I enjoyed this one a great deal. I had the grid filled in reasonably quickly but then had to go over half a dozen or so clues where I’d filled in the answer without fully understanding what was happening. A mistake at 16 held me up but not for too long and 11 was the last to go in and also the last clue I deciphered.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 7 | IN,FIDEL |
| 9 | ARCUATE – A CURATE with the R moved forward. A new word to me so I guessed this with A?C?A?? filled in. |
| 11 | ENLIVENMENT – very tricky this: 1055 in roman numerals is MVL so the wordplay is (MVL NINETEEN)*, with “work out” being the anagram indicator. |
| 12 | MOW – if you turn MOW upside down it looks almost the same but not exactly because M and W aren’t just inverses of each other. If you see what I mean. |
| 13 | E,SCOFF(I)ER – amusing &lit and a reference to Auguste ESCOFFIER, the French chef. |
| 15 | E(AGE)R – “Gagging for it” is a reasonably well-known colloquialism, usually used in reference to sex, but it’s not in either the COED or the Chambers Online dictionary so I’m guessing it’s in Chambers proper or Collins. |
| 16 | NOSE RAG- I originally filled in SNOT RAG although I couldn’t work out why. Eventually it became clear that wasn’t right so I changed it to NOSE RAG but even then it took a while to see how the clue worked. I think it’s NO(SERA)G – “not any good” being NO G and SERA the plural of serum (“watery liquids”). |
| 17 | PROVOS,T – I was surprised at this as I thought Provo meant a member of the IRA but the COED says it can also be a member of Sinn Fein. |
| 19 | H(AG)EN – a reference to Jean HAGEN, the American actress. “Hatcher” is capitalized in the clue to suggest that it might be something to do with Teri Hatcher, also an American actress. |
| 21 | IL,LATE,AS,’E – cleverly constructed clue with a great surface reading. |
| 22 | hidden twice in “mONOtONOus” – a reference to Yoko ONO. |
| 23 | WARM,EMO,LAIR< – WAR MEMORIAL. “Emo” is a music genre about which I know next to nothing. Wikipedia has an awful lot to say about it |
| 25 | C in REDONE< – ENCODER. |
| 26 | TRA(N)CHE[-a] |
| Down | |
| 1 | (THE LINE THEN ONE)* – NINETEENTH HOLE. Great clue – misleading surface and a nice definition (“bar of course”). |
| 2 | AF(F,LIC)T,S – I think this is right: AFT is “facing stern” and LIC could be Lieutenant-in-Chief, perhaps? |
| 3 | HDTV – (THE VIDEO)* with the vowels removed. |
| 4 | W,A TERRE,PELLE(n)T – Another toughie. The official language in Gabon is French “on the ground” there is A TERRE. |
| 5 | ACT THE GOAT – I see the connection with kid/goat but apart from that it’s not all that cryptic, unless I’m missing something. |
| 6 | (GAL MAD)* – LAD MAG. |
| 8 | L,END IN,GLIB,RA(R)Y – “scene of book borrowing” (7,7) gave the game away very quickly for me. I did wonder why note was RAY but then I realised it’s another spelling of “re” (as doh, re, mi etc) |
| 10 | E(D,WREATHED)*LDER – EDWARD THE ELDER. The wordplay also works as (D WREATHED)*,ELDER but that would make the “in” (“sinuously in tree”) superfluous. |
| 14 | FA(INWARD)*DE – FAR AND WIDE. |
| 18 | OF A PIECE |
| 20 | GR,OUCH |
| 24 | [-t]OKAY |
Managed a fair amount of this on a train up North last weekend, though struggled to understand some answers at the time (and gave up in the end as I was distracted by Araucaria’s rather tough jigsaw puzzle). I don’t often complain, but the abbreviation HDTV given as a 4-letter word? Not happy with that!
Enjoyed the LAD MAG clue though.
FLIC is French for police – a little surprised to see it used.
2D A Flic is a slang French word for a French cop
‘Flic’ is in Chambers, so fair game for a Saturday prize puzzle, I thought.
19a is almost certainly a reference to the award-winning stage actress, teacher and author Uta Hagen rather than the much more obscure Jean … though the end result is the same.