This turned out to be a nightmare puzzle for me. I’m too busy at work preparing to take a break and so I didn’t find the space to do this puzzle justice. Some excellent clues but they didn’t come very quickly for me. I have decided to post without knowing the answers to a triplet from the south west corner (18d, 19d, and 22a if anyone wants to chip in before tomorrow’s solution.)
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | DUMBO — DUMB+O — This should have been simple but for some reason I wrote in MIME+O assuming it to refer to a film used in the duplication process. This then held me up for rather too long on 1d. |
| 9 | WIDGEON — WIDGE(t)+ON — a duck. PIDGEON is definitely not the right answer! |
| 10 | NOTICED — NOT ICED — very nice cryptic definition for the subsidiary indication. |
| 11 | SALAAM — ALAS< + AM — good surface reading with a little bit of politics thrown in. |
| 14 | INANIMATE OBJECT — IN+A+MATE+NI + OBJECT — the definition here is very well hidden as “Thing that’s still…” NI = Northern Ireland not technically Ulster but common usage justifies its use (to an Englishman!) |
| 17 | GREEN CHARTREUSE — GREEN + CHART+REUSE — very good surface connecting GREEN and REUSE. I’d not heard of the spirit but it fitted. |
| 18 | ALICANTE — CANT in ALIE(n) — a popular Spanish resort with a useful airport if you want to explore Murcia. |
| 25 | SULKY — double def. — I had to look this one up. I spent way too long looking at S-L-Y and trying to fit word play to it. It turns out a SULKY is a small carriage. |
| Down | |
| 2 | MIDDLE AMERICANS — (CRAMMED IN LADIES)* — very good anagram and a nice use of the initial uppercase letter to hide the definition. |
| 4 | RANK — double def. — J Arthur RANK (useful rhyming slang for the Cyclops puzzle one day) owned cinemas and taxis are found on taxi ranks. Another excellent surface. |
| 6 | PETAL — P(erformance) + LATE< — this is one of those clue that gives the impression of complex word play and then there it is staring at you. |
| 7 | INCONSEQUENTIAL — C in (A QUESTION LENIN)* — great anagram once again. |
| 8 | NADIR — homophone? — I assume this is a homophone but I can’t imagine of what. |
| 13 | WASHETERIA — H in (AS IT WERE)* +A — a word I haven’t heard for a long time. |
| 16 | TREACHERY — R in TEACHER + (sp)Y |
| 21 | ABLE — (g)ABLE — the surface here is tremendous. |
Very tough – the three you mention were the ones I struggled with too. They’re A PT ED – new to me but verified, TRAM PER (all reversed in the wordplay) and, I think APPAL cf APP(e)AL, but not fully understood.
I made a good start with this one, but then spent a good 20 mins on the Tube staring blankly at the entire left hand side of the grid. I then managed to get the long anagram at 2D and all of a sudden about 10 clues went in in 10 seconds, which must have looked quite impressive to the person who’d just sat down next to me! Ended up 3 clues short before resorting to help, SULKY being one of them, the others being 5D and 24A (CEN-TIME-TRE and DIS-PL-EASE)
An enjoyable puzzle overall, but a toughie
Ali
Answer to 19d is Appel “A quick stamp of the foot used in fencing as a feint to produce an opening”. Appeal wanting a.
APPEL – that fits much better, doesn’t it? Thanks, Jos.
A Dac with a bit of a sting in the tail. Colin’s missing 3 plus SULKY probably took me about 40% of the time for the whole puzzle.
Well, I’m glad it wasn’t just me then!
Can anyone explain NADIR?
NADIR, admittedly Collins offers two different pronunciations of the first syllable, but in this case the homophone works as ‘not so, sweet’ or ‘nay, dear.’
“Nay, dear” – ouch!