I’d be interested to know how everyone else got on with this as I found it very easy – solved in just over 11 minutes, far and away my quickest ever time for a Nestor puzzle. Lots of fun though, as we’ve come to expect, and some very subtle and deceptive wordplay to be found. I missed a lot of it while I was solving (which is probably why it got finished so quickly) so it was good to have the opportunity to look at it again while I was writing this up.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | (RUST)*,TONES,STUFF – STRUT ONE’S STUFF. |
| 10 | IN,SIP,I’D |
| 11/12 | PP in (HER FAIRY TALE’VE)* – HAPPILY EVER AFTER. Excellent clue. |
| 13 | COR in AN – “oak’s fruit” does give the game away somewhat but then it’s quite easy to miss the “put something in AN” wordplay so that adds a bit of difficulty. |
| 14 | ABS,(TEN)* |
| 15 | MP in HURRAH (rev) – I would have got this a lot quicker if “boo” hadn’t lodged itself in my mind for “disapproving outburst”, which then proved difficult to shake off. |
| 18 | NEED,REBA[-te] (rev) – another good one, with a smooth-as-silk surface. |
| 23 | PIN in AG – I liked this too. Ag is the chemical symbol for silver so “silver-plated” works as an container. |
| 25 | (MYXO[C for V]IRUS)* – Superb clue. Misleading definition (“Ferry crew” – Bryan Ferry is/was the lead singer of ROXY MUSIC), very convincing surface reading and a neat trick to indicate swapping the V with a C (“twentyfold increase” – think Roman numerals and multiplication). Hats off! |
| 26 | IN HAL[-f],OR – an OR is an Operating Room. [Edit: as beermagnet points out in the comments, this should be INHALER]. |
| 27 | hidden reversed in “espiONAGE ROw” |
| 28 | OST,RICH,FEAT,HER – I liked the definition “might end up in boa”. “East German woman” is a hard phrase to break up too. |
| Down | |
| 3 | PL,ANNE in UND |
| 4 | OD[-e],DI[-t]TY |
| 5 | HERE in ET AL – this and the previous 2 clues I filled in from the definition and crossing letters. They’re all good clues but I really liked this one: “This place is choking and others airy”. |
| 6 | hidden in “whoSE PIAno” |
| 8 | (TINY HALF COFFEE)* – FLY IN THE FACE OF. |
| 9 | (DAMP OCEAN AIR IS)* – CINEMA PARADISO. Another one solved without really working out the wordplay, although this is one of the more straightforward ones. |
| 16 | (BUM)* in RECENT |
| 19 | PITH in E,ET |
| 21 | U,P[-o]STAGE |
| 22 | EX,PO’S,E – “Royal Mail closures” is EX P[ost] O[office]S |
| 24 | LOG<,GI – never heard of him but easy wordplay and checking letters left no doubt. |
26A I put in INHALER with ER from Emergency Room for the “US hospital area”
I never time myself but yes, this didn’t take very long.
26A – My mistake. You’re right – should be INHALER.
This was my quickest Nestor solve of the year by a long way. Very enjoyable and as always with Nestor treatments that were novel and bulletproof.
Excellent work once again from Nestor, with the occasional strained surface reading entirely forgiveable in the light of some highly original cryptic treatments. Oddly enough, I solved the ROXY MUSIC clue at precisely the same time that Jonathan Ross began to play ‘Do The Strand’ on his Radio 2 show. Isn’t there a name for this bizarre phenomenon? If not, there ought to be.