Am solving and blogging now after a night out knowing that I won’t get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow/this morning.. surprisingly easy for a Paul, I felt, with a lot of easyish clues among the many nice ones. Merry Christmas all… anyone else get to open their presents by this afternoon :)?
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1,27 | OFFSIDE TRAP | =Sporting ploy, or all of the surface taken together. “OF”, then DE TRAP = rev(parted) = “left back” is put after (“past”) a jumble of “IF” and S[trikers] . |
| 5,19 | SNUG AS A BUG IN A RUG | Put this in immediately based on the enumeration.. not too much misdirection here. |
| 10 | ARIA | A, rev(AIR). |
| 11 | STRYCHNINE | The very bitter poison. TRY=”essay”, “penned” in by SCH for school, followed by the square number NINE. |
| 12 | PESETA | SET in PEA |
| 13 | NOTATION | I knew Jacques TATI as a filmmaker, though I suppose comic is fair enough. Inside NOON=twelve. |
| 14 | ALPHA RATS | (A[dvance] A SHARPLY)* |
| 16 | FLEET | neat little double def. |
| 17 | SPELT | Is a type of wheat and W-H-E-A-T is spelt out in the clue. |
| 23 | BUTTER UP | Lovely. “Flatter” is the definition. BUTT followed by rev(PURE)= “straight back”. |
| 24 | PLEXUS | P[ower] + LEXUS. The solar plexus is a major nerve network in the abdomen. |
| 26 | DIPSOMANIA | DIPS, OMANI, A. |
| 28 | GLASGOW | GLOW around (gas)* |
| Down | ||
| 2 | FOR REAL | ERR reversed in FOAL |
| 3, 29ac | SNAKE CHARMER | Both words have similar meanings to “cad”. |
| 4 | DESPAIR | (is padre)* |
| 6 | NICETY | Hidden in GermaNIC ETYmology |
| 7 | GENITALIA | GEN=facts, ITALIA is how Italians would say Italy. Cobblers is slang for a kind of these. |
| 8 | SAN JOSE | J[udge], OS=”so upstanding” all inSANE. |
| 9 | GRANNY DUMPING | Not a phrase I was familiar with. GRAN[d] + NY=(New York) state + DUMP[l]ING=”short, fat person left out” |
| 15 | HALITOSIS | Scrabble is an anagrind on “sloth (ai)”, then IS=exists. “ai” is a fairly well known as a two-letter Scrabble word meaning a kind of sloth. |
| 18 | PLUVIAL | PAL=Intimate in the sense of confidant, around LUV for “love”, with an “I” appearing in there as well. The word means to do with rain. |
| 20 | IMPEACH | Laughed aloud when I got this. I(=one) MP EACH is the “constituency allocation”. |
| 21 | ULULATE | ZULU=South African is beheaded, LATE=dead. |
| 22 | CRIMBO | M[essiah] in CRIB getting O for his birthday tomorrow. |
| 25 | EATER | I am vaguely aware of a phrase similar to “this apple is a good eater” or something. HEATER=warmer loses H for hot. |
Some really nice clues in this one.
I thought 1,27ac was terrific.
Manehi 14A appears to be a typo – it’s Alpha RAYS.
Lovely crossword for Crimbo Eve!
Merry Christmas manehi & all. Like you I had a laugh at 20dn, and a snigger at 7dn.
25dn – an “eater” or “eating apple” is in contrast to a “cooker”.
Very enjoyable. Perfect crossword for Christmas – fun, but never annoying.
Excellent Paul crossword – I found it a bit harder than his most recent ones, unlike manehi.
1, 27 is a splendid &lit; also liked 20, 22, 23 very much. 7dn was a bit sneaky: ITALIA is certainly Italian for Italy, but ‘say’ implied a homophone, and it isn’t pronounced the same way as the last three syllables of GENITALIA.
you’ve got a spelling mistake in 14ac – its rays not rats
Excellent fun – our favourites were CRIMBO, PLEXUS (last one to go in), SNAKE CHARMER, IMPEACH and BUTTER UP. Merry Christmas (again) everyone 🙂
Good stuff, Paul.
Struggled with Crimbo, believe it or not.
Good fun stuff from Paul today, but I’ve seen an almost identical clue to 25d somewhere else very recently… unfortunate coincidence.
Merry Christmas everybody!
Smutchin – so have I, which makes me think it must have been a Guardian clue, as I very rarely look at other papers’ crosswords.