Solving time : well over an hour. Lots of difficult clues, as one would expect with Scorpion, but some lovely ones and most of them could eventually be explained. I think.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | RE(S/D)OLE. Loafer (the shoe) might need this. |
| 4 | (SQUARE)* round FF. I am never very happy with “above” to mean “round”. |
| 9 | Def. “Scientist is one”, B OF F(I/U)N. |
| 10 | J(HERWAS)*P. Can’t quite justify “lying through the teeth”: something about the weird way in which the jew’s harp is played, I suppose. |
| 12 | A (SHOP)* in SET rev. Nice &lit. |
| 13 | First letters of the first six words. You need to have watched a bit of television to know this one (Fred Dibnah). |
| 15 | CARBON(D)ATING. Making fizzy = carbonating, drinks the containment indicator. Ageing in the sense of discovering the age. Brilliant. |
| 18 | I suppose this is saying that Norway (who were once the recipients of nul points in the Eurovision Song Contest), although cold, is at least a bit warmer than absolute zero. If this is it, not absolutely convincing. |
| 21 | S TAN Z(AMBI)A. Def. “[Robert] Burns produced such”. Either “vacation in Zambia” is a clever way of omitting the central letters or it’s not quite good enough. I’m not sure. |
| 22 | LIVED rev. I [me] SH. |
| 25 | IN [= batting], first letters. |
| 26 | O V ER DREW [Barrymore]. |
| Down | |
| 1 | (BIROSTO)* nursing (i.e. containing) C. I spent ages trying to justify INFOTECH here, thinking that the last four letters were the college. Very good clue. |
| 2 | (FT OP rev. R(EAD)) in SON. |
| 3 | (THELINGO)* BUZZARD [high-flier). Rather an odd definition, but I suppose it’s pretty hard not to say boring things like “Beds town”. |
| 6 | (FINISHEDASONG)* ER. Refers to Stella. |
| 7 | Hidden rev. |
| 8 | SAPPHO I think. She was a poetess and her sexual proclivities are apparently referred to, but “Only half”?? |
| 11 | Probably FEEDLOT, since it looks as if it begins FE ED [Iron man], and feedlot is the only word that I can find to fit. Perhaps there is a meaning of the word that is not given in Chambers. And I can’t understand “short on TV”. |
| 14 | ST RUDE L I think, but I can’t see why “revealing underwear” = “rude”. Why is it that the incomprehensible ones are the only Ximeneanly-unsatisfactory ones in the grid (fewer than 50% of letters checked)? |
| 17 | LOT (HAIR)* O. Lot in the sense of plot of ground. |
| 19 | “Si Coe”. |
| 20 | S ARNIE (ref. the Terminator, which yesterday’s crossword helped me with). |
| 23 | JOKE I think. A card is someone who makes a joke, and in one meaning, well-hidden in the dictionary, it refers to the joke itself. |
11 I think it’s FEEDBOX, which makes a pangram (every letter used).
Very tough and satisfying. CARBON DATING was absolutely brilliant.
Another way of reading 23dn is as card = JOKEr making JOKE. I’m not so sure it’s a good parsing though.
11A I had FEEDBOX too. 13A was the last to go in for me – couldn’t believe I didn’t spot what was going on earlier! Fantastic puzzle.
4 across QUAFFERS I think “above one boozer” = more than one drinker ie quaffers. 21 across, I took as emptying Zambia as you suggest, leaving ZA. 8 down SAPPHO thought only half was as AC/DC is bisexual she was just lesbian ie half. STRUDEL – had doubts at first but think it means revealing underwear is rude (it used to be anyway). That was where I noticed checking was less than 50% in places which made me think there was more to it all ie the pangram.
I thought this was brilliant in places and unsatisfactory in others. JOKE, SAPPHO and DIBNAH were the best I could come up with for the respective answers but I was surprised to find that any, much less all, were right when I looked here.
Sappho featured in a recent Azed which I blogged, when I pointed out that: ‘the lyric poet Sappho was a Lesbian (i.e. she came from the island of Lesbos); her sexual proclivities are not known for certain, but because she wrote love poems addressed to both women and men, she has long been considered bisexual’. I haven’t read the full clue, but I think she may well have been more than half of AC/DC.