Guardian 23,978: Type O

A couple of tougher clues, but a pretty standard puzzle really. The bottom right corner held out longest, helped by a typo in 18 down – ell for eel (see below).

Across:

1. PARISH. PRAIS(e)* H. Henry usually suggests Hal, but can also be the abbreviation.   

10. A LIE NATION. Pretty simple structure but nice surface – I can think of a few examples.                        

11. GEMINI. EG< MINI.    

12. NEUTRINO. ONE IN RUT* 

13. OUT GO(I)NGS.    

21. BASTILLE. ST in LIABLE*. Hmm, small weight makes me think of Oz, and I tend to regard a stone as quite a large weight – but it’s small in that st. is an abbreviation.

24. SUPER VISOR. Cool and super both mean good, but I don’t think you can regard them as synonymous.

25. NOAH. ON A H*. Funny anagram indicator – that’ll be a bad trip I guess.                                           

26. AURORA. AU RORA*. Au the chemical symbol for gold               

27. HYMNAL. I’m guessing… my ecclesiastical knowledge is sketchy, but this looks like a fairly straight definition.
Down:

1. PAR VENU(e).

2. RABBI(t). A rabbit can certainly be a timid person – is it also a bad player?

3. SWAHILI. HAWS< raILIng. I think Swahili’s just a language rather than ethnic group, in which case the definition’s a bit lacking.

7. BROWN IE.

8. MIDNIGHT FEAST. Cryptic def.

14. GREAT BEAR. AGREE B ART*. Not everyone likes such use of abbreviation as part of an anagram – I think it’s OK if it’s a fairly obvious one.

16. BRAVURA. RAV(e) in A RUB<. Not a very convincing surface, and I’m not sure why ‘most’ is needed.

18. LAM PREY. Don’t know about online, but my newspaper version has a misprint here – “An ell-like creature”. I guessed that might be wrong, but was looking for an elk-like creature – i.e. a moose!  

20. OLIVER. Ref Bath Oliver biscuits.

23. TENON. NET< ON. Item for game=net seems weak.

4 comments on “Guardian 23,978: Type O”

  1. Sorry, you’re quite right about most – I saw that when solving it, as per notes. Just misread it looking back afterwards.

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