Nice stuff from Cinephile: varied, not to hard and not to easy.
The D of the special instructions stands for DREAM, mostly in relation to to A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare. Not too obscure as I had heard of all the characters, though I had to look in Wikipedia for the finer details. My favourite clue was 13ac, for the convolution of ‘turns’ and ‘coming ins’.
Hold mouse over clue number to see clue, click a solution to see its definition.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BASE RATE | BASTE (pour fat) over (covering) ERA (period) – ‘interest’ in a financial sense |
| 5 | AMENDS | AM ENDS (the morning is over at noon) |
| 9 | TREMBLER | My (first letter of) inside TREBLE R (the three Rs) – vibration sensetive switch |
| 10 | ADAGIO | A GI (soldier, general infantry) inside ADO (bother) – slow music tempo |
| 12 | ORLON | hidden inside fOR LONg – fabric from DuPont. Either ‘stock’ or ‘periods’ seems superfluous to me, I can’t manage to fit them both in an interpretation of the clue. |
| 13 | ENCOUNTER | NCO (sergeant) and U (turn) inside (to come in) ENTER (to come into) – definition is ‘meeting’ |
| 14 | RICHES | ostRICHES (big birds, a lot of the letters) – lolly=money |
| 16 | DOMINGO | DO (to perform) MIN (minute, time) GO (to leave) – Jose Placido Domingo Embil well known Spanish tennor |
| 19 | SLEEPER | Railway sleeper and one dreaming. |
| 21 | THRIVE | wiTH RIVEt (without wit=intelligence) – definition is ‘flourish’ |
| 23 | TIT FOR TAT | OFT (frequently) IT reversed RT (the right) A T (model T Ford) |
| 25 | SCRUB | Double definition |
| 26 | EMBRYO | (BY ROME)* anagram=destroyed – definition is ‘potential being’ |
| 27 | IN FAVOUR | Double definition – pro=in favour of |
| 28 | MERMAN | RM (jolly=Royal Marine) inside MEAN (average) – definition is ‘fishy character’ |
| 29 | GALILEAN | GAL (young woman) I LEAN (rely on) – region beside lake Galilee |
| Down | ||
| 1 | BOTTOM | Fundamental=bottom – Nick Bottom is a weaver who gets turned into a donkey in A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| 2 | SHELLFIRE | L (student, learner driver) in SHELF (place of books) and IRE (rage) |
| 3 | ROBIN | Robin Goodfellow also known as Puck is the servant of Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| 4 | THESEUS | THE South East US – Theseus is the Duke of Athens in A Midsummer Nigh’t Dream. Not sure why Theseus would be ‘in authority’ particularly, maybe some Shakespeare scholar out there can enlighten me? |
| 6, 7 | MIDSUMMER NIGHT | (D TIME MINUS MR GH)* – time for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| 8 | SHOWROOM | SHOWeR (missing e=ecstasy) and OOM (uncle, respected elderly person Afrikaans) – definition is ‘scene for displaying’ |
| 11 | ACID | A CID (Criminal Investigation Department, lot of policemen) |
| 15 | HIPPOLYTA | HIP (leader of ‘hip hip hooray’) and (TO PLAY)* – The Queen of the Amazons in A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| 17 | NEVERMORE | If there can’t be more then there has to be either the same or less – quote from The Raven, poem by Edgar Allen Poe |
| 18 | ISOTHERM | IS (exists) with OTHER (different) M (number, 1000 Roman numeral) |
| 20 | RITE | Sounds like “right” |
| 21 | TITANIA | TIT (bird) AN I (island) A (one) – queen of hte fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| 22 | OBERON | OBE (honour) and RON (small boy) – king of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream |
| 24 | TUBER | ER (the Queen, Elizabeth Regina) following TUB (bath) |
| 25 | SWAMI | SWAM I (did I swim?) |
*anagram
Theseus is very much “in authority” in MND – he’s the head of state, and when Hermia asks him what will be her fate if she refuses to marry Demetrius (she’s in love with Lysander) his answer is “Either to die the death or to abjure / For ever the society of men.” Pretty authoritarian stuff. And the mechanicals are terrified of getting hanged if their play doesn’t go down well. It’s true that he seems a lot more liberal in Act V, though…