Solving time: not recorded, but I did finish this without looking anything up. 8/11 were the last two to go in. A couple of quibbles at 12 and 35, and some of the puzzlement that you can easily get if you think too hard about the def’s in Chambers.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | SESAME OIL E,SAME in SOIL = sewage |
| 8 | SOAP SO(A)P – crumpet and soap are both women seen as sex objects |
| 12 | YUKO YUKO(n) – but ISTM that this is a judo rather than wrestling term. Is judo a kind of wrestling? Maybe. |
| 13 | MYOTUBE a stage in the development of muscle from a myoblast |
| 14 | SCIENT SC(I=Institute)ENT |
| 16 | STERLET If inserted into eater, it makes ‘Easter letter’. And it’s a small sturgeon. |
| 18 | PLOP P(L)OP – onomatopoeic container &lit |
| 20 | ARCADE A,R,CADE = a barrel or cask. This used up my barrel luck, as ‘large barrel’ – ?A?K in the Times 2 puzzle the other day had me typing TANK! |
| 21 | CYBERSQUATTER (bets quarry etc)* |
| 23 | APOLLO Poetry corner: Frances Cornford described Rupert Brooke as “A young Apollo, golden-haired”. No, of course I didn’t know that before. |
| 26 | LAVS move the S in SLAV |
| 28 | PERIAPT PAIR rev. in PET – a Shak. word for an amulet |
| 30 | DOGCART crag* in DOT = a marriage portion, not to apportion in tiny amounts, as I guessed |
| 31 | BUTANE The clue here is Fuel in armour shows all such letters —–. I hastily wrote in VOWELS, but as a wiser head elsewhere reminded me, this would make the clue into a sort of cryptic def. with no wordplay – anathema for this inquisitor. The def. is ‘Fuel’, and ‘in armour’ shows all vowels ‘but an E’. Which I understand but don’t think quite works – how do we know that ‘such letters’ means vowels except by word-game instinct? |
| 32 | ALANNAH ANNA in Hal*. I wondered briefly whether there might be an Alannah Crowther but then remembered to look in the First Names section of Chambers where Alannah is equated with ‘oh child’ which I guess is close enough to ‘my child’. Robert Zara’s comment below explains where ‘My child’ came from. |
| 34 | DERM RED rev., M=marks – In C, derm is the ‘true skin, below the outer layer’ – does this make the outer layer ‘false skin’? |
| 35 | SHEEPWASH two Hs = hands in an anagram of ‘pass ewe’. But the clue has ‘pass ewes’ – which can’t be a misprint as one ewe doesn’t need to be in order. So I guess this is a slip-up – which seems to happen more often in Azeds than it used to – or does writing up all the gory details just make you look harder? |
| Down | |
| 1 | SYSOP posy’s, rev. |
| 2 | EUCALYPTOLE (place you let)* |
| 3 | SKIBOB (BO,BIK(e)S) rev. |
| 4 | MINT – which in Scots really does mean ‘aim’ – both noun and verb. |
| 5 | EXTENSOR (rex tones)* |
| 6 | OMBRE O(M(o)B)RE – nut just an old card game, but with final é, ‘with tones or clours shading into each other to give a shaded or striped effect’ – of a fabric or similar. |
| 7 | LOVE RAT OVER in LAT = an isloated pillar (from Hindi) |
| 9 | OUIDA = audio* – This novelist. |
| 10 | ABERDEVINES (a breed)*,VINES – siskins as described by bird fanciers – ‘ety uncertain’. A big help for the rest of the puzzle as I remembered it from previous xwd uses |
| 11 | PEDDER P.E.,redd rev. – variant of pedlar – watch out for pether and (Walter Scott) pedder-coffe |
| 19 | ORLEANS AN in ORLES – I claim to have remembered that orleans was some kind of fabric |
| 21 | CAUDAD CA(t),(a dud)* – towards the tail, in anatomy/zoology |
| 22 | TAMARA compound anag – (as marinated)* – (dines)* – ‘a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, coriander etc.’ – one of those Chambers puzzling etc.’s – do we carry on with other spices that begin with C? |
| 24 | ONGAR – hidden. If you remember Ongar as a place in Essex, the ‘part of Essex locations’ is a bit puzzling, but then you might remember Chipping Ongar (part of Ongar, apparently). Then Google maps reveals there’s also a High Ongar nearby. |
| 25 | HITHE – HIT,H.E. = high explosive – a hithe/hythe is a small haven or port – obsolete except in place names – like Rotherhithe, and Hythe in Kent |
| 27 | SIETH T in (is he)* – a Shak. spelling of scythe, as carried by Old Father Time – most famously on the weathervane at Lord’s. |
The Chambers definition of aberdevine — ‘a bird-fancier’s name for the siskin’ — has always struck me as one of their more unhelpful offerings (though what kind of help I’d expect, I’m not sure).
Alannah is in fact defined in the main section of Chambers as “my child”.
In 35a I was convinced that an R and an L were to be inserted so I had SLEEP…. penciled in thinking that it was some reference to counting sheep!