Well I found this harder than a usual Quixote, got there in the end. Didn’t help myself by tentatively putting in Peri for 1ac. Thank you Quixote
Across:
1 Puck – not Peri (arrgh!) Double def.
3 Remark – R.E. + MARK
7 No Good – GOO in NOD
9 Back door – Back (here again) + DO + OR
10 Consumer – CON + SUMER http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Sumer.html
11 Uptake – Cryp def
12 Demo – hidden reversed in hOME District
13 Sloganeer – LOGAN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocking_stone in SEER
15 Fortunate – TUNA in FORTE. Not entirely convinced by the definition – (it makes one happy)
16 Name – Alternate letters in oN fArM hE
18 Erebus – not this http://www.erebusonline.org.uk/ but if you’ve lived there it can be hell! (puzzl)E + REBUS also
http://www.itv.com/drama/copsandcrime/rebus/default.html well worth looking out for.
20 Teething – Tee + Night*
21 Cameleer – Not a word in my everyday vocab. – CAME + LEER
22 Tavern – TA + (ha)VE + RN
23 Tiddly – Double def
24 Inca – Spent far too long looking at partial anagrams of castle, but it’s IN + CA(stle)
Down:
1 Promote – PRI + M.O.T. + E
2 Cook’s Tour – A cryptic double def made harder by cock up on 1ac
4 Encouragement – (Augment + encore)* + &lit to an extent.
5 Audit – AUDI + T
6 Knocker – KNOCK (http://www.knock-shrine.ie/) warning it plays music at you. + ER(r)
8 Damascus steel – (CUTLASSES MADE)*
9 Burgomaster – Dear oh dear did I have problems with this, saw mayor and answer beginning B_R… thought Boris J – wrong.
I’ve only ever seen it as burg(h)ermeister. BURGER around Old MAST – nuts fed to pigs.
14 Eindhoven – (He in Devon)*
16 Far East – FARE + AST(i)
17 Menorca – MEN + OR + C + A
19 Breed – BRE(w)ED
Oh well looks like Little Urn could be heading back to Oz, sorry for the off topic!
Thanks Flashling
Don’t lose hope just yet about the Ashes – just think of the (utterly unseasonable but all the more welcome) excitement of the last two tests. Ahem…back to crossword. I think 15 a works – solving the clue gives you a word for (‘makes one’) ‘happy’ = fortunate.
Found 4d unexciting (unless I’ve missed something) but otherwise like you spent a while amongst peris and borises……..
Thanks flashling and Quixote.
Very enjoyable but quite tough for me. In 19 I prepared the infusion in the wrong way, getting stewed instead of brewed and so trying for a while to justify “steed”. I, too, went the Boris route for the mayor, and when I gave up on him wasted further time trying to squeeze Mike Bloomberg in there. I’m afraid I still don’t fully understand the construction of 4d.
I notice Quixote said in a recent comment that he has an eye on the Everyman market in the Sunday slot. I found this substantially more difficult, taking at least twice as long as Everyman, but it was still eminently gettable for a relative newbie.
This was a good deal harder than Quixote normally is, I found, so possibly not typical. In 4 down, I think the idea was that the answer would fit in the space given in the clue by the underlining – and is an anagram of two words in the clue as the blog explains. This is generally a very accessible crossword but the standard will understandably vary a little from puzzle to puzzle and this was somewhat harder, in my experience anyway.