When I began this puzzle I expected a fairly easy ride as usual with Dac. In the end this puzzle took me way too long mainly due to the time spent looking at one or two clues. I felt that these two clues were unfair for a daily cryptic with no searchable dictionary to hand, though the majority of the clues were fair and relatively easy.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 9 | LOLLOP — LOLL+OP — lollop is a nice word meaning bound, as in jump. The definition was nicely hidden by the surface. |
| 10 | HILARITY — HILAR(IT)Y — Hilary is both a male and female name. |
| 11 | BRASSERIE — BRASS(ER)IE — a brassie is a golf club, not something I knew but with a couple of checking letters it was a good guess. |
| 14 | COMPROMISED — double definition. |
| 18 | LINCOLNS INN — LINCOLN’S+INN — inn = local, Lincoln’s Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London. I can’t work out if it should or shouldn’t have an apostrophe. Most sources quote the name with while the Lincolns Inn website quotes it without. |
| 21 | READY — READ+Y — again, the definition, set, is nicely concealed in the surface reading. |
| 22 | THEME SONG — (GENT’S HOME)* — number = a song. |
| 24 | TURN AWAY — “Turner way” — a terrible pun! |
| 26 | MUSTERED — “mustard” — mustard is a brassica, a member of the cabbage family. |
| Down | |
| 1 | HALFBACK — double definition — a halfback is a football (soccer) position, to back is to put money on (bet). |
| 2 | MALLARME — “mal arme” — the first of my problem clues. The poet is certainly not known to me and the French is a struggle after the “mal”, in fact I’ve probably misquoted it. If Mallarme was the only reasonable entry then a simpler charade clue would have been much more satisfactory. |
| 3 | GOONS — GO ON+S |
| 5 | OLIVER STONE — OLIVER’S TONE — with the O already in this fell into place straight away. |
| 7 | ALISON — (m)ALISON — the second of my problem clues. I had A-I-O- and just stared at the grid for ages. When I finally plumped for Alison = woman as the only reasonable fit it then dawned on me that unmarried implied no M. I then found malison, an archaic and poetic word for a curse. I’d never heard of malison (the opposite of benison) and felt that it was a little unfair to use it as part of a less than straighforward charade. |
| 15 | RELAY RACE — RELAY+RACE — fairly clear once I’d stopped forcing RALLY RACE to become the answer! |
| 16 | MINORCAN — MINOR+CAN — young offender’s institution got me for a while. |
| 23 | ESHER — ES(c)HER — Esher is an English Town, though I didn’t realise Escher was a Dutch artist. Escher drew topologically interesting worlds and amazing tessellations. |
I was lucky that I knew MALLARME as I would never have got it from the wordplay. For 7D I also had all of the checking letters so filled in ALISON without really bothering to work why – thanks for explaining it.
I found about average for Dac – 16 mins, but was also lucky in having heard of Mallarme and also being familiar with French – because the wordplay here was essentially in French! ALISON was the last I understood also. I found CRANNY quite tricky too before getting it right – the wordplay didn’t follow the natural order of words which misled me. Totally fair, though.
I took nearly twice as long as I’d expect for Dac. But did know Mallarme, malison, and Escher’s nationality. I promise you’ll see brassie again!