My apologies for the late post. I won’t comment on this one as I cheated to get the blog out quickly.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SWITCH | Rod’s intelligence evident in school (6) |
| WIT (intelligence) in SCH (school) | ||
| 4 | DEATHBED | A suitable place for curtains? (8) |
| cryptic definition – nice clue! | ||
| 9 | AVESTA | Part of Arafat’s evaluation backed by religious texts (6) |
| found in arafATS EVAluation reversed (backed) | ||
| 10 | DISROBES | Uncovers debris so spread out (8) |
| (DEBRIS SO)* anagram=spread out | ||
| 11 | OUTCLASS | Mistaken about girl’s top (8) |
| OUT (mistaken) C (about) LASS (a girl) – definition is ‘top’ | ||
| 13 | BUTLER | Servant girl’s back after only a short time (6) |
| girL (last, back, letter of) after BUT (only) ERa (time) short=not finished | ||
| 15 | CHANGE OF HEART | What Scrooge had to replace with compassion (6,2,5) |
| CHANGE (to replace) OF (with) HEART (compassion) – definition is ‘what Scrooge had’ | ||
| 18 | CALENDAR MONTH | May, for instance, abridge article on swindle involving corrupt alderman (8,5) |
| THe (article, abridges) follows (on) CON (swindle) contains (involving) ALDERMAN* anagram=corrupt | ||
| 22 | ENACTS | Appears as girl’s holding court (6) |
| ENA’S (girl’s) holding CT (court) – appears in a play for example | ||
| 24 | UNAWARES | Continued to hedge about following a girl in the dark (8) |
| WAS (continued) contains (to hedge) RE (about) following UNA (a girl) | ||
| 26 | SALT AWAY | Power to seize key American bank (4,4) |
| SWAY (power) contains (to seize) ALT (key) A (American) – definition is ‘bank’ | ||
| 27 | GAMETE | Cell door breached by writer (6) |
| GATE (door) contains (breached by) ME (the writer) | ||
| 28 | DOWNFALL | Failure of Worcestershire’s opener caught by Bradman at slip (8) |
| W (opeing letter of Worcestershire) in (caught by) DON Bradman and FALL (slip) – definition is failure | ||
| 29 | BEAT IT | Best to have sex and leave (4,2) |
| BEAT (best) IT (sex) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SHADOW | Ghost to appear without notice (6) |
| SHOW (appear) inside (with…out) AD (notice) | ||
| 2 | IDENTICAL | Indistinguishable from variously indelicate expressions originally deleted (9) |
| INDELICATe* anagram=variously missing start of Expressions | ||
| 3 | CATALPA | Tree pipit eventually spotted near a mountain in Central America (7) |
| pipiT (final letter of) following (spotted near) A and ALP (mountain) in CA (Central America) – a tree | ||
| 5 | EVIL | Extremely unpleasant dust storm beginning to die away (4) |
| dEVIL (dust storm) mising (away) D (beginning of die) | ||
| 6 | THROUGH | Done when a couple of them get agitated (7) |
| THem (two letters of) with ROUGH (agitated) | ||
| 7 | BABEL | Run out of fish causing confusion (5) |
| BArBEL (fish) missing (out of) R (run) – definition is confusion | ||
| 8 | DISCRETE | Unattached princess has dreadful secret (8) |
| DI (princess) with SECRET* anagram=dreadful | ||
| 12 | SIGNAL | Remarkable note penned by novelist (6) |
| I’m not sure about this one. Could be N (note) in Clancy SIGAL (novelist) but why does signal=remarkable? | ||
| 14 | COMMON | Familiar sound of birds circling a short distance above Nelson’s head (6) |
| COO (sound of birds) contains (circling) MM (short distance) over Nelson (first letter of) | ||
| 16 | ABHORRENT | A tendency over time to keep soldiers from revolting (9) |
| A BENT (tendency) contains (over) HR (hour, time) containing (to keep) OR (other ranks, soldiers) | ||
| 17 | ACCESSED | Entered with authority to go around tax department (8) |
| ACE (authority) contains (to go around) CESS (tax) then D (department) | ||
| 19 | NOT HALF | Very hard to stop Matt getting upset after a refusal (3,4) |
| H (hard) in (to sop, like a cork) FLAT (matt) reversed (getting upset) following NO (a refusal) – definition is ‘very’ | ||
| 20 | NEWGATE | Deny grabbing women from a London street (7) |
| NEGATE (deny) contains (grabbing) W (women) – Newgate Street in London | ||
| 21 | ASSERT | Insist upon getting activists’ leader to lock up (6) |
| Activist (leaing letter of) with TRESS (lock) reversed (up) | ||
| 23 | ALLOW | Acknowledge everyone without rising (5) |
| ALL (everyone) then WO (without) reversed (rising) | ||
| 25 | WAIL | Heard beast’s cry (4) |
| sounds like (heard) whale (beast) – definition is cry | ||
*anagram
PeeDee – I appreciate your blog was done in a rush but I think your explanation for 28a DOWNFALL is not quite right. Cannot be partly an anagram of Bradman. I assume it is the W in DON (Bradman) and FALL (slip).
