
Thank you Guy. Yes, it was good and will look forward to this Sunday’s puzzle. Merry Christmas.
Poor you!
I found this tough! With the S starter for the Bond baddies I tried to shoehorn SMERSH into 21d for far too long, and last in was the unknown bird at 18a. With all the checkers the only word I could see to fit was SUNDERLAND, which didn’t parse either as the town or the flying boat. SANDERLING parsed ( like our blogger I thought the course could be a dubiously shortened LINKS) and seemed a reasonable name for a bird. “When in doubt always pick what parses even if never heard of” is a rule of mine, so in it went.
It took at least 5 of my 30 minutes, but I was happy to finally crack it.
Nice to see Stendhal pop up. His two most famous books are, to me, not a patch on his lesser known stuff, such as Lucien Leuwen, The Life of Henry Brulard and his life of Rossini, where his wit is given freer rein. Like Philip Roth, he is at his best when writing veiled (or overt) autobiography. His travel writings are little gems too.
I spent at least five minutes on the bird, not trusting that ‘gardens’ was an anagram when I had two Ns. A bit of elementary thinking, I’m afraid. Besides the avian, I’d never heard of GOON BAG or ANTI-G, even if the latter was deducible.
44:02
It’s always amusing as an Aussie to have the Times introduce me to an allegedly Aus expression. NHO “goon bag”, but it went in from wordplay with a MER.
NHO sanderling either, but couldn’t be bothered with that.
Goon bags are hung on a rotary clothesline as a roulette style party starter my offspring advise. Goon of fortune. Perhaps more common in Qld.
This wasn’t a thing in my NSW youth, and they kept it from me until recently.
Did you get Arkle? A bit of UK centrism IMHO.
I know next to nothing about UK horse racing, but Red Rum and Arkle are no strangers in the Times Crosswords. To be fair, the paper is the *London* Times, so a bit of parochialism is not so out of order.
I started off pretty quickly, first filling in the NW and SE in roughly symmetrical alternation, and was cruising along until the breeze slackened. I then took a break for dinner at the bar across the street. After I returned to the puzzle, a few minutes passed before it snapped into focus again. Suddenly, I saw a handful of the missing answers. But CONSOLED was still slow to arrive and then, lastly, I had to piece the bird together. Pretty good puzzle!
NHO GOON BAG (I’m Australian) and missed CD RACK which had a domino effect on the bottom. BEING to me was the aerospace company and not the person as I was solving, passing over BOEING several times. Looked at SATIN multiple times but couldn’t see demonstrated. Got BOOZINESS early but thought it was wrong. I ran over correct answers for clues around the bottom row problems but didn’t put them in. if I had managed the bottom row there would have been no problems.
Thanks Jack
A struggle for me today. I had heard of GOON BAG but not the bird, nor the MALWARE (a DNF there), nor the racehorse from 60 (!) years ago. Give me a break. That took most of an hour and I never really felt on the wavelength, as they say. Nice blog Jack, at 13 ac I think your first word should be DEER not REED. Happy Christmas everybody.
From Summer Days:
You got something to say, speak or hold your peace
Well, you got something to say, speak now or hold your peace
If it’s information you want you can go get it from THE POLICE
Failed on the NHO GOON BAG, for which I put in an unparsed GROG BAG, but no excuses for not getting BOOZINESS for which I had an equally unparsed BLOKINESS. It could have been worse, with my initial PRIMONED neologism at 5d (“it fits the wordplay”), corrected just before submission. I parsed LIN for ‘course mostly’ at 18a as LIN{KS}; 3/5 > 1/2 so ‘mostly’ (sort of) works.
Not on form today and I’m hoping our setter is in a generous festive spirit tomorrow.
Despite the impeccable logic of your reasoning, Bletchers, I think removing 2 letters from a 5 letter word on the basis of a majority count might be controversial! Not sure even The Guardian puzzle would allow that.
I can’t quote chapter and verse but I have seen this a few times before, possibly in the Indy. I agree though, it’s not great and not the sort of wordplay you’d expect to see here.
I agree it’s best not to rule out anything when it comes to crossword conventions but on reflection I think my original parsing LIN{e} was the most likely intention here. ‘Line’ and ‘course’ are given as synonyms (both ways) in every source I have looked, in the sense of ‘direction of travel / path / route’ etc. Having said that, I now expect a visit from the setter advising to the contrary!
Merry Christmas Jack and everyone on here … I see that you have already started on the sherry?
