Typical Phi crossword in which everything stacks up. Solving time, 16 mins.
* = anagram < = reversed
ACROSS
1 LES (MISERABLE) S By Victor Hugo
8 COD A Musical term for end of a piece
9 T ERRA FIRMA (air farmer)* from Latin
10 BAN TAM(e) My last entry
12 YEOMANR Y (army one)* y = year with an &lit touch also
13 NORTH SEA (The sonar)*
15 SP (I R) AL laps< r = run (cricket)
16 MET RIC(e)
18 MAST E(a)RLY
20 SCO (OP NE) T (open)*
21 (s)LAVISH
23 ENG I N (E ROOM) Moore< (George Edward)
24 STYX River from Greek mythology – I guessed this when I’d the crossing letters. This blogger is unfamiliar with Pooh by AA Milne but Wikipedia tells me there was a game “Poohsticks” i.e. so STYX = “sticks”
25 EYELESS IN GAZA (seeing a sleazy)* by Aldous Huxley
DOWN
1 LEO hidden
2 S H (first letters) AFT
3 IS TH (M) US Very easy definition
4 EARLY DAY (MOTION) S
5 AT A LOSS My favourite clue
6 LAID A SIDE dial<
7 SOMERSAULTS (also musters)*
12 ADOLESCENCE C in A DOLE SCENE !
14 T (ERROR) ISE (site)*
17 CONCEDE Very well hidden
19 SOLO M ON(e)
22 VIS (T) A
25 YEA (r) R = runs (cricket) but no repetition with 15 as here the word in the clue is in the plural.
Never mind dumbing down of A-levels and GCSEs. If people are leaving primary school without having heard of Poohsticks things really are bad.
The blogger may not have attended an English primary school!
I admit to working out EYELESS IN GAZA because I know it as the name of an early eighties band rather than a novel, guessing that the band as named after something else.
Being of a certain age, I knew the novel, but it too is named after something else – a passage in Milton’s Samson Agonistes.
Eyeless in Gaza is from an older and better-known work than that – the Old Testament
Being of a certain age, and not being eyeless myself at the time (an early 80s stag night), I can never see the title of Aldous H’s novel without recalling Paul Raymond’s version – Braless in Gaza
I’ll get my long dirty mac.
Re comments at 1 (very amusing, Richard!) and 2, I can confirm that this blogger did not attend an English primary school!