Solving time: about 14 mins + a bit of guesswork on 1dn, which I got wrong.
The three starred clues, of which two were fairly straightforward despite being clued without definition, led to words or phrases that can be represented by the letter G; 15dn also contained a thematic reference.
A few clues have strange surface readings but many are very good, though a lot of clues contain superfluous words which are there purely to assist the surfaces. This is normal Guardian (and especially Araucarian) practice, but I particularly dislike ‘for’ stuck in the middle of the wordplay in 14ac and 25ac and the link phrase ‘having to do’ in 6dn.
* = anagram, ” ” = ‘sounds like’.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| *1/10 | ACCELERATION DUE TO GRAVITY; (LACE RE-)* in ACTION (suit) + DUET + O + GRAV(IT)Y – quite a good surface but a very complex wordplay; hats off to anyone who ‘cold solved’ this, especially given the liberal treatment of the hyphen in ‘re-worked’. |
| 8 | A + N(TON)OV – I saw ‘Russian plane’ and ‘speed’ and almost wrote in ‘migrate’ immediately. The Antonov An-225 is the world’s largest aircraft. |
| 9 | WORSTED (double definition) |
| *11/26 | GENERAL + INTELLIGENCE |
| *13 | GRAND[ad] |
| 14 | CIGARILLO; CI (Channel Islands) + GORILLA with A and O swapped |
| 16 | TENNESSEE; ‘inversion’ of “SE 10”, Greenwich’s post code – nearly fell for ‘Minnesota’ here, and took me a while after solving to fathom the wordplay. |
| 19 | COVER; C (100) + OVER (6 balls) – to make this wordplay work you have to split ‘106’ into ‘a hundred and six’. |
| 23 | TO + PAL + OV[a]; “TOPPLE OFF” – a double wordplay clue. Veselin Topalov is currently rated world number one by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, just ahead of Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik. |
| 24 | NORWICH; rev. of WRON[g] + ICH (German for ‘I’) – the definition bemused me but Google came to my rescue: The man in the moon Came tumbling down And asked his way to Norwich; He went by the South And burned his mouth With supping cold pease porridge. |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | ACTINIA; AC + “TINEA” – one of these. I failed on this, guessing ‘actenia’ because of the possible connection to ‘ctene’, another sea creature; I knew ‘tinea’ could mean a moth but not a skin disease (of the ‘athlete’s foot’ variety). |
| 2 | CENTRED; inversion of RED CENT |
| 3 | LOVELOCKS; VELOC[ity] inside rev. of SKOL – I could make nothing of this clue until I had all the crossing letters. It turns out that ‘Mud in your eye’ is a toast, as is ‘Skol’. |
| 4 | ROWAN (double definition) – refers to Rowan Williams. |
| 5 | THROWER; ROW inside THE R[ight] |
| 7 | BAGGAGE TRAIN; (GAGA)* + GET inside BRAIN |
| 15 | GEE-STRING – ‘might be partly starred’ is a thematic reference because of the ‘gee’ (see introduction above). Took me a while to twig to this one. |
| 18 | ER + RHINE – ‘to do with sneezing’. |
| 19 | CAP STAN – a somewhat clichéd wordplay which I would happily forgive if the surface made any sense. |
| 20 | VULTURE; rev. of LUV + (TRUE)* |
| 22 | E(THY)L |
14 minutes… wow. Took me about 45′ I think. Anyway, on Saturday he had 106 as (C, OVER) and Thursday 101 as (C, ONE) — I’m sure now that we’ve understood this he’ll switch to something else equally inventive.
It’s Araucaria rather than Auracaria, chaps.
However, you are not the first to have made the error: a fairly recent Guardian crossword carried the header, ‘Set by Auracaria’.
‘Blimey! New setter?’, we all shouted.
That’s why rightback added (sic).
Interestingly this error has been corrected since I downloaded the puzzle little more than 24 hours ago. I wonder if someone at the Guardian website reads this blog?
Bet they do – sorry I missed your ‘sic’.
Wonder if this will be posted. The Guardian solution at 1d is not correct, btw.
For some reason, this puzzle appeared on the Guardian’s web site today (24 May 2018). Stranger still, the clue for 16a is simply “Tennessee (9)”.
Can someone please explain 16?? Ta.
phitonelly @6, perhaps you are confusing tapeworm with ringworm?
Spooky. Does anyone have the original clue for Tennessee?
16a: State what Greenwich sounds like when inverted (9)
Hi Cookie,
To be honest, I wouldn’t know my tapeworm from my ringworm but Wikipedia invariably comes to the rescue. I was pointing out that the solution “revealed” in the crossword published yesterday is wrong – the anemone is ACTINIA, as correctly blogged here, not ACTINEA. The blog unfortunately missed out a number of the other parses (for NOWHERE, AINTREE, IN TRUST, OATMEAL and NON-IRON), but they’re all quite gettable. The “utopia” connection to NOWHERE was new to me, though.
I don’t understand 2d: what in the clue indicates the inversion that turns RED CENT into CENT RED?