A few unfamiliar bits and bobs to get to grips with this week. All very fairly clued though, so I think everything was manageable in the end.
| Across | ||
| 1 | STAR | Expression of annoyance over principal (4) |
| RATS<. | ||
| 3 | LANDSCAPER | Gets thorny shrub for Capability Brown? (10) |
| LANDS + CAPER. | ||
| 10 | LOCKOUT | Leave work heading off for bar (7) |
| [c]LOCK OUT. | ||
| 11 | RELENTS | Yields the Spanish received in payments (7) |
| EL in RENTS. | ||
| 12 | STUCK-UP | Without resistance began to be high and mighty (5-2) |
| ST[r]UCK–UP. | ||
| 13 | DISMAY | Policeman’s mother beginning to yell alarm (6) |
| DI‘S + MA + Y. | ||
| 15 | LASER | Scientific instrument used in catalase research (5) |
| Hidden in [cata]LASE R[esearch]. | ||
| 16 | STALINIST | Left winger arranged last sit-in (9) |
| Anagram of (LAST SIT IN) with “arranged” as the anagram indicator. | ||
| 18 | PARSIMONY | Meanness of charge over ecclesiastical offence (9) |
| RAP< + SIMONY. Simony is “the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges, for example pardons or benefices” and I wonder why I hadn’t heard of it in *cough*ty-one years of being called Simon. | ||
| 21 | HOSTA | Present a plant (5) |
| HOST + A. I can’t quite nail down a source for host=gift, but I wonder if it’s to do with the church service thing with the wafers. Anyway, the plant is this chap. | ||
| 23 | ABORAL | Native spitting out one drink away from the mouth (6) |
| ABOR[igin]AL. | ||
| 25 | MORNING | Utter desolation before noon (7) |
| Homophone of “mourning”, as in the word itself being uttered. | ||
| 27 | OFFBEAT | Oddball to attend on officer (7) |
| OFF + BE AT. Stumbled a bit here because I don’t recall seeing “off” for “officer” before, but it’s right there in the dictionary so no complaints here. | ||
| 28 | TRIBUTE | Tax credit (7) |
| Two definitions. The “tax” one is marked as obsolete in Chambers, so I don’t feel too bad at never having come across it. | ||
| 29 | COSMIC RAYS | Cover over Nissan car beginning to stop radiation (6,4) |
| (MICRA in COSY) + S[top]. | ||
| 30 | KEYS | Means to enter Cambridge College we hear (4) |
| Homophone of “Caius” as in Gonville and Caius. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SALES SLIPS | Receipts from small beer fall on board ship (5,5) |
| S + ALE + (SLIP in SS). | ||
| 2 | ACCRUES | A county council regrets increases (7) |
| A + CC + RUES. | ||
| 4 | ANTIPASTO | Foolishly points at a dish (9) |
| Anagram of (POINTS AT A) with “foolish” as the anagram indicator. | ||
| 5 | DARED | Challenged measure adopted by theologian (5) |
| ARE in DD. Are is a oldish measure of land area, popular crossword setters. | ||
| 6 | COLOSSI | Powerful people defile old Schutzstaffel unit (7) |
| COL + O + SS + I. More unfamiliar stuff: a “defile” (noun) can indeed be a hill, as can the more often seen “col”. | ||
| 7 | PUNJABI | Language of paper supporting sarcastic fellow leaving Punch (7) |
| PUN[gent] + JAB + I. While the entry was fairly apparent, this took a while to unravel. I hadn’t heard “pungent” for “sarcastic”, and the tersely-named “i” newspaper is easily hidden in plain sight. | ||
| 8 | RUST | Corrosive effect of Russia over time (4) |
| RUS + T. | ||
| 9 | WORKER | Hand book, say, to leading lady (6) |
| WORK + ER. | ||
| 14 | STRANGLERS | Group of foreigners touring Luxembourg (10) |
| STRANGERS touring L. | ||
| 17 | ASYMMETRY | Imbalance of my tyres man briefly realigned (9) |
| Anagram of (MY TYRES MA[n]) with “realigned” as the anagram indicator. | ||
| 19 | REBUFFS | Snubs those who love religious education? (7) |
| RE + BUFFS. | ||
| 20 | ISRAELI | Island artist meets old priest and King David? (7) |
| IS + RA + ELI. | ||
| 21 | HORRID | Intensely passionate leader changes to become nasty (6) |
| From [t]ORRID with its initial letter changed to H. | ||
| 22 | SEIZURE | Certain to assimilate East Indian Zone in attack (7) |
| (EI + Z) in SURE. | ||
| 24 | LATER | Subsequently coming up in adventure tale… (5) |
| Hidden and reversed in [adventu]RE TAL[e]. | ||
| 26 | TORC | …Tolkien’s beginning to crush monster with twisted metal band (4) |
| T[olkein] + ORC. | ||
* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition; Hover to expand abbreviations
I learnt some new words/meanings today, thanks to Simon’s explanations. Simony and defile (=col/hill) were new. TORC was vaguely familiar but I had to look it up to check.
I took ‘present’ in 21ac to be a verb, as in present/host a person or event.
Thanks Kairos and Simon.
A defile is a narrow pass, as is a col. It originates from military usage – troops could only pass through in a narrow file.
Thank you for blogging, Simon.
A pleasing puzzle which went with my Sunday morning coffee. Couldn’t parse PUNJABI, so thanks especially for that. TRIBUTE I vaguely remembered in this sense.
I took HOST the same way as swatty, but I did very much like your explanation of Holy Communion as ‘the church service thing with the wafers’. You’ll be explaining transubstantiation as ‘the body and blood churchy thing with the wine and wafers’ next …
Thanks to Kairos for the diversion.
Pleased to note that I wasn’t alone in not knowing the ecclesiastical offence or the required definitions of defile and pungent. Not entirely sure that I knew the twisted band either, but the wordplay was clear enough.
Another excellent puzzle from Kairos – 3a was quite brilliant.
Thanks to Simon for expanding my knowledge and to the multi-talented man of the cloth.
Found this pretty tough, but I am a bit all over the place solving-wise at the mo. Enjoyed what I did, though. No particular fave today so I’ll just say thanks to The Clothman for the puzzle and to SH for the enlightenment.