Very much correct apart from the QC/Hurley bit! 😉
Apologies. Now amended. I multitask around here and had the Hurley QC at the top of the pile in front of me.
Agreed, lin is short for line in this case.
Thank you for all these helpful clarifications. Op-art, CD rack and anti-g are the sort of answers that elude me. Old enough to remember Arkle and I enjoyed the link between the Spice Girls and Dame Nellie.
I was at Kempton on 27 December 1966 when he broke a bone in his foot early on and miraculously cleared the fences and hobbled in second. There was a tremendous murmur8ng around the course.
He became fabled enough for ‘Arkle’ to be used as a byword for speed/accuracy. I remember Derek Randall had the nickname for his exploits on the cricket field.
I did this while waiting to see the doctor, then over lunch, so have no idea of the time, but it took time. I was rather pleased with myself to know a Spice Girl name, except I didn’t know she had a B. NHO GOON BAG–not alone, I’m happy to say–or ARKLE, and was in no position to verify them–neither in ODE–and was pleased and relieved to have got them. DNK the bird.
27 mins. But being pedantic, at 24ac, surely “being inclined to insobriety” requires an adjective (boozy) rather than a noun (booziness). Not that boozy would fit!
Think of ‘being’ as a gerund here. Thus, ‘Being inclined to insobriety is a trait of the British.’
18.40
I found this very amusing, especially the Spice Girl reference – maybe MELCHIOR will arrive later this week.
LOI BEING, after struggling with GOON BAG – perhaps a precursor to BOOZINESS, hopefully not involving THE POLICE.
COD MELBA
Dear Mr Cool, is this your SANDERLING?
GROW BAG almost made it into my final submission.
That’s what I put! Didn’t twig until I read the explanation here.
18:34. Another who had never heard of GOON BAG. I fell for the trap and tried hard to make 25A EGG BEATER for too long. I too parsed the LIN in SANDERLING as LIN{e}. LOI POISONED. Thanks Jackkt and setter.
DNF
Sanderling/consoled wouldn’t reveal themselves quickly, and I have a bunch of other things to do today, so I gave up. You have to do a bit of mental gymnastics with ‘being inclined to’ and construe the ‘being’ as a gerund in order to make the solution work as a noun. It’s not ideal, really.
Thanks, jack.
No time to offer with the Christmas Eve comings and goings in the household and it was a double DNF anyway. One of those coming, of a younger generation, confirmed the existence of an ANTI G SUIT. I had to check the unknown to all present GOON BAG, similarly ANTRA. All the CDs are now in a cupboard along with the cassettes. The CD RACK was donated to the British Heart Foundation. Shouldn’t that be the point when it can no longer be clued? The guy there covets my vinyl, but that’s too precious, even though I’ve no longer got a record player. COD to MELBA. Decent puzzle with a disappointing end for me. Thank you Jack and setter,
STENDHAL (who?) and SANDERLING (what?) crossing over was enough to stump me.
49 minutes, never quite building momentum and instead slowing to a crawl with STENDHAL, ANTRA, HECATOMB and GOON BAG—which I assumed was a word for the brown paper bags that winos traditionally hide their booze in—like pulling teeth at the end. Glad I learnt ARKLE from a previous puzzle and saw the CD RACK surprisingly quickly…
Hope everyone has a good Christmas!
A curate’s egg for me, with plenty of solid wordplay leading to some interesting and often unconventional answers (ANTI-G, OP ART) but it was spoiled by the ludicrously obscure Australian wine box inner, which even our resident Aussies have never encountered, and which gave me a pink GROW BAG on the basis (a) it’s the only thing I have ever heard of that fitted and (b) grow almost means continue, sort of. This is The Times of London, and esoteric jargon from Oz or the USA just feels unfair.
I wonder how many people under 50 have a CD RACK? Vinyl is making a huge comeback, but thankfully CDs with their illegible 6pt text never will, unless the Russians or Chinese blow up the Internet.
I couldn’t get into the club this morning – just as well, as I would not have put in with such confidence the nho GOON BAG, the unknown ANTRA or the ungrammarly BOOZINESS.
CD RACK held me up, wondering what well-known Latin phrase I’d forgotten. Odd to see two answers clued by anagrams beginning with ‘THE’. I sympathise with anyone under sixty re ARKLE, who was retired when I was eleven.
25′ 28″, thanks jack and setter.
