Lots of fire and explosions today. The usual quality from Dac but with one clue leaving me perplexed as to its definition.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | AXING — A+XI+N.G. — team is often XI, as in a football eleven. |
| 4 | DEBATABLE — (A BED)<+TABLE |
| 9 | TRIMESTER — TRI(M)ESTE+R |
| 10 | KRAFT — “craft” — new one for me, kraft is from the German from strong and is a strong brown paper made from wood pulp. |
| 11 | LIGHTERS — double def. |
| 12 | MARTEN — M(ART)EN — the marten is related to the ferret, you should know all about ferrets by now. |
| 14 | AMERICAN EAGLE — double def — this symbol appears on the US emblem. Eagle is a golving term, a hole made at two under par I think. |
| 17 | SISTINE CHAPEL — S(IS)T+IN+(PLACE HE)* — after I had got the answer I had to parse the clue several times to get the saint and “is” in there. The “in” could be in the anagram but it makes no difference. |
| 19 | TO DATE — T( (s)O (goo)D )ATE — what would we do without the Tate Gallery? |
| 21 | PROROGUE — PRO+ROGUE |
| 23 | EGG ON — E.G.+GON(e) |
| 24 | ADORATION — A.D.+ORATION — AD is present day, as in 2007AD. |
| 25 | ENTREATED — (ENTER DATE)* |
| 26 | HEEDS — HE+EDS — journalist often resolves to ed(itor) but I wonder how many journalists are editors. |
| Down | |
| 1 | ATTILA — ATTI(c)+L.A. — |
| 2 | ISINGLASS — IS IN GLASS — a substance derived from the sturgeon that is used to fine real ale. It somehow attracts the suspended proteins and then sinks to the bottom of the barrel. |
| 3 | GOES THE DISTANCE — (SECTION HEAD GETS)* |
| 4 | DETERMINER — DETER+MINER — I don’t know the definition here., is it “For example”? Determiner is a grammatical term, among other things, but I can’t see how that fits in. |
| 5 | BARN — BA(R)N |
| 6 | TAKE A DEEP BREATH — cryptic def. |
| 7 | BLAST — double def. |
| 8 | EXTENDED — EX+TENDED |
| 13 | FATHERHOOD — cryptic def. — I loved this for a cryptic definition. I solved the puzzle from the bottom up and so had the last letter and thought, “CARBONATED”. Not bad for CD I thought. Then it got better! |
| 15 | GELIGNITE — GEL+IGNITE — gel is how a posher person than me might say lass. |
| 16 | AS IT WERE — I in (SWEATER)* |
| 18 | KEYNES — “canes” — I guess this is how the economist is pronounced. I had assumed it was as in Milton Keynes. |
| 20 | DIGIT — DIG IT |
| 22 | TART — sTARTer |
4D: my thought on solving was that “For example, the” was the def. I think the word “the” fits the grammar-related meaning of “determiner”.
18D: John Maynard “canes” it is. I knew that Economics degree would come in handy one day…
Yes, you’re right. The Chambers definition gives examples but none are articles and I wasn’t sure that an article fell within the definition. Collins is more specific and mentions articles as being determiners.
Milton Keynes, named after two great economists 😉
DETERMINER As this was a new word to me which I worked out from the friendly wordplay, I looked in the Concise OED – the end of definition 2 gives “for example a, the, every” so I understood it like Peter has.