I gave up on this puzzle as I just could not get my head round most of Poins’ clueing!
No anagram in 28 across (downfall). W in Don (Bradman, a cricketer) then slip = fall. Personally, I don’t think names of cricketers should be allowed in ‘everyman’ crosswords. Cricket shouldn’t be allowed in life generally.
Thanks for the post.
Greg, you beat me to it by seconds. Yeah, I gave up too. Not a fan.
12d – SIGNAL. One of the definitions of signal is “Notable; out of the ordinary”
Thanks GregN, you are very kind describing my explanation of 28a as “not quite right”. Complete gibberish would be my interpretation! Fixed now.
PeeDee – please don’t think I’m nit-picking here, but I am sure in 14d COMMON you meant to write MM (short distance).
As someone who singularly failed to solve more than about six clues I feel guilty for pointing out these corrections and thank you for going to the effort of posting the blog
Thanks again GregN. More haste less speed was required I think.
I gave up on this one, too. Went back to it several times during the week, but by Wednesday had made no further progress with less than half done.
Glad I’m not the only one to grind to a halt and give up then.
Add me to the list of people who gave up – the RH side was fine but parts of LH remained a mystery until I read the blog.
Thank you, PeeDee. I did finish this one, but my memory of it was that it was tricky and like others I got a bit frustrated with it. So while I would never want to kick a setter when he’s down, not my favourite ever Poins either. I liked BEAT IT and the cd with DEATHBED.
Re 8d, when I got that I thought of K’sD moaning about DI 🙂
Thanks, PD. I found this tricky, and certainly we’ve all had weeks where time was not on our side.
Regarding 12 down, it works, though the only example I can think of is the term “a signal failure”.
My dirty little secret, flashling, is that in fact I’ve got a picture of her cut out of The Daily Express and stuck on my bedroom ceiling. There. I’ve gone and said it now.
K’sD – you read the Daily Express?? I am shocked!
As if it wasn’t difficult enough, I originally had “mewl” for 25d.
That did not help at all.
And “cess”? Got the answer but could not explain why.
MEWL and WAIL are equally good solutions for 25dn. I think a cryptic clue should have one clearly correct solution, but in fairness to Poins noticing that a second solution exists would have been very difficult.
If you are still listening, hashertu, ‘cess’ is just an old word for ‘tax’. That’s it. Quite often crops up because it’s a useful set of letters for compilers.
I didn’t find this as tricky as a lot of you seem to have done, but I confess that I entered a careless “cetalpa” at 3dn because I didn’t parse the clue properly, even though CATALPA was ringing a bell somewhere in the deeper recesses of my mind.
As far as the “mewl/wail” comments are concerned, any amibiguity is resolved once all the checkers are in place so I really don’t have a problem with the clue.
Looked up “signal” in on line dictionary and one meaning refers to “ signal exploit” meaning a remarkable exploit. The answer to 12 down.
Thank you Dai, quite right. I have no idea why I didn’t think of that at the time.
Signally, this same crossword appeared as 2364 in the ‘i’ on 5 September. Thanks for solving the half-dozen I couldn’t manage.