(Apologies for the late post – solved the puzzle earlier today, and forgot to write the blog!!)
This was a toughie, especially after the usual Rufus romp yesterday. Some very unusual words and difficult wordplay. There are a couple of examples below where I can’t quite explain the wordplay.
Took me a good half an hour to solve, possibly more – I wasn’t counting and it was several hours ago.
ACROSS
1 V(1)-SAGE
9 M-ALLEE – a small eucalyptus tree
10 ANNE-(L)-IDA – segmented worms
11 RECOMBINANT DNA – reverse cryptic – “and” is an anagram of DNA, and recombinant would be the anagrind
13 SP-ILL-I(KIN)S – another name for jackstraws – SP (sine prole) is appearing a lot in crosswords just now
14 S-PIT
16 OR(i)B(i)S – ORIBIS are small African antelopes
18 F-RATERNIS-(desir)E – where RATERNIS = (restrain)*
21 GAVE UP THE GHOST – as in, sacked the ghost writer
23 A-R.R.-ANGER
25 SEA-L-ANTS
26 O-STEAL
DOWN
2 SA(LIE)RI – Antonio Salieri, the “baddie” in the play and movie, “Amadeus”
3 GRENOBLE – not altogether sure of the wordplay, something to do with GREY and NOBLE?
5 NO(<=TEN ANON)TE – NO NO NANETTE is a musical comedy, first produced in 1925, filmed as “Tea for Two” in 1950
6 EXE-‘UNT – stage instruction meaning “they exit”
8 GUARAN(i)-TEE – the guarani is the unit of currency in Paraguay
12 BAKER STREET – again haven’t had time to work out the wordplay
13 SHOTG-LASS – SHOTG = (ghost)*
15 ARCH-IVES – Charles Ives (1874-1954), more famous in Crosswordland than in the real world?
17 BA-VARIA(tions)
20 QUANT-A
22 WELL(ie)
12d Baker’s Dozen and the London 13 bus goes down Baker Street (I’m a Northerner : had to look it up)
Had the same vague idea about 3d – unknown is the “Y” missing from GREY, but couldn’t quite make the wordplay happen
Unknown to be impressive is an instruction to substitute one for t’other.
Nice one Fletch – I’ll have to look out for that construction.
Also, I got S-POT for 14a, am I definitely wrong ?
Stan, I reckon that 14A is SPIT.
“Hole” = Pit; (produced by) “spades” = S; and a SPIT is the depth of ground dug, effectively the length of the spade’s head, thus “amount of soil shifted”.
I thought 12D was also a nice homophone “Baker’s treat” for “An extra No 13 heard?”.
Yeah – I got hung-up on the wrong sort of “soil”
“Some very unusual words and difficult wordplay” – almost word for word, Pasquale’s comment about someone’s recent Bank Holiday puzzle.
(Just thought I’d get that one in.)
The Guardian doesn’t seem to understand that daily puzzles are, more often than not, solved on the train, bus, in the pub etc. where solvers don’t have access to reference books.
The obvious solution to satisfying compilers’ and solvers’ fascination with the arcane, unknown and difficult would be to introduce, as the other “heavies” (for want of a better word) have, a barred weekend puzzle…
Al