A twitcher-friendly theme today – and not one of my personal strong suits, so I was relieved that the thematic examples used were generally common or garden varieties. I did have to confirm 9A (the most plausible guess, given the obvious wordplay) and 24A (felt vaguely familiar for some unknown reason) post-solving.
Across
1 PARROT – (raptor)*
4 BANTAM – probably the most curiously-named of the various weight categories in boxing?
8 TA,NAGER – (Regan)rev. Lear’s daughters never seem to be too far from the surface in most setters’ bran tub of Shakespearean characters.
11 KING,F(ISH)ER – “Man”= some chess-piece is one of those devices which can often stymie inexperienced solvers, given the wealth of other alternatives (firstnames, Isle…). Fer (Iron) as in Chemin de Fer.
13 HERON – hidden.
14 NIGHT,JAR – a touch of 13D about this one?
16 PA(RAKE)ET – (peat)*
18 ROBIN’
21 SONGTHRUSH – (shorn thugs)*. An amusing surface reading, albeit in a slightly cartoony way.
23 K(ESTRE)L – no idea, how densely forested Kirkwall is in actuality. Any Orcadians care to weigh in as to whether this could be deemed an &lit?
24 PO(CHAR)D – a type of duck. Pod is one of the lesser lights in the crosswording realm of “container”s.
25 SH,R,IKE – ref. Dwight D Ironworker
Down
1 PI,AN,I – pretty cute; the kind of clue more likely to be encountered in an advanced/barred puzzle.
2 REAL,GAR
3 O(BE,DIE)NCE – an opportunity well-seized, although I’m probably not for the first time.
5 AM,[-h]OUR – Unusually here, “almost” indicates a letter removal at the beginning rather than the end of a word.
7 MARK TWAIN – the nom de plume chosen by Samuel Clemens, derived from a plumb-line method of water depth measurement for boats (pre-Plimsoll lines). Mark One, Mark Twain (=Two) etc. (With thanks to my father, who instilled this factoid in me as a kid; I never imagined it coming in useful!).
10 THINK TANK – “design”=think seems to be wandering into far-fetched territory.
13 HOARINESS – I had heaviness here initially, before figuring out that it was merely a double def’n.
17 AG,IST,ER – a word that I was lucky to recognise. It dates back to the heydays of working class cattle-ownership and medieval serfdom.
19 BURG,HER – (grub)rev.
22 SPRAY – double (or maybe triple) def’n.
1d – I am not happy with this one as I have been unable to find ‘piani’ listed in any dictionaries I have (Chambers, COD, Collins) nor in any of the on-line dictionaries or wordlists (including quinapalus and Onelook). It is also notably absent from a ‘Dictionary of Music’ that I have on my bookshelf.
One or two references do give the noun ‘piano’ as a section of music played quietly, rather than the usual adverb, but they don’t give the plural.
‘piani’ is the plural of ‘piano’ in Italian but ‘piano’ does not mean a quiet section of music in the Italian dictionaries I have checked.
If anyone can provide confirmation that ‘piani’ is listed in one of the standard reference sources then I will gladly withdraw my reservations about this clue.
10d “design”=think seems to be wandering into far-fetched territory.
One of the definitions for ‘think’ in Chambers is ‘to design’.
Piani is not in COD (tenth ed.) but it is in The Oxford Paperback Crossword Dictionary (2000).
Thanks Rishi. My COD is 25 years old (7th ed.) and long overdue for replacement so I am not surprised when certain words cannot be found in it. I am going to buy a new one at the same time as Chambers 2008.
The OPCD is not exactly a ‘standard’ reference, in fact I have never seen it. Is it just a list of words or does it also give definitions? I have just checked and my Newnes Wordgame Dictionary (just a list of words – unused for many, many years) also includes ‘piani’ but I still think that to be a valid crossword answer it should appear in one of the ‘recognised’ reference works.
Piani is also in Chambers, 9th ed (2003)
Defn: pianos or paini – a soft passage
Sorry, I made a misspelling in my definition, it should have been piani
Thanks Dave. I will withdraw my reservations about this clue. It only goes to show that I should update my copy of Chambers, which I will do when the 2008 edition is available.
Hi Geoff. According to Amazon, it’s available tomorrow fortnight (Aug, 22nd). In fact, you can pre-order it now.