I thought this was a cracking puzzle. It looked like it was going to be a lot harder than it turned out to be as my first pass over the across clues yielded nothing; but I got going with 2D and then it all fell into place fairly quickly. A lot of the words were unfamiliar to me but the wordplay was nothing less than bullet-proof; so much so that I’d filled in a two-thirds of the grid before feeling compelled to check Chambers (11D was the first word I looked up, even though there was at least half a dozen words before that that were new to me).
NB: the IoS printed the wrong grid the magazine so thanks to Eimi for sending me the correct version.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | (SPOOR MAY)* – PYROSOMA, which literally means (in Greek), “fire bodies”. |
| 9 | EQUIP,O,I,SING |
| 13 | FAIR,MY<,ONE,Y – excellent clue. Said to be left by a fairy at the place where it was found. |
| 14 | Y in FLASH – FLY ASH. |
| 15 | AM in ARE(a) – an edible type of seaweed. |
| 16 | I,ANO(n) in LID – another good clue. I knew that this had to be something to do with LIANA but it took a while to see the ANO(n) bit of the wordplay to get LIANOID. |
| 20 | ASK,LENT |
| 21 | hidden in “clasSY RENdition” – alternate spelling of “siren”. |
| 24 | LI in IR,REGION – I’m not sure that “Atheism” is a direct synonym of IRRELIGION but the latter means “lack of religion” which implies (I suppose) a lack of belief in a god. |
| 26 | IN,I in MATE |
| 27 | (MINI CUTLASS)* – MASCULINIST. I didn’t know that “masculine” had this form but it was a reasonably easy anagram to spot. |
| 29 | ESC,ARGOT – I filled this in quite quickly and then wondered why as I couldn’t see why “A key” = ESC. Had a “do’h” moment when I realised it was the ESC(ape) key. |
| Down | |
| 1 | P,ELF – I had to check this in Chambers as PELF looked too silly to be a word. |
| 2 | I in (A FURY*),A – the RUFIYAA is the currency of the Maldives. I thought it was spelt differently to this (I would have sworn there was a “h” in there somewhere). |
| 4 | OR in MILDS |
| 5 | ASANAS – are positions in yoga but I can’t work out the wordplay. Any offers? |
| 6 | (ALONE GRIMY)* – excellent clue, which I think would count as an &lit. |
| 7 | (GIN)*,I in OMINOUS – another corker with a great surface reading. “Threatening to belt one” for the last part of the wordplay is really good. |
| 8 | GREE in (REST)* – GREE is an archaic word (indicated by “former”) for “favour”. |
| 10 | (MY TEQUILA IT)* – QUALITY TIME. Interestingly, the Chambers online dictionary gives the definition for this as a period of time where “someone’s attention is devoted entirely to someone else” (my italics) (the Concise OED has a similar definition); whereas the definition in the clue – “when I can really appreciate it” (setter’s italics) – implies a period of time where your attention is devoted to only yourself (a bit like the newer “me time”). |
| 11 | (GAMER RINGS)* – GRANGERISM. Haven’t the faintest idea how I managed to come up with this as it seems such an unlikely sort of word. Turns out, it’s the practise of illustrating particular books with engravings torn from other books. |
| 14 | ASH,M in FLAN – another great clue, loved the surface reading. |
| 17 | (IT PAUSE)* – IAPETUS is the third-largest moon of Saturn. |
| 18 | PERI(l),W,GI (going up) – the wordplay leads to PERIWIG but I can’t see how that relates to “Major”, the only bit left in the clue that could be the definition. |
| 23 | AID,I,O (all going up) |