Guardian 24,259 Paul : If it wisnae for your Wellies, where wud you be ?
Posted by neildubya on December 13th, 2007
Apologies for lateness – wrote a whole entry this morning and lost it. Baaad IT bloke – didn’t save my work as I went along.
In the end – really quite a straight puzzle for Paul.
Across
9 RU-I-NATION
10 TH(REEF)EET – “The film” is “The E.T”
12 Left out because we don’t publish all answers here. Hint : It’s an anagram
13 WEED – Trad. Crossword Fodder
14 WELLING-TON (BOOT) S - Welling as in tears welling up – a boot upfield is a punt – Ocean is Tons ? (help !)
16 Another one I’ll leave OUT in this POST
17 PA’S-SAGE
19 PEPPER-CORN : Yes, corns are painful and Pepper is a type of spray
24 COUNTER – didn’t work out the wordplay here
26 EX-CEL(L)
27 OVERT-HERE
DOWN
1 GREEN-WOOD-PECKER
2 SI-MP-L-EST : “siest(a)” wrapped around MP and L
3 Could easily say I was leaving it as an exercise for the reader, but I didn’t get it.
4 MISSPELT – anagram of 2 down
5 UNCOOL (man !)
6 Straightforward anagram left out of solution
7 O-RIEN-T-EXPRESS : Rien is French for nothing – the rest is not a Mystery, even though the book is.
8 Didn’t get it despite having all the letters – must be going wordblind
15 F(O-REST)ALL
17 PAR-O-DIED – “All lived = Zero died” is a common crossword idiom
18 ALEWIVES = tricky anagram I thought
20 P-OUNCE
21 CAR(BONDI-OX-ID)E : Bondi as in beach. Inspiration as in Breathing. Ahhhh!
December 13th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
3D is HAZEL. Haze is a mist; L = lake and the whole thing is a tree.
December 13th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
3D is HAZE-L(ake)
8D is REDS UNDER THE BED (end deterred Bush*). Apocalyptic is a new anagram pointer to me.
December 13th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
24 across. It’s the thought that counts they say, so a thought is a counter.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
D’oh ! I’m not going to whinge about any of those – all perfectly fair. Thanks for rescuing me.
December 13th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
16ac: haha Stan. But thanks for filling in my missing answers
December 13th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
8dn: anagram of ‘end deterred bush’ = reds/under/the/bed – feared in the cold war
hazel – our last answer – but obvious
December 13th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Does anyone have a convincing full explanation for 14a ?
December 13th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
14A: Definition is ‘Those on 22′ (ie FEET); ‘leaking’ = WELLING, ‘punt’ = BOOT (ie propel) ‘consumed in’ = word inserted in, ‘an ocean’ = TONS (both hyperbolic expressions for ‘a lot’)
WELLING TON(BOOT)S
What a lovely crossword! Well up to usual Paul standards, even without a theme. 24A is very clever, I enjoyed the unusual charade for 21, 25 and even his straigtforward anagrams have some excellent surfaces – OARLESS and ALEWIVES, for example (fortunately I knew the latter word, so the solution came to me immediately).
December 13th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Further to my ‘explanation’ of 14A it might be useful to point out that ‘leaking’, ‘punt’ and ‘ocean’ all have associations with water – hence giving a slight but distinctive allusion towards the solution. Paul is one intelligent and imaginative compiler.