This would be a good puzzle for a lazy Sunday breakfast or lunch. Sadly I no longer get to solve them on Sunday mornings any more as I forgot once too often, so now I have to solve and write them up earlier in the week, which may be efficient but misses the point somewhat. Thank you Peter.
| Across | ||
| 8 | CAVATINA | Song by girl after drink (8) |
| TINA (a girl) following CAVA (a drink) | ||
| 9 | PRIME | Poet’s first poem is excellent (5) |
| Poet (first letter of) then RIME (poem, archaic) | ||
| 10 | PERK | Bonus for each £1000? (4) |
| PER (for each) K (£1,000) | ||
| 11 | EPIGLOTTIS | Malfunctioning toilets contain animal’s body part (10) |
| anagram (malfunctioning) of TOILETS contains PIG (an animal) | ||
| 12 | STINGY | Policeman close to adversary like Scrooge? (6) |
| SING (policeman, member of the band The Police) and adversarY (closing letter of) | ||
| 14 | CHATROOM | Setter leaving threesome in awfully macho forum (8) |
| TRiO missing I (the setter) in anagram (awfully) of MACHO | ||
| 15 | SPEWING | Running stitches protect top of pocket (7) |
| SEWING (stitches) contains Pocket (top letter of) | ||
| 17 | LEBANON | Knight following sign outside bar to Asian republic (7) |
| N (knight, chess) follows LEO (sign, of he zodiac) containing BAN (bar) | ||
| 20 | MATRICES | Moulds made by retired sailors involved in horrible crimes (8) |
| TA (sailors???) reversed (retired) in anagram (horrible) of CRIMES. Does Peter mean soldiers rather than sailors here? | ||
| 22 | FIDDLE | Duke and duchess kept in line by cook (6) |
| D (duke) and D (duchess) in FILE (line) | ||
| 23 | GOVERNMENT | Something finally finished by new people with time to rule (10) |
| somethinG (final letter of) OVER (finished) by N (new) MEN (people) and T (time) | ||
| 24 | CELL | Oboist originally leaving instrument in part of prison (4) |
| CELLo (instrument) missing Oboeist (originally, first letter of) | ||
| 25 | DENIM | Fellows losing money in dark fabric (5) |
| mEN (fellows) missing M (money) in DIM (dark) | ||
| 26 | INSTANCE | Intoxicated leaders can set bad example (8) |
| INtoxicated (leading letters of) then anagram (bad) of CAN SET | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | LAGER TOP | Drink somehow got paler (5,3) |
| anagram (somehow) of GOT PALER | ||
| 2 | RANK | Grotty station (4) |
| double definition | ||
| 3 | LIVERY | Historian accepting queen’s badge (6) |
| LIVY (Titus Livius, historian) contains ER (The Queen) | ||
| 4 | DA VINCI | Officer drinking a French wine with catholic artist (2,5) |
| DI (detective inspector, officer) contains (drinking) VIN (wine, French) and C (catholic) | ||
| 5 | SPILLAGE | Wise man taking medicine for problem with waterworks? (8) |
| SAGE (wise man) contains (taking) PILL (medicine) | ||
| 6 | HINTERLAND | Trace antelope roaming Ecuador’s last remote area (10) |
| HINT (trace) then ELAND (antelope) containing (roaming, going around) ecuadoR (last letter of).
I’m not keen on wordplay that requires one to chain meanings to get to the result: “roaming” means “going around” which means “contains”; therefore “roaming” means “contains”. How about “carpet” means “roast” which means “cook in the oven”: I’m going to carpet the chicken for dinner. I know lots of setters do this but it makes me feel uneasy. |
||
| 7 | MERINO | Fine yarn spun in Rome (6) |
| anagram (spun) of IN ROME | ||
| 13 | NEW ORLEANS | Nuclear engineer swore about list in US city (3,7) |
| N (nuclear) then anagram (engineer) of SWORE containing LEAN (list) | ||
| 16 | NICKNAME | After prison chap returned with Eastern alias (8) |
| MAN (chap) reversed (returned) following NICK (prison) then E (eastern) | ||
| 18 | OIL SLICK | Soil treated to beat risk to wildlife (3,5) |
| anagram (treated) of SOIL then LICK (to beat) | ||
| 19 | ASTERIX | Gaul finds upturned Greek letter under flower (7) |
| XI (Greek letter) reversed (upturned) under ASTER (flower) | ||
| 21 | AVOIDS | Steers clear of space in hollow asbestos (6) |
| VOID (space) in AsbestoS (hollow, no middle letters) | ||
| 22 | FETISH | Place turning up in extremely foolish fixation (6) |
| SITE (place) reversed (turning up) in FoolisH (extreme letters of) | ||
| 24 | CRAP | Compiler’s first music is rubbish! (4) |
| Compiler (first letter of) and RAP (music) | ||
definitions are underlined
I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords. If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.
