A distinctly Antipodean flavour to this week’s offering, with a couple of pieces of Aussie (or Kiwi) slang, and a Maori word as well. Lots of other unfamiliar words, or unfamiliar meanings of familiar words. Had I not made a careless error at 2 down, I would have solved it comfortably within a day.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | BUTUTS | TUT in BUS. Tut is a dialect word for work paid by the piece. |
| 6 | ABRUPT | An easy anagram to start with. |
| 11 | SOUR ORANGE | (a)URORA in SONG, + E. The one word Seville here serves as the definition. |
| 12 | BALTIC | BALTI + C. The Baltic Exchange is a shipping market. |
| 13 | STILTY | TILT in S(ociet)Y. Stilted is the more common form of the word. |
| 14 | INKIER | IN + KIER. A kier is a kind of vat, and inky (or inked) is Aussie slang for being drunk. |
| 15 | SLEE | L in SEE. |
| 16 | FETA | E in FAT*. It’s not a very difficult clue, but “reduced” as an anagram indicator seemed to be stretching it a bit. Azed no doubt thought it was worth it for the excellent surface reading. |
| 17 | NYCHTHEMERON | THEME in NY CHRON. Took me ages to get this, mainly because I had carelessly entered 2 down as USABLE, giving me NE… The word means a complete period of 24 hours. |
| 19 | ALL SYSTEMS GO | AS LEGS MOSTLY*. |
| 24 | TWIG | W in TIG. The clue uses two of the three different meanings of the word. |
| 28 | FIRS | A homophone for furze. |
| 29 | SPIRIT | I in SPIRT. |
| 30 | HATPIN | H + INAPT*. A cloche is of course a kind of hat. |
| 31 | ALARUM | A LA RUM. |
| 32 | RESTENOSES | REST + SON SEE*. A restenosis is a recurrence of a stenosis, which can fairly be described as an artery problem. |
| 33 | RELIER | Hidden in “wastrel, i.e. rootless”. I thought at first that I was looking for an adjective, but “dependent” can also be a noun. |
| 34 | STIPEL | (E)PISTLE*. A clever clue, because “leaflet” here refers to a leaf from a tree. |
| Down | ||
| 1 | BABY-SNATCHER | B and HE in CARNABY ST*. |
| 2 | USABLY | USA + L in BY. |
| 3 | TOLTEC | LOT (rev) + ETC*. |
| 4 | TRINITY | 1 NIT in TRY. Originally the name of one of the four terms of the legal year, it’s still used at Oxford University. |
| 5 | SOCKO | SOC + KO. A soc is a feudal term, the right to hold a local court, and socko itself is an American slang term to be found in Chambers under the second meaning of sock. |
| 6 | ARSINE | Hidden in “wars in Europe”. It’s the poisonous gas form of arsenic. |
| 7 | BATED | AT in BED. The at is a monetary unit in Laos, there being one hundred to the kip. Who’d have thought that kip could have eight separate meanings, two of which have been used in this excellent clue. |
| 8 | UGLIER | LEG I* in RU (rev). |
| 9 | PETIT | Another clever clue; you have to read “pain” as a French word (it’s in Chambers under petit). |
| 10 | TRYPANOSOMAL | TRY + A SPOONS* + MAL. It describes a type of parasite. |
| 18 | MELILOT | LILO in MET. The description of the plant’s odour as “peculiar sweet” is in Chambers. |
| 20 | LISTEL | SELL IT*. In this clue “butchers” is the anagram indicator, and “past its use-by date” refers to the fact that the word is obsolete. You can find it under the fifth meaning of list in Chambers. |
| 21 | SHINER | N in SHIER. I for one never knew that a mouse could mean a black eye. The OED gives examples from 1842 to 1985. |
| 22 | SITREP | PRIEST*. Here the definition is nine words long! |
| 23 | GROUSE | GR on OUSE. As well as the wordplay, Azed also gives a straightforward definition “one shot down in sport” and a synonym, “boshta”. Both boshta and grouse are Australian slang terms meaning very good. |
| 25 | WHARE | HE + WAR*. The reference to Wellington is of course to the city in New Zealand. |
| 26 | SPITE | P in SITE. |
| 27 | KRANS | SNARK (rev). The reference is to Lewis Carroll’s classic poem. |
Thanks, bridgesong, particularly for explaining the wordplay for BATED. My favourite was 19ac and I also thought 9dn was v clever! I was pleased to finish this, but having considerably more trouble with today’s offering!
Without giving anything away, there’s an obvious error in today’s (appropriately, “Wrong Number”) puzzle – the enumeration for 12ac is given as (9) but should be (5). There’s also a cringe-making spelling mistake in the preamble: “Competitors should submit with there solutions…”
Pleased with this, as my 3rd solo effort. Ground to a halt on today’s puzzle though!
Thanks, Andrew, for pointing out the error in today’s puzzle.
(I also spotted the spelling mistake in the preamble. And there’s another one, I think — surely ‘required at the number here’ should read ‘required at the number where’?)
But there is yet another anomaly. In the print version, the end of 14ac reads: ‘for e.g. smarty-boots?’ whereas on-line the same phrase is ‘for e.g. County Cork?’ I wonder which is correct?
I don’t usually work from the on-line version, but had to print out the puzzle today, having made a mess of my first attempt in the paper! So far, v v slow-going….
The RTF version I printed out has “County Cork” – both that and “smarty-boots” work. I’ll say no more except that puzzles with prizes shouldn’t be mentioned, whatever anomalies may occur, until after the deadline for entries.