Apologies to my fellow bloggers for letting the side down, but better late than never I suppose… I had hoped to get this posted before lunchtime on Friday, but work was far too busy and I wasn’t able to spend more than 5 minutes on the puzzle, let alone writing up a blog entry. After lunch on Friday I was off to London and didn’t get back online until late last night (and a bit worse for wear).
Across
1 BANGER,S(AND)MASH – also=AND is fairly common
9 TAN(DOOR)I – IN AT rev
12 PADSTOW (Wads top)* – I thought this was a very unsatisfactory clue. “Options” as anagrind, and a poor surface reading.
15 LANG,U,AGES – one of the last ones I got, and only figured out the wordplay later. Archbishop Lang, U=fashionable, AGES, Faculty as in University department.
17 RADA,R,TRAP=part rev – not difficult but good surface and a nice definition.
21 GR(ENAD)E – DANE in ERG, all reversed. Another good surface and cryptic definition.
25 STAN,DAR(e)D – straightforward enough, but required in the definition of 1dn.
27 TRIDENT MISSILE (mindless trite I)* – and a bit of political comment from Gordius.
Down
1 BELOW AVERAGE (Brave goal we E)*
2 NAMUR – R.U. man rev – luckily this came up in another puzzle last week too.
3 E,N,DE(A)VOUR
4 S(IT)WELL – I think Edith was the poet of the family.
5 NINE,PIN – excellent clue – the four digits refer to a PIN number.
16 UNSER,IOUS – unser is German for “our”. I’ve got a German A-level, so not a problem for me but I don’t know if that would be common knowledge for the average solver.
18 RIEMANN (I manner)* – I got this because I’d heard of Riemann the mathematician, but I didn’t know about the Riemann integral.
19 POTS,DAM – Gibson was commander of the Dambusters.
22 (p)AWNED – I’m guessing that to pop means to pawn something. AWN is a beard of wheat.
24 EL(EM)I – one of those words that appears in crosswords a lot because of the useful crossing letters it provides.
I too wondered about ‘popped’. Chambers confirmed it is slang for ‘pawned’.
It is indeed – as in ‘pop goes the weasel’. The original version of the nursery rhyme went:
“Up and down the City Road
In and out the Eagle
That’s the way the money goes
Pop goes the weasel”.
Once all the money’s been spent on booze – rather than rice – you have to pawn your coat (weasel and stoat).
Cosmo LANG and his much earlier predecessor William LAUD pretty much corner the market when you see ‘archbishop’ in a clue.