This was mostly not too difficult and great fun to solve, as always from Nestor but there’s one clue I couldn’t get (10d) and eventually had to concede defeat and look it up. Annoyingly, I still don’t understand the wordplay.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | OFFA[-l] – of Dyke fame. |
| 4 | P in SCRAPE,’D |
| 11 | JOINED-UP,R,IT in WING – very tough, although getting the J helped me a lot. Took me a while to separate out “script” from “script run by computer” as I convinced the latter would be the definition. |
| 12 | RUN WILD – Spooner would say “one riled” |
| 13 | IRON OUT – when I see “club” in a clue I first think of IRON and then “wood”. |
| 14 | (SALE)* in PANTRY |
| 18 | USE,BO in HOUND |
| 20 | ENS in INCE – for non-sporting types, Paul Ince (ex-Man Utd and England midfielder) is the manager of the Milton Keynes Dons (who used to be Wimbledon) |
| 21 | L,OTTERY – I think OTTERY is a pun meaning “having lots of otters”. |
| 23 | (SPOKE HURRY NOT IE)* – from the enumeration I immediately thought this was KEEP YOUR something ON but the only thing that occurred to me for “something” was a word for ladies’ undergarments. Eventually I wrote out the anagram fodder and ticked off the letters until I was left with SHIRT. |
| 25 | DAYLIGHT – “annual savings” refers to DAYLIGHT saving time, aka putting the clocks forward aka British Summer Time. |
| Down | |
| 2 | (SO DEFINITELY CRY)* – SOCIETY seemed an obvious choice for the second word, and there wasn’t much you could do with the rest of the fodder, apart from FRIENDLY. |
| 3 | AM,ERICA – had a bit of a guess with this as I didn’t know that ERICA was any plant of the heath genus. I had the first and last letters filled in though so it was a confident guess. |
| 7 | N in PO,IS OPEN,LETTER – POISON-PEN LETTER. Another tough one, especially the definition, which is hard to spot. |
| 8 | I,GIT in DATE – DIGITATE is a botanical term, referring to leaves consisting of finger-like sections. A new word for me but not too tricky to work out from the wordplay. |
| 10 | ?U?D?A?U?E – got stuck on this and gave up after 10 mins or so, having solved the rest of the puzzle in only a few minutes longer than that. I figured it that it might start with QUAD so I looked it up once I got access to a dictionary and it looks like the answer is QUADRATURE but I still cannot work out the wordplay. The clue is: “How to fit damn circle in square? Slice tops off both!”. “Damn” could be DRAT and “square” with the s missing gives QUARE but that leaves the second U unaccounted for. |
| 13 | (SHIFT HELEN)* – IN THE FLESH. |
| 16 | PA,NICKED |
| 24 | [-h]UGH |
I’m not 100% sure about this but I think the second u is given by slicing the top off a circle like taking the top off an egg. You get a u shape left if you take the top off a circle? What do you think?
I think you might be on to something there. It would certainly explain the presence of the exclamation mark at the end of the clue, indicating that something dodgy/surprising is happening. It’s certainly an original idea.
Yes, I was faced with the same perplexity, but I think Ben’s explanation is probably right (and that’s very inventive from Nestor). I liked the linking of AJAR with DAYLIGHT in what I found was quite an easy puzzle compared with some earlier Nestor Indys.
Is the Spoonerism in 12ac correct? I would pronounce one to rhyme with con so it doesn’t work for me.
I thought it was OK – I’d rhyme ‘one’ with ‘run’. Had a quick look in Collins and they give same vowel pronunciation for both.
Like Richard, I thought the Spoonerism was a bit strained but, like homophones, I accepted that in some accents it might work. However, I would have expected that most people would not pronounce “one” and “run” in the same way.
Nmsindy, is it that you pronounce “one” and “run” so that they both rhyme with “on” or do they both rhyme with “son”?
I’m guessing you must both be northerners. Do you pronounce cud to rhyme with could as well?
Re Testy’s question at comment 6, they’d rhyme with ‘son’ for me. But I take the point about accents differing.
I am and I do.
Found the responses re 12a interesting.
Didn’t find any problems with “wun rild”.
(The ‘ild’ is intended to be pronounced as in wild.)
I feel that Ben had the right idea for 10d.
Sorry about the delay.
6625 only appeared in South Australia’s “The Advertiser” on 2/2/08.