I started slowly, and didn’t feel in tune with the puzzle at all, maybe it was the bruising effect of trying to solve Saturday’s twin puzzles…….
Across
9 URTICARIA Often references to rash lead to Urticaria, which is Nettlerash. (H)urt – harmful without the ‘h’, ic, sounds like I see, and “Your Tiny Hand is Frozen” is an aria from La Boheme.
10 MULCT is to fine, and is found reversed in ‘act clumsily’.
11 CHE SARA SARA – ‘what will be, will be’, and an anagram of search a Sara.
12 BASTION – Backwards ‘nob’ holding ‘asti’, a sparkling wine.
14 COIN C ID ENT . ‘Coin is cash, and ID within a cent.
16 TURNOUT for a while I was convinced this was tourist, but it isn’t!
17 BEN GAL I
19 OVER CO OK ED, co-ed being the abbreviation for co-educational.Paul thinks of OK as meaning reasonably. If you believe it is an acronym for Orl Korrect, then this seems rather grudging.
14 MORDENT – a musical embellishment, like a trill, and an anagram of modern t(imes).
25 DI LUTE D
27 CON SON ANT, an ‘a’ is certainly not a consonant, but a con is a kid, a son is a boy, and some ants are soldier ants.
Down
1 PUNCTUATION MARK – refers to the comma following ‘mountain’, and is an anagram of ‘track up mountain’.
2 S TEE LIER – a tee being a stand, and steelier being more determined, so I assume this is correct, but I can’t see the drive. Can anyone else?
4 FREAK OUT anagram of four and take.
5,6 CAR BONE MISSIONS Nice clue.
8,15 IT’S NOT BIG AND IT’S NOT CLEVER
17 BLEEDING – evidence of a cut.
18 AWAY TEAM
20 ERR AND, to err is to make a mistake, or slip.
21 OPT I C S, I assumed that chapter abbreviated was generally ‘ch’, and then study steered me towards ‘office’, but the study of light is optics.
Re: 2 down – there’s no reference there to “stand” at all.
The cryptic bit is “take rest during drive”, and indicates “lie” inside “steer”.
Sorry I didn’t write what I meant to write – I took rest to mean a tee. I don’t know why I wrote stand.
And thanks for the explanation; I now get it.
Tough puzzle, with loads of indirection in the definitions, e.g. “certainly not a” to mean CONSONANT, and “, perhaps” to mean PUNCTUATION MARK; and elsewhere, e.g. sparkler = ASTI.
Glad to see someone else found this a tough nut too, and this is the second allusion to Saturday’s Araucaria double puzzle, which was a right stinker…
“Bleeding” is also “So” – in the sense of “bleeding good” being “so good”. Paul is a genius.
Can anyone illuminate me as to the origin of, “It’s not big and it’s not clever”. It’s not a common expression here in the States. I found lots of references when I googled it, some of which could be considered insulting to dwarves. But nothing suggesting whence it came.
I can’t find a reference either, but I remember it as a playground expression – and all it means is ‘by doing such and such, you neither appear to be a big boy, nor do you look smart’. I think it may well have been used also by parents to their children, when trying to get them not to do something or other. It’s the sort of thing that may have come as a catch phrase from some long forgotten TV show.