Solving time: just about an hour.
Greetings from the Royal Blackburn Hospital. I was flung into here on Tuesday as the old pins were still knackered.
Reasonably tough fare from the Observer’s maestro, not helped by by a slip of the pen with 8 down. In Chambers this is listed as BESO LAS MANOS, but in this puzzle it’s shwn as BASO LOS MANOS to intersect with ANTIPODE.
Thanks to the Cryptonuts (esp Uncle Bob) for assisting with parsing a couple of clues.
ACROSS (*) = anagram; (CD) = Cryptic definition; (R) = Reversal
1 QUIXOTRY Homophone of “Quicks” + O + TRY
11 FREEWHEEL WHERE(*) inside FEEL
12 BLOAT A inside BLOT
13 MOSEL SO (R) inside MEL (another name for honey)
14 LASCAR L (Left) + AS (When) + CAR (Wagon)
15 INKOSI IS OK IN (*)
16 ANATTA Hidden answer
17 CHOLIC Homophone of COLIC
20 ANTIPODE AN + TIP (empty) + ODE
22 HIERURGY I HURRY E.G.(*)
25 OLD AGE LOAD (*) + GE (See Mrs Bradford)
27 ULEMAS compound anagram AS A RULE MONK minus KORAN = ULEMAS
30 PARSEC PARSE (analyse) + C (constant)
31 STEALE E inside STALE (past its best)
32 IROKO OK inside IRO(N)
33 ACNED DANCE(*)
34 NINETIETH TIE inside THE INN (*)
35 PERIOSTS OS (bone) inside TRIPES(*)
DOWN
1 QIBLA compound anagram IRAQI BELIEVER minus I = REVERIE + QIBLA Bit complicated for me, Reminds me of the old chestnut ELEVEN plus TWO = TWELVE plus ONE.
2 UHLAN HAUL (*) + N
3 ICOSAHEDRONS HAD NO SCORE IS(*) I like the definition “for each of us faces total score”.
4 X FACTOR (MA)X FACTOR (Cosmetician). I didn’t know that was the original meaning of the phrase!
5 TERRAN RANTER chopped in half and switched round.
6 RELICT C inside RELIT
7 CHOKO COOK (*) with H inside
8 BESO LOS MANOS As I said earlier, this is shown in Chambers, as BASO LAS MANOS as hands (MANOS) takes a feminine article in Spanish. E SOLO (Spain alone) inside BOSSMAN(*)
9 LEESIDE SEE(R) inide LIDE
10 ALLICES ALL + ICES
18 CHOPINE OP inside CHINE
19 FILARIA AIR + AL(L) + IF all (R)
21 PREECHO OR CHEEP (*) + &LIT
23 RECHIE Hidden answer
24 GUSHER G + USHER
20dn is more than just a palindrome; “but you are” = SED ES, which occurs “up and down” in the answer; and it’s Latin, so it’s “there”, i.e. in the Vatican.
The first word in 8dn is BESO, not BASO – presumably a typo in the blog, as it crosses on of the Es in FREEWHEEL.
Thanks Andrew
I had amended the BESO LOS MANOS entry, just after I wrote this posting on Thursday last and time-locked it. I thought it had corrected itself. I’ve made the amendment.
20 was a bit slipshod of me in assuming that solvers would have known it was Latin for “seat”. Apologies.
I thought ASKER was very jolly.
I don’t know whether it’s so special in Spanish, but in Italian, “la mano” = hand, feminine, is an exception to the rules that nouns ending -o are masculine, which makes the slip perhaps forgiveable. A quick flick through my Eng/Sp dictionary suggests that at least most Spanish -o nouns are masculine too.
This could easily be rubbish, but a French teacher of mine informed me (all those years ago) that there are many European languages in which the word for “hand” is feminine, even when it looks as though it should be masculine. No doubt there are plenty of counter-examples?