With apologies for the delay, here is last week’s plain puzzle.
I forgot that I was down to blog this until this morning and then had technical problems with the pdf; luckily I had kept my completed grid so didn’t have to solve the puzzle a second time. Luckily, the puzzle was fairly straightforward, with very generous checking, so I didn’t have to rack my brains too much for the parsing.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SPILTH | Excess 50 tons loaded onto ship that’s wrecked (6) |
| L T in *SHIP. | ||
| 7 | SWAPT | Exchanged (as once) page penned by hard-working student (5) |
| P in SWAT. There was some doubt about whether the answer would be SWAPT or SWOPT, since both exist and both could be justified by the wordplay, but 9 down left no room for doubt. | ||
| 12 | MARATHONER | Long-distance athlete creating damage on heart, running (10) |
| MAR *(ON HEART). | ||
| 13 | RED WINE | Graves? At least some are briefly occupied by Christian saint (7, 2 words) |
| EDWIN in RE (“are”, briefly). Better known perhaps as a white wine. | ||
| 14 | CLARO | Cigar that causes start of cancer of the mouth returning (5) |
| C(ancer), ORAL (rev). | ||
| 15 | DURESSE | Imprisonment? King fills debts with limits of sentence (7) |
| R in DUES, S(entence)E. | ||
| 18 | KERATOSE | Unusual oak trees with hard inner framework (8) |
| *(OAK TREES). Chambers defines this as: “(esp of certain sponges) having a horny skeleton”. | ||
| 19 | NOUS | Talent? Genus has this for info (4) |
| “Info” can equate to “gen”, which of course is GENUS without US, or NO US. Easy to misread GENUS as GENIUS and be completely misled. | ||
| 20 | STAGED | Put on stone, getting old (6) |
| ST AGED. | ||
| 22 | EMPALE | Woman losing head about bit of part to run through (6) |
| P in (f)EMALE. | ||
| 25 | HOLI | Festival–original one–take day off (4) |
| HOLI(day). It’s a Hindu festival. | ||
| 26 | CAPRIDAE | Billy etc end go on e.g. dodgems with one on board (8) |
| CAP, A in RIDE. An echo of a word in this month’s competition puzzle as someone pointed out last week. | ||
| 30 | DUCTING | Pipes cut all over the place with sound lagging( 7) |
| *CUT in DING. | ||
| 31 | ATTAR | Cooked tart containing hint of apricot fragrance (5) |
| A in *TART. | ||
| 32 | ANTONIO | Merchant? One such with onions includes me (7) |
| If you write “Merchant onions” the answer is hidden: so a sort of indirect hidden clue. | ||
| 33 | PYRAMIDION | Top of obelisk, pony dancing round right at centre of one (10) |
| R AMID in *PONY. | ||
| 34 | TRYST | Old cattle fair: have a go with stall, getting rid of the lot (5) |
| TRY ST(all). | ||
| 35 | SCLIMS | Scottish mounts? Pares down around start of climb (6) |
| C in SLIMS. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SARDINE | You may need key to get at this gem (7) |
| Cryptic definition, referring to sardine tins which (used to?) need a key to open them. I had never come across this secondary definition, which seems to be based solely on a Biblical reference. | ||
| 2 | PSEUDOMARTYR | To murder a spy is devious, one only pretending to suffer for the cause (12) |
| *(TO MURDER A SPY). | ||
| 3 | LAWED | Taken to court? Praise in hearing (5) |
| Sounds like “laud”. | ||
| 4 | TRISKELIA | Manx figures embellished skirt essayist has on (9) |
| ELIA (a famous essayist) in *SKIRT. | ||
| 5 | HANSEL | Composer replacing director with soprano displaying special gift (6) |
| S for D in HANDEL. Nothing to do with Grimm’s stories, this is a variant of HANDSEL. | ||
| 6 | STEERS | Directs Tree playing in opening of stage section (6) |
| *TREE in S S. Does anyone (apart from crossword setters) remember the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree? | ||
| 8 | WOLD | Upland country, wide and abandoned (4) |
| W OLD. | ||
| 9 | ANALOGON | Shortly to bag a record, or something similar? (8) |
| A LOG in ANON. | ||
| 10 | PERISELENIUM | Line me up, excited about ascent for point closest to satellite (12) |
| RISE in *(LINE ME UP). | ||
| 11 | TROG | Plod retrogressively in part (4) |
| Hidden in “retrogressively”. | ||
| 16 | CATHECTIC | Pet, agitated, showing surge of energy, mental (9) |
| CAT HECTIC. | ||
| 17 | PUPPETRY | Giving youngster exercise, experience that involves manipulation (8) |
| PE in PUP TRY. | ||
| 21 | DINGOES | What’s-his-name in SA bagging duck as Aussie cheats (7) |
| 0 in DINGES (a South African version of what’s-his-name). | ||
| 23 | EDDAIC | Caddie found out recounting lots of old myths (6) |
| *CADDIE. | ||
| 24 | MAUNDS | Mum on Sunday (but not always) cooked old-style chips? (6) |
| MA *SUND(ay). A chip can mean a basket, and a maund is a Shakespearean term for a basket. | ||
| 27 | STOOL | Stand sacks up (5) |
| LOOTS (rev). | ||
| 28 | RAPT | Transported prince in wretched thing, contraption partly stripped (4) |
| P in RAT; and hidden in “contraption”. | ||
| 29 | MAAS | Motherwithasoncopiesnanny(4) |
| MA A S. Sorry about the lack of spaces in the clue: it’s something to do with the Guardian’s pdf. |
||
*anagram
Thanks for explaining 32ac – the parsing had me beat, but the answer was obvious though.
Nick
I couldn’t parse 29d for ages, not knowing there was a caprine equivalent of baa, although I suppose it must have appeared before.
Talking of which, I suspect the successive Caprinae/Capridae solutions are deliberate rather than coincidental. (Unless last week’s was Capridae after all!)
For anyone still reading this, the review at andlit.org confirms CAPRINAE in last week’s.