Avian theme. 14D (CHAFFINCH) was my way in. I solved this twice. The second time took as long virtually as the first since I’d forgotten most of the birds already.
Across
| 1 | PART,RIDGE |
| 9 | PORTIA=”Porsche” – is there another PORTIA other than Shylock’s? The clue says “ladies”. |
| 10 | FIELD,FARE – my last clue. Didn’t know it was a bird. |
| 12 | PERE,GRINE=”green” – ref. PEREGRINE falcon. Apparently can be pronounced to rhyme with “green” which takes care of saving the planet. Not sure about “a drink” though? |
| 17 | DEN – two meanings &lit I suppose if one accepts that a DEN is squalid. |
| 19 | H(OTC)AKE – as in, selling like HOTCAKES. OTC=”Over the Counter”. |
| 20 | OAK GALL – a slightly indirect anagram: (AKA, log, L)* |
| 21 | EBB – two meanings: turns out it’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning who’s our poetess. Yes, I googled. |
| 27 | C,OR,M,OR,AN,[i]T – another bird. Our numbers are Roman C and M. |
| 28 | IND[i]ABA – replace I for “one” in India with AB for “sailor” to get an African “conference” – which I didn’t know but the wordplay was clear. |
| 29 | P,HAL,A,ROPE – another bird. Ref. Prince HAL. |
| 30 | CAVE,L,L – ref. Edith CAVELL (British WWI nurse) and CAVE is derived from the Latin “beware”. Trivia: Edith Piaf was apparently named after her. |
| 31 | BRAMBLING – another bird (implied two meanings). |
Down
| 2 | ARISEN – (is near)* — Not sure I understand the part of speech here – can “come up” and ARISEN be used interchangeably? |
| 5 | GIRONDE – ref. the French river and I think the relatively mild revolutionary Girondists? |
| 6 | CORN,C,RAKE – and another bird |
| 7 | P(TAR,MIG)AN – another bird: MIG’s our Russian “aircraft” and “black stuff” is TAR. |
| 8 | B(ALD)EAGLE – lad* in BEAGLE for a bird. |
| 14 | CHAFF,IN,CH – my first undefined clue: clear wordplay and once I got it everything fell into place pretty quickly. |
| 15 | STO(C,K,DO)VE – I don’t really like “Note – £1,000 note” indicating the contents here. But it’s a bird. Stilt notes that C and DO are the same note. |
| 16 | R(A,ZORB[a])ILL – a bird again. Ref. “ZORBA the Greek” so no need to qualify with “for example”. |
| 17 | DEE – two meanings: the river and the letter. |
| 22 | B(R)OTHER – another “stream”: this is R (others were RILL and DEE and GIRONDE). |
| 25 | C,RURAL – new word for me: means “relating to the leg or knee”. |
| 26 | IN[ch],SPAN – SPAN is literally an old measure of nine inches. And I think the def is “get ready for a trek” if you’re a yoked ox. |
Why is 5dn GIRONDE and not GARONNE?
I checked through my atlas and the only two rivets I could find that would fit were these two. I could not make either mean mildly revolutionary though. However the distionaary claimed the former as an estuary and the latter as a river. So I got it wrong.
Grrr after slogging through all those obscure birds (fieldfare, phalarope, brambling, …)
Whoops. “distionaary” indeed. Typing all to pot as well. Sorry.
This may be heresy, but I didn’t like PEREGRINE at all- in fact I just put it in because I had some of the right letters. Maybe I am tone-deaf where “sounds like” clues are concerned…
I thought this was considerably tougher than usual. There’s a Portia in Julius Caesar as well (Brutus’s wife). The drink in 12 is perry. I think “a problem has come up” and “a problem has arisen” means 2 is fine (though it seemed seriously dodgy to me until I thought of this a minute ago). And I’d really like to see the end of “note” = “anything from A to G”, but I’m not holding my breath.
Actually, on reflection, since one of the notes in 15 is C and the other is DO, and these are the same note… well, maybe it’s witty or something. Makes it a bit less annoying than usual, anyway. I’ll let him off.
yeah you’re right about 15D — I miscounted the O’s — so the wordplay is: STO(C,K,DO)VE indeed.
5D: if you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girondist you’ll find that they were in fact moderate radicals (if that’s not an oxymoron).
Thanks (or merci) for the enlightenment. I’ve read the article, of course the answer then makes sense. But it still seems to me that one of the Girondists is a Girondist, or, according to the article, a Girondin, not a Gironde, which in any case is an estuary more than a river.
It still seems rather obscure though. Maybe it because I are an enjinear and aint got no klassikal educashun.
So while it is good the know the answer, Grr rather than Grrr.
Re 16dn had this friend called Mimis Domassos (or something like that) way back. He drank like a fish.
‘Abzorba’ we called him.