Solving time 30:50 without books, one mistake – or c. 38 mins with confirming look-ups and one correction.
Mostly fairly straightforward, but there are one or two unresolved points where you may be able to help out. In theory I should defer this post by 40-odd minutes but I doubt any of you are sad enough to crib from this and rush for the midnight post even if you have one.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 3 | F,ACE,FUNG,U.S. – A Charlie is a beard of the Charles I type, and a fung is a mythical Chinese bird, often equated with the phoenix |
| 10 | MARZIPAN – zip = energy in (an arm)* |
| 12 | BRAK – comp anag – (Durban lakes)* – (land use)* – Durban and the Afrikaans answer fit nicely together but I don’t think they make an &lit. |
| 13 | A,MAN(I)TA – manta as in manta ray is Spanish for blanket. The Amanita genus includes three well-known fungi – fly agaric (A. muscaria) – the red toadstool with white spots in all the fairy-tale pics, the death cap (A. phalloides), and destroying angel (a. virosa). |
| 14 | RONIN – a lordless Samurai |
| 15 | COL,IN=on fire – the Virginian quail |
| 17 | CA(LOT)TES – cates = viands, and calottes RC are clerical headgear – the “papal yarmulke” kind. This is the one I messed up, trying PALETTES, which didn’t really work at all on reflection. |
| 18 | SHOO(I)N – ‘shoon’ = an old plural for ‘shoe’. A shoo-in is a US ‘dead cert’. |
| 22 | TELOS = aim. I guess L=left replaces something in a TE___OS name for an Ionian island. But after Googling for TEHAVENOS and TEPORTOS and looking at one list of such islands, I’ve given up. |
| 24 | BACKRA – white folk in Caribbean English. Comp anag – (in Carib-speak)* – (I pen)* |
| 26 | SEALYHAM = (leash may)* – a kind of terrier |
| 29 | TA(B)LA – Indian drums, and Indian musical rhythm |
| 30 | AIR-HOLE – passage = aisle and P=rho replaces the central S – cheeky use of the appearance of Gk. capital letters. |
| 31 | REIN – two* removed from Rotwein. |
| 32 | FI(REFLA=flare*)G – &lit. |
| 33 | S AND C = “sc., literally”,ASTLE=tales* |
| Down | |
| 1 | IMBRAST = (arm bits)* – archaism for embraced |
| 2 | CA(RO=or rev,)CHE – add caroche to your xwd notebook page headed “carriages” (or find it in Bradford). |
| 3 | FRANCO – which turns out to be Italian for “post-free or franked”. |
| 4 | CION – US sp. of scion – icon with C = crown relocated |
| 5 | F(AMILYB=(by mail)*)AKER |
| 6 | NA(NOTE)CH – nach = a performance by (Indian) professional dancing women. |
| 7 | GU(‘ILT)Y |
| 8 | (a)UNTIE – resolve as in ‘solve a knotty problem’, I guess |
| 9 | S(P)ANS – sans = Fr. ‘without’ = bar, but I can’t quite see spans = “winds up old” – though I can see “wound up old” from the archaic use of ‘span’, as in that quote about Adam and Eve (see the Times for the Times comments from last Wednesday for more on this – well, I had to find some way of mentioning this puzzle …). |
| 11 | PARANTHELIA – (Paler in a hat)* whitish images of the sun elsewhere in the sky – worked out from checking letters in my case. |
| 16 | WOO(L)SHED – a ringer is the most expert (i.e. quickest) of a group of Aussie sheep-shearers |
| 20 | URALI,AN – urali has many spellings – worth a look in C as they come up quite often |
| 21 | PADANGS = (gasp and)* – Malaysian playing-fields |
| 23 | L,A(URE)N. – an. = anno = “in the year”, ure = archaic ‘use’ |
| 25 | KEBELE – hidden word. It’s a territory in Ethopia. Surprised to see no anagram of Ethiopian marathon star Kenenisa Bekele (sadly for this purpose, Abibi of the 1960 Olympics was ‘Bikila’, though it sounds the same from English lips). |
| 26 | STAYS – I assume ‘fundamentally rigid’ is about the corsetry kind. |
| 27 | ERIC = (blood) fine,A = afternoon |
| 29 | TRET – last letters of “bolt for free, that” – an old allowance for waste when selling goods by weight |