A puzzle of two halves for me; the Downs were all pretty easy but the Acrosses less so. All good fun though. No Nina or theme that I can see but I might be missing something subtle.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | C,ALL,I,[-h]OPE[-s] – the Muse of epic poetry. I only know this one and Erato so this wasn’t too difficult. |
| 10 | ARROW in J,MARCH – MARCH always looked likely for the second word and the crossing J from 3d made an initially tough looking clue very easy. |
| 12 | END,ANGER,ED |
| 13 | TELL – even with ?E?L I have to say I was baffled by this one and considered writing in FEEL and leaving it at that. Good job I didn’t though as it’s actually quite simple: “the level without seeing what’s inside” meant T[-h]E L[-eve]L |
| 15 | S in TOT,IS< – TSOTSI is South African slang for “thug”. It’s also an Academy award winning film, which is the first thing you find out when you Google the word. |
| 16 | NO I,SOME – good clue this, with some lifting and separating required to pick out the well-disguised definition. |
| 18 | ARIZONA – I filled this in when I had enough checking letters in place to be reasonably confident it was right but the wordplay was lost on me. Looking again, I think it might be that the abbreviation for ARIZONA is AZ or, if you like, A-to-Z (“housing for letters”). |
| 20 | OK in GART[-h] – got this from the definition and enumeration. A “garth” is an archaic word for “yard”. |
| 23 | T in BYE – quite a tough one this. The definition is “bits – many of them” because in computing there 8 bits in a BYTE. |
| 26 | (HUCKSTER MAD[-e])* – DEUTSCHMARK. |
| 29 | TERTIARY – another one I didn’t really get at the time but understand now. TERTIARY can mean the third in order, importance etc and in a race someone getting the bronze would have come third. Also the TERTIARY is a geological period or “age”. A very cleverly worded clue as it sounds like a cryptic def. |
| Down | |
| 1 | COFFER – take the C off and you have OFFER (“tender”). |
| 2 | hidden in “coLOUR DESigns” |
| 7 | PED[-dle] in TOR,O – another one that gave me trouble, despite guessing correctly that it began TOR- |
| 8 | (I SHELTER)* – ST HELIER. A port in Jersey. Nice &lit clue. |
| 14 | COP,K (going up) in PICKET |
| 17 | BARB,SODA (going up) – I can’t believe how long it took me to get this as I saw SODA almost immediately. |
Fairly difficult, I thought, and reading through this I got lots wrong. I came to exactly the same conclusion regarding 18ac.
13 ac I did not get this – settling for FEEL without conviction. Your explanation of TELL clears that up – the clue, as explained, is “Monkish” so I perhaps I should have got it. Four letter answers, with two unchecked, can often be trickiest, esp if there are a lot of alternatives. I did get ARIZONA early on, on the basis you have set out.
Apart from my error, I found it easier than usual from Monk. As Monk’s puzzles are generally themed, I looked hard, but, like you, can see nothing.