A tricky one from Izetti that pushed me well over my target, finishing in 21:24, and with the last one not parsed. A couple of clues are advanced for the quickie, needing you to form an anagram and then insert some other letters, but for anyone with ambitions to attempt the 15×15, that is a common technique.
I think I must be missing something in my parsing of 1d POPE. There must be something more than what I’ve come up with. I’ve even checked the obscure definitions in the dictionary, and I find that a pope can be a fish, a weevil, a bird or a mulled wine, but I’m none the wiser for how this clue works.
Definitions underlined in italics, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in squiggly brackets.
| Across | |
| 1 | Stop silly club maybe providing old-fashioned communication (8) |
| POSTCARD – Anagram [silly] of STOP + CARD (club, maybe). | |
| 5 | Loud Greek character presenting his cheese? (4) |
| FETA – F (loud, forte in music) + ETA (Greek character).
A sort of semi &lit, because feta is, of course, a Greek cheese. |
|
| 8 | Learner hiding in tree seen by everyone in London thoroughfare (4,4) |
| PALL MALL – L (learner) in PALM (tree), next to [seen by] ALL (everyone). | |
| 9 | Started losing heart and head (4) |
| BEAN – BE{g}AN (started), without its middle letter [losing heart]. | |
| 11 | Stick around and see county town (10) |
| DORCHESTER – ROD (stick), reversed [around] gives DOR + CHESTER (see, as in diocese).
Dorchester is the county town of Dorset. Nice to see a see that isn’t Ely. |
|
| 14 | Imagine one piece of fruit filled with energy! (6) |
| IDEATE – I (one) + DATE (piece of fruit) containing [filled with] E (energy, as in E=Mc2).
Everything I dislike about this word is summed up by the example sentence that the SOED uses to illustrate its use, “The arc whose ideated centre is a nodal point in the composition.” Thinking about it, perhaps the dictionary editor hates the word too, and chose that sentence deliberately… |
|
| 15 | Fruit always eaten by the old man (6) |
| PAPAYA – AY (always) inside PAPA (the old man).
We often see AYE meaning always, but AY is in my dictionary, so fair enough. |
|
| 17 | Source special diet for Lent season (10) |
| SPRINGTIDE – SPRING (source, as a river) + anagram [special] of DIET. | |
| 20 | Something charged when member finally enters club (4) |
| IRON – R [membeR finally] put inside [enters] ION (something charged).
Iron as in golf. I had this the wrong way around for ages, trying to find a way to put R inside a word for ‘club’. |
|
| 21 | Unmarried person rests uneasily, keeping quiet at home (8) |
| SPINSTER – Anagram [uneasily] of RESTS, including [keeping] P (quiet) and IN (at home). | |
| 22 | Attention given by the male journalist? (4) |
| HEED – HE (the male) + ED (standard abbreviation for journalist).
“He said” and “The male said” would be interchangeable when describing a conversation between a woman and a man. |
|
| 23 | Old Labour minister: angry fellow (8) |
| CROSSMAN – CROSS (angry) + MAN (fellow).
Richard Crossman, British Labour politician (1907 – 1974). I think I’ve only heard of him because he was one of, if not the, first politicians to publish their diaries. |
|
| Down | |
| 1 | Alexander? Alexander, maybe! (4) |
| POPE – ?
All I can come up with is that Alexander Pope is a fairly famous poet (well, I’ve heard of him, even if I couldn’t name a single poem) and that there have been multiple popes called Alexander. Looking forward to someone enlightening me on this one. |
|
| 2 | Commercial event with southern beer (4) |
| SALE – S + ALE (beer). | |
| 3 | Cheering arrival outside stronghold (10) |
| COMFORTING – COMING (arrival, as in “the second”) containing [outside] FORT (stronghold). | |
| 4 | Old widow, king and priest coming to court (6) |
| RELICT – R (king) + ELI (priest) + CT (court).
Not a common word, marked in my dictionary as “archaic, excluding Irish”. A nice easy one for all the readers in Ireland, then. If you’ve got to fit a “priest” into 3 letters, the odds are good that it will be ELI or REV. |
|
| 6 | Ultimate net value looking wrong (8) |
| EVENTUAL – Anagram [looking wrong] of NET VALUE. | |
| 7 | Unusual woman embraced by a bishop — 50 (8) |
| ABNORMAL – NORMA (random woman) inside [embraced by] A, B (bishop, from chess notation) and L (50, in Roman numbers). | |
| 10 | Plants found by nieces wandering across country (10) |
| CELANDINES – Anagram [wandering] of NIECES containing [across] LAND (country).
This clue could easily be from the 15×15. |
|
| 12 | Craftsperson who could create thin mist (8) |
| TINSMITH – Anagram of [could create] THIN MIST. | |
| 13 | What could be made more safe is frightening (8) |
| FEARSOME – Anagram [what could be made] of MORE SAFE. | |
| 16 | Good person cheerful or in shock? (6) |
| STUPOR – ST (saint – good person) + UP (cheerful) + OR. | |
| 18 | Some anatomical bit that is very small (4) |
| ATOM – Hidden in [some] anATOMical. | |
| 19 | Architect seen as a flighty type (4) |
| WREN – double definition – the first of the puzzle! No wonder I found it hard. | |
I can usually finish an Izetti crossword, even if it means dipping heavily into aids. This one was too hard and I gave up with about a third still to do.
When I saw that, it was Izetti, I was tempted to not bother! However, Pall Mall, Sale, feta, tinsmith, heed, Dorchester, spinster and Atom went in in under 10 minutes. And then it ended! All things considered, I am quite happy with that.