This was a “solved-before-the-bus-came-along” puzzle for me so much of the wordplay went by in a bit of a blur, although I knew I would get the opportunity to look at it all again when I came to write up the blog. I did however spot a cheeky Nina (which may have been unintentional, although I hope not) – look at the five unchecked letters running across the middle of the grid.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | WALL,OP – I think OP is a reference to “op-art”. |
| 5 | TELECAST – “Telly” [Savalas]. |
| 12 | (EAT)*,HOUSE |
| 14 | A in RIDER |
| 15 | (LATER)*,E – TRALEE |
| 17 | hidden in “tHATCHER Years” – loved the definition “scene of much brooding”. |
| 22 | (SO HE WILL NEVER)* – NOWHERESVILLE. Not really sure how I got this as the definition “small American town” isn’t all that helpful given that the place doesn’t actually exist. Interestingly, a weather forecaster on the BBC got in to trouble for describing a part of Scotland using the same word. |
| 24 | NIL<,NET |
| Down | |
| 2 | AS,I,NINE – I liked this clue, especially “one over the eight” for NINE. |
| 4 | ED in PROCURE – my first thought on seeing this clue was that the wordplay would be (GET EDITOR)* with “involved” as the anagrind but then a U appeared in the grid so I had to rethink. |
| 5 | (LOTS O BOTHER SURE)* – nice &lit clue. |
| 7 | N in CAVE,DISH – this was a guess as I didn’t know that CAVENDISH was a type of tobacco. |
| 8 | SCRAP,IE |
| 13 | HALESOWEN – “hails owen”. |
| 14 | (LAVER TRIE[-d])* – RETRIEVAL. |
| 16 | AI,NAMUR (going up) – I filled in ROMANIA and hoped that NAMOR would be a Belgian city but when I checked, it turned out that the city was NAMUR. |
| 21 | A,LL,IN[-n] – excellent clue. Nice surface reading, tricky definition to pick out from “spent a couple of pounds” and cryptically sound. |
22A: Nowheresville may not actually exist, but it gets about 121,000 hits on Google, as I discovered when I looked. Had never heard of it, but evidently many people have.
Had exactly the same negative experience with Romania/Rumania.
I was lucky with NAMUR in the RUMANIA clue as I happened to know it, but it did strike me as fairly obscure, but nonetheless easy to verify. I enjoyed working out NOWHERESVILLE from the anagram and thought the clue was excellent.