Times QC No 3311 by Juji

Tricky one for 1A, needing an operation on the anagrist first. And “unusable” looked like an anagram indicator as well.

We mathematicians go on about ellipses which are well defined, but there is no mathematical definition of an Oval. Shape of a cricket ground works for me.

The only time I ever heard this colour is the “I” in rainbow. It was Newton who decided that there must be seven colours in a spectrun, one of his weird alchemy beliefs.

Apparently our modern definition of “blue” and “indigo” has shifted. what Newton called “blue” was likely closer to what we call cyan or a light sky blue. Therefore, what he called “indigo” was actually just standard, deep navy blue.

Brigitte Bardot of course.

This is the slang “rabbit” for chatting, generally somewhat dismissive, as a teacher might stay to their pupils. And of course there isn’t a game called “rabbit”, it’s the other meaning of “game”, meat that is not farmed. I had it for the first time in Malta last month. Not a fan of hacking up another mammal on the plate.

CALIFORNIAN – (AFRICAN LION)* [mauled]

Comes up a lot in crosswords, but I think not actually in use so much these days. Like much crim argot it comes from Romany. As do nark, chav, shiv, cosh, barney and gaff. And of course “posh”.

This was my LOI. There were so many words that fitted the framework. S/NAPPED, S/LIPPED, S/HIPPED, S/TAMPED etc

This is the only surface that falls below the high standard. Although “up” can follow just about any verb, I’m not sure “darning up” works.

This caused trouble, I thought an ENACTOR is someone who officially puts a law, decree, system, or process into action. So, not really a “performer”, which is why we have separate words for ACTOR and ENACTOR.

Clever, that “of” is what makes this an adjective.

I guess if a country was already an Anarchy, then an Anarchist wouldn’t really be a revolutionary, they’d be the “continuity candidate”.

At my University, the Anarchist Society had to have elections and an AGM to receive Union funding, which they duly did.

By the late 1980s, Tiffany cracked the Top 20 most popular names in England and Wales, but it crashed out of the top 1000 recently. So If you randomly run into someone named TIFFANY in England today, there is a massive statistical probability that she will be in her 30s or 40s (a Millennial). So a “woman”, not a “girl”.

These sol-fa notes are a pain to remember, especially as many of them have variant spellings. I though “lo” and “se” looked plausible before I clocked that “on the counter” was a reversal indicator.

And of course ABCDEFG can be notes as well.

RAITA – {c}RA{b} + {v}ITA{l} [Shelled]

That “in” bothers me a bit, I think it is superfluous to the wordplay and is just misdirection, since IN often indicates containment.