| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | DECIDED: CID in DEED |
| 5 | DELIBES: DLIBErateS without rate. Refers to Leo Delibes the French romantic composer |
| 10 | NEWCASTLE: anagram of LEWES CANT |
| 11 | OFF WITH HIS HEAD: from Lewis Carroll’s Queen in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Also much used by Shakespeare! |
| 13 | OARE: OAR + E |
| 14 | ALTARNUN: sounds like ‘alter none’ |
| 17 | EYESIGHT: YES in EIGHT |
| 18 | RHEA: oveRHEAd without an anagram of ‘dove’ |
| 21 | PERFECT EXAMPLE: PERFECT (grammatical tense) + EX + AMPLE (adequate) |
| 23 | TIGERWOOD: a kind of wood and the singular writing of the great golfer Tiger Woods |
| 24 | TENSE: anagram of SENT + E |
| 25 | YPSILON: I SPY (reversed) + half LONdon |
| 26 | SYCOSIS: sounds like psychosis |
| Down | |
| 1 | DUDS: double definition |
| 2 | CASH FOR PEERAGES: CASH FOR PEE (toilet charge) + RAGES |
| 3 | DISOWN: IS (one’s) in DOWN |
| 6 | LOADSTAR: anagram of LAST ROAD |
| 7 | BETWEEN THE LINES: I think this is a double definition. |
| 8 | SHELDONIAN: anagram of IS ON HANDEL, for the Oxford theatre |
| 12 | HOMEOPATHY: HOME (in) + O (love) + PATH Y (unknown way) |
| 15 | DIHEDRAL: anagram of DR HAILED. I have no idea what the aerodynamic feature is. I know the word within the context of mathematics, referring to that bounded by two planes (not aeroplanes!) |
| 16 | SHUT DOWN: SH + UT + DOWN |
| 19 | EXODUS: Not confident of this one. EX (once) OD (in the red, as in overdrawn) + US (those on the Guardian team?) |
| 20 | EMETIC: reverse CITE ME (as in the setter) |
| 22 | TEAS: TEASe without the ‘e’, to chaff |
8 comments on “Guardian 24,402 (Gordius)”
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19dn: no problem – ‘Guardian’ is usually ‘we’ or ‘us’ in [Guardian!] crosswords.
Thanks for 16dn: I knew it must be SHUT DOWN but had never heard of ‘ut’!
15D the aerodynamics referred to are apparently the angle at which a planes wings move from the horizontal. I had to look it up!
16D UT is the French for the note we know as C.
14A Altarnun is probably best known to non Cornish people as the provenance of the dastardly vicar in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Jamaica Inn.
Hope this helps
And Oare is where Lorna Doone was shot.
Thanks – I did look up ‘ut’ once Diagacht had confirmed it was a word – hadn’t bothered before because it looks so unlikely!
Pretty straightforward, apart from 14a which I had to look up and 15d which I’d never have got in a month of Sundays without Googling.
I also had to make sure there was a wood called ‘Tigerwood’but the clue was well-formed and it could not have been anything else.
I remember ‘Ut’ being on the old programme Call my Bluff years ago when I was a kid, so that was no problem.
15d I got this more or less straight away. Those of us who built balsa wood and lacquered-paper aeroplanes in our youths would remember this. Anhedral (sloping down) and dihedral, the other way. You see anhedral tips to the main wings on many jet liners these days.
Oare: John Rigg, yeoman and church warden thereof, told a simple tale simply: Lorna Doone
John Ridd I really meant
The weekday Guardian cryptics do seem to be getting more erudite –
I guessed 13ac (OARE) and 14ac (wrongly as ALTARNON) but couldn’t be bothered to check them in Google/Wiki from my dialup connection. 26ac (SYCOSIS) is in Chambers, but…
I agree that the weekday Guardians are becoming more erudite and arcane, though hasn’t Friday traditionally been a bit tougher than the other weekdays?