Though England’s cities burn, the morning crossword – like the Test Match – must go on. In any case, Leeds may be grubby, scruffy, pot-holed and rainy, but I’m proud to say it’s remained peaceable over these troubling past few days.
Hamilton’s latest felt like a bit of a slog for me today, for some reason. A few less-than-satisfying definitions didn’t help, but I got there in the end. A two-espresso puzzle.
ACROSS
1. ESCORT Anagram of Cortes, though I’m not really sure why the conquistador might have had one
4. ESTEEM S(urrey) [sounds like ‘es’] + teem [sounds like ‘team’, or XI in cricket]; not entirely sure about ‘cried’ as a sounds-like indicator
8. VIVALDI Vidi [Latin for ‘I saw’, as in Caesar’s ‘veni, vidi, vici‘] incorporating Val [a girl’s name] to give the Venetian composer
9. SALTING Salt [seadog] + anagram of gin to give a means of ‘putting it away’ (but the he’s seems awkward to me)
11. MANICURIST Rather limp double definition
12. NERD NE [North East, the region of England that includes Tyneside] + Rd [road, way] to give a wonk, geek, nut or obsessive
13. ANGEL That rarity, a triple definition
14. HACIENDA Anagram of enchilada minus L(earner) [uninitiated]
16. DOG WATCH Another somewhat weak cryptic-cum-double definition for a bit of naval slang
18. SAMEY Say [comment] incorporating me [yours truly]
20. ASIA Opening letters of A(ny) S(erious) I(nternational) A(ssembly) – but, again, the definition doesn’t really satisfy
21. APICULTURE A + pi [religious, pious] + culture [society(?)] to give bee-keeping, or the propagation of social communities – not mad about the clueing, but love the definition
23. SIDINGS Sings [confesses, in crime-movie slang] incorporating Di [Diana, girl’s name] to give the train-track sections used for storing rolling stock and so on. Got bogged down here by mistakenly assuming that the G stood for girl, and spent ten minutes worrying away at convolutions of ‘I sin’ or ‘I did’
24. WINSOME If you win some, you enjoy partial success
25. SIGHTS Anagram of Things, with the n [North] changed to s [South]
26. URGENT Urge [appeal] + NT [New Testament, books]
DOWN
1. ERICA Eric [boy’s name] + a to give a girl’s name – this one had me cursing when the penny dropped
2. CRAVING C(aught) + raving [wild]
3. RED MULLET Reversal of tell [mention (?)] + um [hesitation] + der [German for ‘the’] to give the tasty fish
5. SMART Not-entirely-satisfactory double definition: smart as in ‘clever’ and ‘sting’
6. ENTENTE E(ast) + N(orth) + tent [cover] + E(ast) to give a French term for an understanding (I remember reading a quote (probably apocryphal) from a US politician to the effect that “Russian has no word for entente“… but I’m damned if I can track it down – anyone?)
7. MAN FRIDAY Anagram of f(anc)y Miranda to give a Defoeian helpmeet
10. HIGHCHAIR Cryptic definition
13. ACOUSTICS A + cous [sounds (sort of) like ‘coos’, a bird’s calls – a pigeon or dove’s, specifically] + tics [sounds like ‘ticks’, short periods]
15. COSTUMIER Anagram of Tom Cruise – okay, this one works very nicely
17. WEARING Nice double definition: wearing as in ‘tiring’, ‘trying’, and as in ‘being dressed in’, ‘sporting’
19. MATISSE Anagram of Satie MS [manuscript] to give the French painter
21. ANGST Hidden in gANG STages
22. REMIT Another double definition
Many thanks Ringo & Hamilton. This was a real pleasure after having struggled with today’s Grauniad Cryptic.
However, I did fail to get 23a SIDINGS as this possibilty never occurred to me.
Try as I may, I can’t win them all.
Thanks Hamilton for the puzzle and Ringo for the blog.
Re 21ac: this was one of many that took me longer than it should have done, but I was perfectly happy with it once I had solved it.
Because I started with 1ac, I had no problem solving 1dn. Nonetheless I feel it is an unsatisfactory clue, since PAULA would work equally well without the checked letters.
President George W. Bush was supposed to have said that there is no French word for ‘entrepreneur’, but this seems to be a canard (do the French have a word for that?) Ronald Reagan did claim that Russian had no word for ‘freedom’.