Independent 7113 by Glow-worm

by

*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, CD=cryptic def, DD=double def

A challenging puzzle with some good clues and surface readings. I was mainly held up by the unusual spelling of 5 down and being convinced for a long time that 11 across was an anagram.

 

Across
1 Drainpipes: CD/DD.
7 Swiz: Hidden in Blain’s wizardry.
9 Merlin: (nim[b]ler)*.
10 At length: (tangle)* + th[e].
11 Cherchez La Femme: Not an anagram of (Dear wife’s home so). It was cher = dear in French + chez la femme = at the wife’s home. Cherchez la femme means to look for the woman (or wife), hence superfluous if she’s already at home.
13 Spacer: Recaps<.
15 Pea green: Peerage* + n.
16 Gourmand: Man in gourd.
18 Banjax: B + Ajax around N. I assume it’s referring to the Greek hero.
19 Bow Street Runner: Bows + tree (three in Irish accent) + t + runner. A runner can refer to a piece of carpet in the theatre used for deadening offstage sounds.
22 Earliest: Ear + l + (I set)*.
23 Annual: Anal about nu. I’d have preferred a “for example” to identify viola with annual.
25 Miss: Hidden in extremis Sabena.
26 Space Cadet: (accepted as)*
Down
2 Roe: Odd letters of trooper.
3 Idler: Bette [M]idler.
4 Panther: Pan + r over the.
5 Pzazz: (Zap)* + ZZ. It’s not a spelling of the word I’ve seen before.
6 Sultana: Ult in san + a.
7 Sanhedrin: (hinders a n)*.
8 Intemperate: Irate about (men pet)*.
12 Hippopotami: (Im at op + op + odd letters of uppish)<.
14 Chrysalis: Lays* in Chris.
15 Pod: DD (pod = school in fish sense, pod=Hull in the sense of the husk of a fruit).
17 Airless: [h]airless (head going from bald).
18 Barrage: Bar + rage. Rage seems to be Australian slang for a party.
20 Extra: Hidden in context Rachmaninoff.
21 Ninja: Not entirely sure about this. “Assassin, reporting an injury, a year gone”. The best guess I can make is that it’s “an injary” and you remove a + yr.
24 Ave: Hidden in Namibia Veldt.

3 comments on “Independent 7113 by Glow-worm”

  1. Re 1ac, I think of bags as being specifically baggy trousers, therefore the opposite of drainpipes. But maybe that’s just Oxford Bags.

  2. With all the unusual letters, I thought there was going to be a pangram, but there’s no Q, I think. Original puzzle, with some unusual approaches, some clues very easy, some very hard.

  3. Neal, 21dn – I think – effectively reduces to a homophone of NINJUR. The A and Y are subtracted.

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