The Go Off Show
I would value input from any Cobber who has manage to produce wine from a vine planted in a GROW BAG. I quite like GROW for continue and don’t see why both the idea and the wordplay can’t be possible. For all I know it’s what they do in the Sydney suburbs to produce cheap plonk and other forms of rot-gut. Since our resident antipodean contributors seem to be saying “you’re coming the raw prawn” to GOON BAG I think we should rise up in protest. I’d quite like my two rosés dismissed for Christmas.
Funnily enough, my ancient, inherited with the property, computer desk still has a CD RACK incorporated, but I think it might be the last one left on Earth. Why would anyone want to torture CDs?
Just for fun, try reviewing this grid and count the number of answers that reflect my disappointment. You can have a start with AS IF.
I failed on the GOON BAG and HECATOMB corner, and various other clues.
I thought the SPECTRA clue was excellent.
Disappointing solve, as I was on the money yesterday.
Happy Christmas!
11.44
I enjoyed this, although the less said about racehorses retired almost two decades before I was born the better. ANKLE would have surely been a preferable entry.
Elsewhere, I didn’t know the bag, the soprano, the writer, or the bird, which was my LOI once I’d stopped looking for a synonym of ‘seen’ to go in the anagram, but all was fairly clued. I did know ANTRA and HECATOMB, if only because they’ve both tripped me up in the past.
Thanks both – and merry Christmas.
DNF. Well I did finished in just over 40 mins but I had two errors. AITRA (AI for esteemed and this being an alternative spelling of ATRIA) and GROW BAG (where continue = grow). I didn’t help myself by entering DOMEDY in 1 across and only spotting my typo after about half an hour! This led me to try and create some DADSMATES where COMPADRES were needed.
COD: MELBA ( and not, as I was trying to justify, POSHA).
Like ‘dadsmates.’ Can imagine them sitting around a table in the pub mansplaining everything to each other.
😀
Well! Tricky.
Started using the Cheating Machine early on, which gave me grief as it has a lot of The somethings but not Police nor Creator. Nor did it have the NHO CD Rack, nor HHO Anti-G(-Suit) and Net Zero, now added. Added too the NHO Goon Bag and goonbag. I’ve bought a lot of so packaged wine in Oz and am totally unaware of this nomenclature. So there we are, DNF bigtime.
The CM did help. And some of the ones where it didn’t help were in, such as Arkle about whom I had forgotten until it suddenly popped up. Mel B was in, but not actually useful as I wasn’t searching that way.
44 minutes on a crossword that seemed to be following the down with the kids policy lately adopted by the Times. Several that like others I’d never heard of and SPECTRA was entered without my really knowing how it worked, since my Bond knowledge is thin. Some nice clues, though.
Different ditch, same DNF. Old enough to remember ARKLE, young enough to know Mel B, lucky enough to get GOON BAG but too dim to name that sandpiper.
About 38
Tough particularly in the SE but got there. Loved the MEL B clue
Sadly I made up primoned and mixed up the letters in hecatomb again! Not my day! I’ll hope for better tomorrow.
I thought about PRIMONED as well!
Another PRIMONED here. Frustrating when that happens as it undermines the success of having deduced all the others correctly.
Thought it was a good puzzle, but a DNF for me. I hit a brick wall, or rather four brick walls, on the following:
THE CREATOR – thought the answer must include an anagram of “teacher”, but I failed to think of “rot” for rubbish. I think I might have got this one eventually if I hadn’t allowed despondency to set in.
SANDERLING – NHO; I could see that the answer had to be something meaning “course”, but missing a bit, sandwiched by an anagram of “gardens”, but “line” didn’t occur to me at all. This one would probably never have come.
STENDHAL – Ashamed of myself. I have a degree in French Lit, in the course of which I had to read a couple of his books (“Le Rouge et le Noir” and the incredibly tedious “Armance”). I am also fond of Indian food and know that “dhal” is “lentil”. It even occurred to me that Stendhal might be the answer, so why on earth didn’t I write it in? I believe the expression for this is brain-fart.
CONSOLED – as jackkt says, should have been easy, but I threw myself completely off the scent by thinking that “games” indicated “PE” and then trying to think of a machine that might supply the rest of the answer. I think I would have got this one eventually if I hadn’t given up the ghost.
Not my finest half-hour.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Like Jack I got off to a flying start and then made a dog’s breakfast of the SW corner. Having dredged out the unknown STENDHAL and then remembered SANDERLING, I wrote out the anagrist for HECATOMB, which almost arrived after I entered the BAG bit of 27a, except that I parsed it correctly and then typed in MEGATOMB. What a plonker! It didn’t really matter though, as I’d plumped for GROW BAG by then. 4 pink squares. Bah Humbug! CDs are very popular among folk club guest artists, as they make more from selling one CD than from a plethora of downloads. I buy them and then load them into iTunes and from there to my phone to play in the car. Saves changing CDs while driving (I still have a CD player too!)
