I found this reasonably easy (for a Nimrod) although I couldn’t get 26 and didn’t fancy guessing it either. I spotted the Nina with the grid half full though so filling in the missing letters made the rest of the puzzle that little bit easier.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 4 | (BE STUCK)* in RUT – RUSTBUCKET. |
| 9 | N,(AGE)* in NONE (reversed) – an ENNEAGON is a nine-sided polygon (or nonagon). |
| 12 | TE,R in A,LEGO – “Lawrence” is often TE or DH in crosswords. |
| 17 | APEMEN in (SECT)* – the ESCAPEMENT is the mechanism in a clock or warch which connects the moving parts to the balance, it says here. |
| 21 | (P READ AND)* – RED PANDA. |
| 23 | (LIME US)* – MUESLI. “-style” seems superfluous here. |
| 26 | LANDRAIL – had to Reveal this one and I still don’t understand it. A LANDRAIL is a bird and “both sides” could be L AND R but that leaves AIL. |
| 28 | [-s]HOES |
| Down | |
| 2 | (GET ANY Z)* – YANGTZE. If sleep is ZZZ then “a little” must be Z, right? |
| 4 | GI,RAM (going up) in ROLE |
| 5 | SINBAD THE SAILOR – “specific rating ” is THE SAILOR and SIN,BAD are two types of evil but I don’t really see why the (a) and (b) stuff was necessary. Am I missing something super-subtle? |
| 7 | E in (LAWS RACY)* – CLEARWAYS. |
| 8 | NAVE (going up), GEL |
| 14 | EH (going up),PH on A DONE – HEADPHONE. “Cans” is a slang word for “headphones” although it’s not in Chambers Online and I don’t think I’ve ever seen in used in the singular form. No reason why it shouldn’t be though I guess. |
| 16 | (IN MEETS AT)* – ESTAMINET. |
| 18 | SLEEPER – the very long definition (the whole clue minus the last word) caught me out here. |
| 20 | hidden reversed in “thEM IT’LL Arouse” |
| 22 | NOT UP – a TON is a 100 but I can’t see how that works in the answer. |
| 24 | hidden in “wEAR THe” – with “trousers” as the indicator, which I rather like. |
LANDRAIL I think it’s get = ail = annoy or something like that. Seeing the Nina helped me, too – a little easier than usual from Nimrod
NOT UP = ton (reversed) = hundred
23A alternatively “crushed” is superfluous.
5D the surface made a nice link to the Nina but I also don’t see why the (a), (b) rigmarole was necessary.
24A Personally, I wasn’t keen on “trousers” as the indicator, so there you go, chacun a son gout…
It may be my post-match hangover, but I didn’t find this that easy, and put in several wrong answers – SCAN for SLAV (well, it might be an informal term for a Scandinavian!), IN THE STARS at 15ac and CYCLEWAYS instead of CLEARWAYS (OK, that one must have been the drink).
At the point when I spotted the Nina I had __SSER OF TWO_NILS, which I thought for a moment might be Nimrod’s response to Eimi’s Berbatov and Woodgate puzzle. Sadly, I couldn’t get 1 and 9ac to begin with T and O respectively!
Couple of good hidden inds, I thought.
If you ‘trouser’ something you pocket it, and that activity seems to correspond well enough to what’s going on cryptically. ‘Dresses’ asks for our extended leniency I would say, but using verb forms in a nicely misleading, noun plural kind of a way seems a fine ploy to me.
I agree that Sinbad might have dispatched the (a) & (b) terms, but as they are indeed the first two (a & b) elements in the SI, you can only really fault the clue on bagginess.
Can someone please provide and explain the answer to 1 across.
Sure – if you can remind me what the clue was. Thrown the paper away you see.
I think it was something like “Poet’s accompaniment, swapping sides in bank” (although the surface was probably much better)
The answer was LYRE (i.e. bank=RELY and swap the RE and the LY sides to get LYRE). It had me puzzled for quite a while too because I thought that the sides were just the L and R and I was wondering what RYLE meant!