I always enjoy one of the Don’s crosswords and this was no exception. Some clever clues and I particularly liked 28a even though it went in on the first pass. 19a, 22a, 5d, 7d and 20d are also worthy of a special mention.
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Across
1 COUNTERBID COUNT (noble) *(BRIDE)
7 CORE homophone of ‘corps’ (division of army)
9 DONG DON (Bradman) G (good)
10 ON THE CARDS *(HOT DANCERS)
11 BARSAC BAR (pub) homophone of ‘sack’ (another, white wine)
12 LOCATION AC (bill) reversed in LOTION (skin preparation)
13 CALLISTO CALL (name) I (one) ST (way) O (round)
15 IOTA O (nothing) in ITA (child’s alphabet)
17 PANG PAN (face) G[rimace]
19 TOILETTE TOIL (hard work) TT (avoiding booze) in EE (middle of week)
22 BURNOUSE BURN ‘OUSE
23 PADAUK PAD (home) AUK (bird)
25 SEPARATIST A RAT (a deserter) IS in SEPT (clan)
26 BLIP B[looming] LIP (cheek)
27 STAY ST[r]AY (wander off not right)
28 TREE-HUGGER both ‘Thelma’ and ‘Sasha’ contain the name of a tree
Down
2 ODONATA O (nothing) N (new) in O (old) DATA (information)
3 NEGUS hidden in ‘oNE GUSty’
4 EXORCIST ORC (monster) in EX (no longer) IS [pries]T
5 BATTLE OF THE NILE *(THEN LET LIFEBOAT)
6 DRENCH R (river) in DEN (haunt) CH (children)
7 COASTLINE C[hallenge] *(TO ALIENS)
8 REDCOAT *(OR CADET)
14 LEGENDARY *(LAD ENERGY)
16 DISPATCH SPA (spring) in DITCH (desert)
18 ACUTEST A CU (copper) TEST (ordeal)
20 TAURINE TA (army) URINE (water)
21 MUTANT MUT[e] (almost nothing to say) ANT (little creature)
24 DEBUG DEB (girl) UG[ly] (not half unattractive)
Hi Gaufrid
Thanks for the blog and the explanation of 28ac -brilliant! I agree with you about the other great clues.
I got as far as PAD with 23ac but I hadn’t heard of the tree and, to my shame, TAURINE was the other one I hadn’t put in. In defence, I’ll say that ‘going over’ often means ‘going round’, so that’s what I was looking for but it was, after all, a down clue, so I should have known.
Thanks guys!
Hi Eileen
Like yourself, I had not heard of the padauk tree and had to resort to searching Chambers for PAD???. Fortunately the bird began with an ‘a’ so I didn’t have to go through many entries (only two in fact).
I also needed Chambers to confirm TAURINE (bull-like) and an on-line reference to verify CALLISTO (Jupiter’s second largest satellite).
G’day folks.
Am relieved to see that I’m in good company with today’s consensus; in terms of both getting a kick out of 28A (and 19A) and of having to look up the second half of 23A online.
I think this puzzle is a great example of the philosophy “a battle of wits, which the setter aims to lose gracefully”.
Is it reasonable that we should need to know Mr. Bradman’s first name?
Tony
Don Bradman is/was a famous cricketer, hence the reference in the clue. This setter uses various famous ‘Don’s as his pseudonym (eg Quixote and Pasquale) but it was not relevant in this instance.