PeeDee – your posts (and those of your fellow bloggers) have most certaily helped this novice get started with and enjoy cryptics – thanks for taking the time to do so!
A pleasant if not great solve for me. Can’t see the retired sailors reference in 20a and, like you PeeDee, assumed it was an error. Not keen on N for nuclear in 13d. I know it can be found in combinations with other letters but by itself? Happy to be proven wrong. (Probably in Chambers.) Used a word find to get EPIGLOTTIS and then Googled famous historians in order to get LIVERY. Finally guessed and checked CAVATINA.
A good puzzle for a lazy Sunday afternoon for me, though defeated by MATRICES. I don’t know how TA = ‘sailors’ either and I tried to fit in NR to no avail. Otherwise not too difficult, though I didn’t know LAGER TOP, which I now see is a strong shandy, as a term for ‘drink’. I wasn’t too fussed by ‘roaming’ though may have been with a harder clue; this one had crossword land’s favourite ‘antelope’ to make it a bit easier.
I liked, or rather didn’t like, the image conjured up by the surface for EPIGLOTTIS!
Thank you to PeeDee and Peter
This took a lot longer than it should; firstly the artist isn’t EL GRECO, despite wasting time trying to parse why it might be, eejit.
Then RN or a reversal of TARS do not feature in what became MATRICES.
Finally, I was left with the Rufusian two-word dd RANK which came very slowly, and the seemingly endless permutations of drinks and girls’ names for CAVATINA so quite a workout in the end.
Thanks P &PD
Didn’t know cavatina or the historian, and missed epiglottis and matrices.
Felt odd to have Lebanon described as Asian, though perhaps it is technically. Would you describe Israel as Asian? I went to high school in Lebanon.
Favourite clue was 26A INSTANCE.
Many thanks Peter and peedee
Enjoyable easyish puzzle. Most went in pretty smoothly, but the last 10 or so were tougher and I got beat by 8,9 and 20a in the end (mostly due to a lack of vocab, though those words now hopefully stored in the noggin for next time). Honours today go to some nice and amusing surfaces so thanks to the first third of the ‘folk’ group for the puzzle and to the LAPD for the write-up (our blogger now living in the States for purposes of sobriquet).
This lulled me into a false sense of security and then reminded me rudely of my limitations with the last few, including CAVATINA. I can’t actually remember if I cheated there (I solved in the wee small hours) but I probably did.
Like our reviewer and others I wondered if the sailors were meant to be soldiers.
I echo WordPlodder’s comments about EPIGLOTTIS, and think I will follow Dutch’s example in his choice of intoxicated leading clue.
Many thanks to Peter and to PeeDee.
We finished without help apart from checking the “song” meaning of CAVATINA in Chambers. Couldn’t parse STINGY properly – we knew of ‘sting’ as a police operation and thought it had something to do with that. (Memo for future: remember the possibility of splitting compound words, e.g. policeman = police + man).
As others have said, we thought the sailors had to be soldiers. And we found the apostrophe-s in 11ac although it made for a smooth surface was a bit meaningless. Perhaps ‘contain’ should have been ‘containing’ then the clue could be read as meaning “An anagram of ‘toilets’ containing [an] animal is [a] body part”. On the other hand we have no problem with the type of clue for HINTERLAND.
Difficult to nominate a CoD but NEW ORLEANS gets it by a short head – and N is shown as an abbreviation for ‘nuclear’ in Chambers; it makes a change from new, number, note, name, etc.
Thanks, Peter and PeeDee
Thanks Peter and PeeDee
Re 6, eChambers gives ‘wander over’ as the definition of ROAM, and I think it’s fair to say that ELAND is ‘wandering over’ R, so that’s fine by me. Equally baffled by the sailors, though.
Simon S – your eChambers definition illustrates just what I mean:
If I wander over Austria then I visit places in Austria. It would be very odd if I said “I wandered over Austria on holiday.” and when you ask “So where in Austria did you go?” I say “I didn’t visit Austria at all, I went to Germany and Italy”.
The meaning of “wander over” in the definition for ROAM very clearly means “travel inside”, not “travel outside”. To get to the containment indication one one has to chain two definitions:
“Roam” to “wander over” and then using a different meaning/metaphor “wander over” to “goes outside”.