A very enjoyable puzzle from Virgilius. For my own part, found this to be one of the easiest Saturday puzzles I can remember, finishing unaided in roughly 20 minutes – although I don’t time these things, so this may be inaccurate as well as vague! The trickier clues were resolved easily enough thanks to the mini-theme of “halves”, based around 13, 15, and 19.
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 8 | SEETH – THESE*. |
| 9 | BRITANNIA – (IN BAR AIN’T)*. |
| 10 | ENTRANCED – ENTRANCE + D. |
| 11 | OPERA – P in (O + ERA). |
| 12 | BARMAN – BAR + MAN. I found “local service” to be nicely misleading. |
| 13 | HALF-BUTT – apparently a longer-than-average snooker or billiard cue. 9 and 23 together form BACKSIDE. |
| 15 | SEMI-TRANSPARENT – 8 and 28 together form SEE-THROUGH. |
| 19 | DEMIJOHN – 7 and 24dn together form LAVATORY. |
| 21 | CATTLE – hom. of “CAT’LL”. I can think of Jersey and Guernsey that are both cows and Channel Islands; readers may know of others. |
| 24 | TERMS – dd. “Hilary” is the second term of the academic year at Dublin and Oxford Universities. |
| 25 | NOISELESS – LIONESSES*. |
| 27 | RUSTICATE – (IT’S A TRUE + C)*. |
| 28 | ROUGH – [tho]ROUGH[fare]. “Driver” being a golfer in this case. |
| Down | |
| 1 | ISLE – hom. of “ISLE”. |
| 2 | BESTIR – BEST + I + R. |
| 3 | PHEASANT – H in PEASANT. |
| 4 | WINDLASS – WIND LASS. |
| 5 | SAW OFF – dd. |
| 6 | INSECURE – (NICE + SURE)*. A pleasingly serendipitous anagram! |
| 7 | LAVA – L[iquid] A[fter] V[olcanic] A[ctivity] &lit. Excellent clue. |
| 9 | BACK – dd. |
| 12 | BASED – AS in BED. An “as” was a Roman copper coin, originally a staggering 1lb in weight. |
| 14 | TITLE – dd. |
| 16 | MEMORISE – M[ain] E[xpedition] + MO + RISE. |
| 18 | AMATEURS – (RU TEAM AS)* &lit. Perhaps my Clue of the Week. |
| 20 | JUSTIN – JUST IN. Not having broached its 1,349 pages myself, I did wonder if this was a reference to the Vikram Seth novel “A Suitable Boy“, but alas, the book does not seem to have a character by this name. |
| 22 | TIED UP – dd. |
| 23 | SIDE – cd. The clue left me wondering a little, but I think it’s just a cd. |
| 24 | TORY – R in TOY? I couldn’t quite nail this, but the answer was clear from LAVA-. |
| 26 | SOHO – S[et] O[nes] H[eart] O[n]. |
I found this much harder that you did and failed with 12, 21 across and 2 down. Liked the theme of the halves and the great Virgilius clues as always. In 24 down, I think TOY comes from ‘very little’
2 and 5 down didn’t get although I got the “off” part.21a no idea and 23 d no idea.However it was very enjoyable.