I used to regularly drive past Arkle and Foinaven on my way to Durness in Sutherland. Two spectacular mountains not far from Laxford Bridge and Ben Stack where Robin Cook met his doom. 32,45 for the puzzle with 2 errors. Thanks setter (Jalna, I presume from a previous comment) and Jack.
Unlike Arkle, I fell at the last fence, entering Ad Rack instead of CD Rack – how annoying – I still have a CD Rack!
Despite this fail, I enjoyed the puzzle.
Season’s greetings to all.
Spent 75 mins but did get there in the end. A few too many obscurities but otherwise some excellent misdirection and self-inflicted missing the point.
HECATOMB is one of those words only ever encountered in crosswords. I can remember it at least 3 times in here. The problem is that the dictionary web bots will find this page and log it as evidence that the word is still in use and we’ll be stuck with it.
DNF Undone by cd rack. I mistakenly decided excellent would be A and never shifted. Now I’m kicking myself as I got the rack bit. 38 mins of enjoyment spoilt by my stupid mistake.
Merry Xmas everyone.
Failed also with NHO GOON BAG, mainly because I assumed it was some kind of BIN, which made BEING rather difficult. 35 mins with a little help from my friends…
85 mins! Not my finest hour (and 25 mins). NW corner lulled me into a false sense of security. Parsed everything OK, but NHO goon bag or anti-G. Liked spectra, once I eventually solved it. CD rack was final solve – had been trying to fit something into ‘A-OK’ for ‘excellent’!
About 8 minutes with a break and the bird being the last one in. I had a laugh at GOON BAG – it’s an expression I’ve heard quite a bit in the last 10 or so years, and yesterday my brother texted me a picture of the box wines at an Italian supermarket with the caption “found the goon section”
42’00”
Steady progress, stayed on gamely.
Liked this lots. Fortunate to get a clear run; Arkle’s portrait hung in what Grandma Edith termed the Champions’ Room and sanderlings were also familiar. The goon bag was constructed and entered with glee; if it wasn’t an Oz term for something that contained, in some way, gut-rot grog, it should be !
I miss my CD rack; having transfered my Mozart piano concerti and various operas to a computer prior to travelling and living abroad, I never really heard them again. The cretinous software couldn’t keep the movements in the right order and then the hard disk failed and lost the lot anyway. They tell me this is progress.
Season’s Greetings to Jack et al, the setters who have saved my sanity in this trying year, and the legion of erudite contributors here.
I had another of my occasional goes at this. Failed on 11! No chance at all of getting the unknown GOON BAG, ANTRA or ANTI G and found several other clues absolutely bewildering.
DNF. After needing multiple attempts to get close to the finish line, I blotted my copybook with ‘primoned’ rather than POISONED… at least I wasn’t the only one.
– Took far too long to separate ‘soft’ and ‘drink’ in the clue for APPOINT
– SANDERLING was only vaguely known if at all
– Relied on the wordplay for ANTRA, and like Jack I considered ‘atria’ for a while
– Same story for the unknown GOON BAG
– Dimly remembered STENDHAL from I-have-no-idea-where
– Again like Jack, I couldn’t have told you what HECATOMB means
Thanks Jack and setter. And Merry Christmas everyone!
COD Appoint
This took some work – I got a lot of these from the definition and then backed into the construction, which is surprising considering how well-hidden or allusional many of the definitions were.
Best to everyone for a Happy and Healthy Christmas
33.27. Had to deduce ‘Goon Bag’ – an expression unknown to me – and did not like ‘CD Rack’.
Season’s Greetings to all.
I had grow bag which sort of fits. Arkle was kidnapped by the IRA
I think the kidnapped (horsenapped?) one was Shergar.
Made a dog’s breakfast of this! NHO ARKLE, ANTRA, SANDERLING nor GOON BAG, despite residing in Oz for 60 years ( don’t think I’ll miss the latter). Sure, I got a few, but then again, too few to mention…regrets? Nah, the definitions were too obscure to make a stab at most of them. BOOZINESS? Surely not. Liked some of the shorter ones, like AS IF, SATIN and MELBA, oh and THEFT.
Roll on tomorrow.