My apologies for the later than usual posting, caused by other commitments as well as by the trickiness of the puzzle.
Nimrod never disappoints: you know he’ll never hand you a solution on a plate; that you’ll have to work hard to complete the grid; and, importantly, that it’ll be worth the effort of soldiering on until the end. This puzzle was no exception to that.
I was actually up held by some of the more obscure vocabulary today, not least the entry at 2 and the reference to “rubber” in the wordplay at 8: if I had just quickly checked the words concerned in Chambers, I could have saved myself a whole lot of head-scratching as I tried to find alternative reading of those clues.
Despite struggling valiantly through to the end, there is still something which eludes me, so I am appealing to fellow solvers to explain the wordplay in 10 – thanks!
My favourite clues were 9, which is blindingly obvious once you get it, but which kept me guessing for ages; and 24, for working “songbird” and “twig” into the same concise clue. The completed grid is also a pangram, with all 26 letters of the alphabet appearing at least once.
*(…) indicates an anagram
| Across | ||||
| 1 | ADAM AND EVE | [A + MAN (=chap)] in *(EVADED); “cunningly” is anagram indicator; Adam and Eve is Cockney rhyming slang for “to believe”, hence “(to) credit in the Queen Vic”, i.e. in the East End | ||
| 6 | ZEAL | Hidden (“in”) in “siZE A Lot” | ||
| 10 | ESTATES | Definition: property; wordplay: the E(astern) states of the US are “looking (out) over Atlantic” | ||
| 11 | NAURUAN | Palindrome (“returning … would change nothing”); situated in the South Pacific, Nauru is the world’s smallest republic | ||
| 12 | ENCLOSURE | Double definition: ENCLOSURE means “pen” as in pigpen, pigsty AND (something sent with) a “letter” | ||
| 13 | THETA | the TA (=volunteers, i.e. territorial army); the definition is “letter”, since “likewise” refers to “a letter” (here, of the Greek alphabet) at the end of the clue to 12 | ||
| 14 | MAINS | Double (cryptic) definition: MAINS are “followers of those starting”, i.e. courses of a meal that follow starters AND “a current public source”, i.e. the mains electricity supply | ||
| 15 | BATH-TOWEL | *(THAT) in BOWEL (=the intestine); “unfortunately” is anagram indicator | ||
| 17 | THEM AND US | T<ables> (“top of” means first letter only) + HE-MAN (=Mr Muscle) + DUS<t> (=dirt; “not quite” means last letter is dropped) | ||
| 20 | OVERT | OVER (=on) + T (=time) | ||
| 21 | BHAJI | B (=book) + HAJI (=pilgrim, i.e. in Islam); the “Indian” in the definition stands for “Indian restaurant” | ||
| 23 | NUREMBERG | REM<em>BER (=recall; “heartless” means middle letters are dropped) in NUG (GUN=arm; “twisting” indicates reversal); Nuremberg was the site of the war crimes tribunal following WWII | ||
| 25 | SPRINGY | SP-Y- RING (=group of agents, i.e. spies); “relegating Number 3” means that the third letter – “y” – is placed later in the word | ||
| 26 | TURNOUT | Cryptic definition: a turnout is the number of people assembled, a gathering; the verb to turn out means to stir in the sense of to get out of bed | ||
| 27 | YALE | Cryptic definition around Yale University (“institution that academic may want …) and Yale lock/key (“… to provide an opening”) | ||
| 28 | LITMUS TEST | [IT MUST (=it is essential)] in LEST (=for fear of) | ||
| Down | ||||
| 1 | ARETE | Hidden (“may reveal”) in “Chi-squARE TEsts”; an arête is a sharp ridge, hence “feature of (mountain) range” | ||
| 2 | ANTICLINE | ANTIC (=cavorting around, i.e. frolicking) + LINE (=row); an anticline is an arch-like fold dipping outwards from the fold-axis, in geology | ||
| 3 | ACTION STATIONS | *(ICON + SATANIST TO); anagram indicators are “injured” and “reformed” | ||
| 4 | DISTURB | TUR (RUT=groove; “for reversing” indicates reversal) in [D (=daughter) + IS + B (=born)] | ||
| 5 | VINCENT | IN (Ni=nickel; “wheels” indicates reversal) in V CENT (=what it’s worth, i.e. a nickel, the US coin, is worth five (=V) cents); the definition is simply “man” | ||
| 7 | EXUDE | *(DE<l>UXE); “discharging luminance (=L, in physics) means that the letter “l” is dropped from anagram; “models” is anagram indicator | ||
| 8 | LANDAULET | L (=left) + AND (=with) + A + ULE (=rubber, i.e. from a Central American tree) + T (=model Ford) | ||
| 9 | QUOTATION MARKS | Cryptic definition: the four quotation marks (two before and two after) are what enclose an utterance (“what was said”) in punctuation | ||
| 14 | MATT BUSBY | MATT (=lustreless, i.e. dull) + BUSBY (=black headgear, e.g. a bearskin); the reference is to Sir Matt Busby (1909-94), long-serving manager of Manchester United football club, hence “he had successful charges” | ||
| 16 | WHEREFORE | Hidden (“of”) in “snoW HERE, FOR Example” | ||
| 18 | DINKY-DI | IN in *(KIDDY); “outrageous” is anagram indicator; dinky-di is an Australian expression meaning genuine, real, honest, cf fair dinkum | ||
| 19 | STRATUM | STRAT (TARTS=women of the night; “going upstairs” indicates vertical reversal) + UM (=let me see) | ||
| 22 | APRIL | PR (=couple, i.e. abbreviation of pair) in AIL (=suffer) | ||
| 24 | GET IT | TIT (=songbird) + E.G (=perhaps, i.e. for example); “picking up” indicates vertical reversal; the definition is “twig” as a verb, i.e. to understand, realise | ||
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