Solving time of 18:59 is probably as fast as I have solved a Jumbo, at least since I started blogging them, so either this was at the easy end of the spectrum, or I was bang on the right wavelength. A lot of cryptic definitions, and mischievous wordplay, both of which are often characteristic of a “wavelength puzzle”, so perhaps I’ve answered my own question there.
With Jumbos, which attract a far smaller audience than daily puzzles, I generally confine myself to discussion of answers which I think are a) less straightforward for inexperienced or non-UK based solvers, or b) especially elegant / questionable. In other words, unless it’s an exceptionally interesting puzzle, the coverage is unlikely to be 100%; however, as always, if a particular clue is not discussed, please feel free to raise it in comments for explanation or discussion.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | AGORAPHOBIA – a cryptic def. straight off the bat, which is a sign of things to come. |
| 15 | ORDERS – {b}ORDERS. |
| 16 | DIPLOMAS – DIP(lower), LO(see), M.A.S(degrees). |
| 17 | DESTINY – Nous parlons un peu de francais ici, DES(=”of” in French), TINY(=”tres petite” in English). |
| 19 | GENERATOR – GEN(=dope=information), ERA, TOR{y}. |
| 23 | EPEE – reverse hidden in crEEPEr. I wasn’t entirely convinced that “bit of fencing” means the same as “an article used in fencing”, but the meaning is clear enough. |
| 25 | OASIS – OAS IS. The OAS were active in trying to prevent Algerian independence; I doubt I’m the only person whose knowledge of them comes from them being the employers of the fictional assassin in The Day of the Jackal. |
| 27 | AYE AYE – peculiarly-named Madagascan creature which often appears in TV nature programmes. |
| 28 | SUBTRAHEND – [HART BUS]rev., END(=aim); about as tough as the vocab got, especially if you’re no great mathematician. I was trying to fit CART into it, despite the lack of support from the wordplay, until crossing letters made it clear that it wasn’t “subtractor” or similar. One of those occasions when knowing that the word “subtract” comes from the past participle of the Latin verb “subtraho” helped me arrive at the right answer. |
| 30 | PORTLAND – RT. in POLAND, the “Bill” referring to Portland Bill, the scenic peninsula in Dorset (hello, Jim). |
| 34 | BANANA REPUBLIC – one of those cryptic defs which take a bit of unpicking, though the meaning is perfectly clear; or at least it is once you remember that bananas come in “hands” rather than bunches. A banana republic is “a politically unstable country, whose economy is largely dependent on exporting a limited-resource product”, most typically bananas, hence the name. Once you establish that it’s the bananas which are making the money, not people (given that such economies involve only a small number of plutocrats actually profiting), the shape of the clue makes sense. |
| 35 | CATACOMB – CAT(=jazz fan…nice), A COMB(=curry, the definition here being the one relating to grooming horses). |
| 38 | ROSE-TINTED – when red is the far left of the political spectrum, the moderate left is usually characterised as pink. |
| 43 | WATT =”WHAT?”. James Watt, that’s what. |
| 44 | INTERVAL – double def., one being specific musical notation. |
| 48 | TEAROOM – ‘ROO in TEAM. |
| 49 | SARATOGA – [RAT, O{ld}] in SAGA. One for our North American solvers. |
| 50 | LANCER – Sir LANCE{lot} + {soldie}R. |
| 53 | HO-HUM – HO{use} + HUM{ble}. |
| 55 | REDECORATED – RED(=colour) ECO-RATED(as fridges and the like are these days), the environmental colour not being green after all. |
| Down | |
| 2 | OILED – {t}OILED minus T{ime}. |
| 3 | ASPIRER – A SPIRE + {cleve}R, Oxford being the city of dreaming spires. A smooth surface which describes an awful lot of people in public life. |
| 4 | HOOD – referring to Robin HOOD and the part of academic dress which comes attached to a gown. However…either my experience of subfusc is wrong or the setter has conflated two separate things – I always thought subfusc specifically means the dress code involving a dark suit (hence the name, from the Latin fuscus=dark, gloomy) and white tie, over which one then wears the appropriate gown and other academic accoutrements, so undergraduates wear subfusc without hoods. Learned comment welcome. |
| 5 | BREVIARIES – B{ritish} REV, 1, ARIES(=stars). |
| 6 | AUXILIARY VERBS – auxiliary verbs are the extra ones you get indicating tense etc., the most common being “BE and HAVE”, hence “combining to make…behave”. |
| 8 | LINKS – another cryptic def., a links being a seaside golf course (hello again, Jim). |
| 10 | ELAPSE – E LAPSE, where A is the top grade and E is the fifth rank. |
| 18 | STRAINER – double def., the less obvious one referring to a riddle i.e. a sieve. |
| 22 | STUPID – PI(the foreign character being Greek) in STUD. |
| 24 | TAIL LAMP – A in TILL(=work), A M.P. |
| 26 | SELENITE – {h}ELEN in SITE, Helen of Troy being proverbially beautiful. |
| 32 | NEARNESS – i.e. if you were NEAR (Loch) NESS you’d be close to a monster. Possibly. |
| 34 | BIRDWATCHER – excellent work, this is how Spoonerisms should be done in crosswords – sadly there was no satisfying penny-drop moment, as it wasn’t entirely new to me (the late Humphrey Lyttleton told a story in which he was interviewed by someone who asked about his hobbies, including his love of “orthinology”; only much later did Humph realise he should have said “not so much orthinology, more word-botching”). |
| 36 | BLOOD ORANGE – BLOO{m}, DO, RANGE. |
| 37 | CORRIGENDA – (ARECORDING)*; Latin for “things which are to be corrected”. |
| 42 | OVERLOAD =”OVER LOWED”. |
| 47 | COSMIC – S{on} in COMIC. I made a jump too far, working my way through Beano, Dandy etc. before realising the publication wasn’t so specific. |
| 49 | SLEET – LEE in ST{reet} &lit. |
| 52 | ISLE – I S{O}LE minus 0. |
I’m not sure of the technicalities but when I wore it subfusc certainly didn’t involve a hood.