*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed
I found this extremely difficult. Hypnos seems to have an ability always to come up with the synonym or phrase that I would never think of and this was no exception. Examples that defeated me here are haze for bully, one for drink and tart for baggage. I was also thrown by the missing apostrophes in Palme D’Or and O’Neill.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 7 | Hazel: Haze + l. |
| 8 | Claridges: (de[a]ls cigar]*. |
| 10 | Martin: Martin[i]. |
| 11 | Charisma: Charm around i’s + a. |
| 12 | Palme Dor: PR around (a model)*. |
| 13 | Open: PE in on (the on side is the leg side in cricket). |
| 15 | Filbert: B in trifle*. |
| 17 | Streets: S[tric]t + steer<. |
| 20 | Gloss: [G]loss. |
| 22 | Aqueduct: A quest with Duc instead of s. |
| 25 | Towering: Owe[n] in Tring. |
| 26 | Lennon: N no in len[t]. |
| 27 | Sell short: Hom. of cell + (Clare) Short. |
| 28 | Weird: This was the only one I didn’t really follow. Clue is “Pouring out largely dry wine, ignoring navy rum”. It looks as if the definition is rum and the rest looks like some sort of anagram where you remove RN, but it doesn’t quite work. |
| Down | |
| 1 | Macadamia: (AI mad a Cam)<. |
| 2 | Rent a mob: A Mo in Brent with B moved to the end. |
| 3 | Placard: PL + a card. PL appears to be an abbeviation for Poet Laureate, a position presently held by Andrew Motion. |
| 4 | Freak out: F + [b]reak out. |
| 5 | Advice: A dice around v. |
| 6 | Jemmy: J + Emmy. |
| 9 | Enid: Alternate letters of “lean birds”. |
| 14 | Stuccoers: (cute cross)*. |
| 16 | Respighi: (His grip)* around [suit]e. Very difficult anagram to get if, like me, you’d never heard of him. |
| 18 | End anger |
| 19 | Taggart: A GG in tart. |
| 21 | Oneill: one + ill. I suppose “one” for drink must be in the sense of “get one down”. |
| 23 | Ugli: Hidden. The soundalike would have been a bit too trite and obvious. |
| 24 | Foxes: F + oxen with N becoming S. |
28a It is an anagram but ignoring just N for navy. DR(y)WI(n)E
There’s a theme to this, which, I suspect, made it hard (I found it so). A football team though not appearing itself, their nickname, old ground, former very successful manager, and several players of the recent past.
It’s my home team and I hadn’t spotted it! – and even then, I didn’t immediately see that both forename and surname were there. [My excuse is that I favour a different-shaped ball.]
FILBERT does double duty: with HAZEL and MACADAMIA it makes another, nutty, mini-theme.
In 6 down “prise” meaning “jemmy” is not spelled with a “z”.Is a question mark enough to indicate its a homophone?
An heroic puzzle – thank you Hypnos. Up the Foxes.
(According to Chambers, ‘prize’ can be spelt with a ‘z’ to mean ‘force’, so this clue is ok.)
Collins also gives it as a variant spelling of prise (without qualification).
The Concise OED says it’s a US usage. I guess the ‘up the Foxes’ in comment 5 above refers to the hoped-for outcome to their first ever season at the third level of English football…
Nearly half the answers unXimenean – more unchecked than checked letters. I think this is what made it so difficult: when you have _O_E_ it’s dreadful.
Help! What’s happened to the normally excellent Hypnos? 7 across is virtually unsolvable if you don’t know that HAZE= bully. All you can get from checking is -a-e-. It could be anything…