A brisk workout from Crux this Tuesday. A good one for practising your speed techniques.
I breezed through this and though the pleasure didn’t last long, a pleasure it nonetheless was to get a rythm going, with the odd ‘aha!’ along the way.
| Across | ||
| 1 | FRANKINCENSE | Open with anger first Christmas present (12) |
| FRANK (‘open’) + INCENSE (‘anger’), for olibanum, a sweet-smelling resin, I’m told. | ||
| 10 | HALF-CUT | Henry and Hew given fine for being drunk (4-3) |
| HAL (diminutive of ‘Henry’) + CUT (‘hew’) contain F[ine]. | ||
| 11 | NIGERIA | Revolutionary broadcast eg, in an African country (7) |
| AIR (‘broadcast’) + EG + IN, all reversed. | ||
| 12, 13 | TRAIN-SPOTTING | Work out marking for hobby on-line (5-8) |
| TRAIN (‘work out’) + SPOTTING (‘marking’). | ||
| 15 | NANOMETERS | Eastern ornaments broken into microscopic units in US (10) |
| Anagram (‘broken’) of E[astern] ORNAMENTS. The U.K. spelling is ‘nanometre’; one millionth of a metre. | ||
| 16 | UGLI | Mixed fruit starts off unusually green like ivy (4) |
| First letters (‘starts’) of last 4 words. The Ugli (a registered trademrk) is a cross between a grapefruit & a tangerine. | ||
| 18 | HOBO | Chap leaves American city to become a drifter (4) |
| HOBOKEN (New Jersey), minus KEN (a ‘chap’). | ||
| 20 | TOE-CURLING | It’s extremely embarrassing to English and Scottish sport (3-7) |
| TO + E[nglish] + CURLING (Scottish competitive housework on ice). | ||
| 22 | DESKTOPS | Display screens no longer fitted with inkwells (8) |
| Jocular double definition, tho’ I’m not sure that ‘desktop’ is defined as just the screen. | ||
| 24 | UNFIT | Having riotous fun with it would be inappropriate (5) |
| Anagram (‘riotous’) of FUN + IT. | ||
| 26 | RETIREE | Senior citizen on a Hebridean Island (7) |
| RE (‘on’ or regarding) + TIREE (the island and coastal weather-station). | ||
| 27 | STEARIC | Fatty’s raciest version (7) |
| Anagram (‘version’) of RACIEST. New to me but gettable and a nice anag. | ||
| 28 | ABBREVIATION | The EU for instance is potentially above Britain (12) |
| Another neat anagram (‘potentially’) of ABOVE BRITAIN. | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | RELEARN | What amnesiacs must do in Shakespeare – Lear, notoriously! (7) |
| Inclusion in ‘shakespeaRE LEAR Notoriously’. | ||
| 3 | NICKNAME | The Devil’s title, commonly? (8) |
| Cryptic def, ‘Old Nick’ being one of many ‘nicknames’ for him of whom we may not speak lest he appear. | ||
| 4 | IOTA | It means very little to the Greeks, literally (4) |
| Cryptic whole def., after smallest Gk letter. | ||
| 5 | CONSPIRACY | Tories take on major crime cabal (10) |
| CONS (‘Tories’) + PIRACY. | ||
| 6 | NIGHT | Headless horseman is shorter in summer! (5) |
| (k)NIGHT. | ||
| 7 | EARNING | Gainfully employed in education? Not entirely (7) |
| (L)EARNING (‘education’, foreshortened). | ||
| 8 | SHOT IN THE DARK | Guess it could be filmed at night (4,2,3,4) |
| Double def. | ||
| 9 | LAUGHING STOCK | Patsy’s cattle with a sense of humour? (8,5) |
| And another. The French have a cheesy word for it (‘La Vache Qui Rit’). | ||
| 14 | ATMOSPHERE | A most unusual present captures Penny’s character (10) |
| Anagram (‘unusual’) of A + MOST, then HERE (‘present’), all around P[enny]. | ||
| 17 | ARGUMENT | Glue applied to a tear can be heated (8) |
| GUM (‘glue’) in A RENT (‘a tear’). I think the idea may be that the GUM is introduced into the split in A R/ENT, as it were. | ||
| 19 | BUSH TEA | Public transport with hot meal and a drink in South Africa (4,3) |
| BUS (‘public transport’) + H[ot] + TEA (a ‘meal’). Tea made from the leaves of various S.A. plants. | ||
| 21 | INFERNO | A refusal to follow reason may lead to hell (7) |
| INFER (‘reason’) then NO (‘refusal’). | ||
| 23 | THROB | Both get right change for pound (5) |
| Anagram (‘change’) of BOTH+R[ight]. | ||
| 25 | ASTI | Mostly up and about town in Italy (4) |
| ASTI(r) (‘up and about’) for the Piedmontese town. | ||
*anagram
Yes, nothing too difficult, though I didn’t know about UGLI being a trademark and I’ve now learnt where crossword land’s favourite tipple, ASTI, comes from. Probably splitting hairs, but I regarded the defs for 8 and 9d being ‘Guess’ and ‘Patsy’ respectively, with the rest of the clue being wordplay rather than another definition. I guess it’s just a matter of definition.
The most famous chap to leave Hoboken to become a drifter? Well, a sort of drifter.
Thanks to Grant and Crux
A quick but enjoyable solve for me too. I think desktops is fine in 22a – it can refer to the whole computer or just the screen, e.g. placing icons on the desktop. The stand out clue for me was ABBREVIATIONS.
To Hovis:
Indeed. A brief diversion…
This is true. For many years my partner worked for BBC Religion, producing programmes from Russia to Bermuda. Tho’ not religious herself, she collected the most tasteless religious tat from around the the world – twinkling Madonna-and-Childs, gaudy tinsel crucifixes, that sort of thing – which she displayed across the back of her desk at the Beeb. When the message ‘you have unused icons on your desktop’ came up, she would say aloud, “I know. You just don’t get irony, do you?”.
A nanometre is a millionth of a millimetre.
To Dis
So ’tis. Misread my Chambers. Ta.
Thanks Crux and Grant
Twas quite an easy one that I got to just before midnight on the day but only got around to checking it off tonight. No real holdups apart from HOBOKEN that I didn’t know until coming here. And had to check up that TIREE was in fact a Scottish island.
Have only ever come across the UGLI in a crossword puzzle … wonder what it would taste like …