Solving time : 20 minutes
A good quality puzzle, as usual, from Dac. The puzzle had what felt like a preponderance of proper names in the answers, the wordplay and a few clues: artists, musicians, places…
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 9 | DWELLER — d+Weller — Paul Weller was the singer in The Jam. Dac must be about the same age as me! |
| 10 | NASTIER — (retsina)* — If you play Scrabble then retsina is a good rack to aim to have as it anagrams nicely with lots of other letters. |
| 13 | OPAQUE — op+a que— I haven’t checked the French here but I assume that’s = a que |
| 18 | LEFTIE — l(e+FT)ie — FT is Financial Times, this clue got me for a while as I read socialist (red, Che, etc.) as part of the word play. |
| 23 | EXAMINE — Ex(a min(k))e — I have assumed the animal is a mink, I don’t think there are any others. |
| 25 | LAKES — (B)lakes — Nice surface using Wordsworth to give the Lakes (the Lake District) and tie with poet. |
| 26 | NOTORIOUS — A Hitchcock film. Not a great double definition but then not a great word to have to clue either. |
| Down | |
| 1 | BADE — Bade(r) — Douglas Bader. |
| 2 | SMETANA — s(met)ana — From The Jam to Smetana, Dac seems very well-listened |
| 3 | MULTITUDE OF SINS — A very nice cryptic definition. |
| 4 | TARZAN — “tas”+an |
| 5 | LANDSEER — English artist specialising in animals, the lions in Trafalgar Square are his. |
| 8 | PARIS GREEN — paris(h) green — I’ve not heard of the stuff but the word play is straightforward. |
| 12 | MOTHERWELL — A Scottish town and a possible positive answer to a question about one’s mum. |
| 15 | FRAULEIN — I thought this the weakest clue of the puzzle, a fairly obvious cryptic definition. |
| 19 | TIEPOLO — tie+polo — Another artist. |
Another good Dac puzzle, reasonably straightforward, solved in 14 mins. I wondered too about (MIN)(?) – thought maybe Mina, but that’s a bird so I think you’re right with Mink. Not much doubt about the answer, though.
Jonathan Crowther’s recent A-Z book tells us Dac was born in 1948.
MULTITUDE OF SINS was my favourite. Also liked 6 Ac. FRAULEIN I got straightaway seeing the real meaning before the misdirection intended, I guess, where ‘miss’ wd be a verb.
TIEPOLO is definitely a crossword artist – friendly letters for the setter in crossing words, I’d say, especially the O at the end and perhaps the other vowels. Some day, I must try to find out something about him…
Solved in the time it takes for the District Line to get from Ealing Broadway to Earl’s Court (with no delays) – about 22 mins. Tube travel is becoming my standard measurement for crossword solving; trouble is, the quicker I get, the more time I have to spend on less enjoyable tube-related activity, like reading the paper.
Dac is a few years older than Colin, as Niall has pointed out, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from his puzzles. Coincidentally, he was Monk’s O-level French teacher.