Monday Prize Crossword / Sep 18, 2017
For the second week in a row, Dante’s on the menu – with the same grid.
Mostly easy but …..
….. the bottom half took a lot more time than the North.
Actually, the SW corner took me just as long as the rest of the puzzle.
I’ll have to admit that most of it stayed blank for quite a while.
So not that easy!
Definitions are underlined wherever possible and/or appropriate.
| Across | ||
| 1 | DOLLAR | Everyone in the staff rejected foreign money (6) |
| ALL (everyone) inside ROD (staff), then reversed [rejected] | ||
| 4 | IRRITATE | Make annoyed and angry about unfinished ceremony (8) |
| IRATE (angry) around RIT[e] (ceremony, minus the last letter) | ||
| 9 | VELVET | Material on which one flourishes (6) |
| As in ‘on velvet’, being in an advantageous position | ||
| 10 | ORANGERY | Wrath seen in leaderless Conservative hothouse (8) |
| ANGER (wrath) inside [t]ORY (Conservative, minus the first letter) | ||
| 11 | RHINAL | Some catarrh in a lot of noses (6) |
| Hidden answer [some]: catarrh in a lot | ||
| 12 | ALL THERE | Everybody present and of sound mind (3,5) |
| Double definition | ||
| 13 | ANY | A state in America – no matter which? (3) |
| A + NY (state in America, New York) | ||
| 14 | EQUALS | Peers squeal when excited (6) |
| (SQUEAL)* [* = (when) excited] | ||
| 17 | EPITAPH | Hat and pipe mislaid – in the cemetery? (7) |
| (HAT + PIPE)* [* = mislaid] The kind of half-definition I do not like very much. |
||
| 21 | AIRWAY | A high line to take (6) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 25 | SEE | Observe and understand (3) |
| Double definition | ||
| 26 | REPORTER | His relations make the headlines (8) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 27 | ASTHMA | New maths gets a complaint (6) |
| (MATHS)* + A [* = new] | ||
| 28 | CAREFREE | Happy-go-lucky benefit of the welfare state? (8) |
| One of the benefits of the welfare state is that CARE might be FREE | ||
| 29 | PAPAWS | Father gets backing to exchange fruit (6) |
| PA (father) + reversal [backing] of SWAP (exchange) | ||
| 30 | MADELINE | Girl forced to take fishing gear (8) |
| MADE (forced) + LINE (fishing gear) | ||
| 31 | UKASES | Ask Sue about edicts of the tsar (6) |
| (ASK SUE)* [* = about] | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | DIVORCEE | Unmarried person? (8) |
| (Not so very) Cryptic definition I’m an unmarried person but not a divorcee. And is every divorcee unmarried? |
||
| 2 | LILLIPUT | It had a small population, literally (8) |
| Cryptic definition Of course, referring to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput (4 May 1699). |
||
| 3 | AMENABLE | Willing scholar comes up to help (8) |
| Reversal [comes up] of MA (scholar), then + ENABLE (help) | ||
| 5 | RARELY | Seldom depend on the Gunners (6) |
| RA (gunners, Royal Artillery) + RELY (depend) I could make a joke about Arsenal here but I won’t. |
||
| 6 | INNATE | Hotel has a tea break, it’s natural (6) |
| INN (hotel) + (TEA)* [* = break] | ||
| 7 | A-LEVEL | Cram everything in the night before? Just the opposite for this exam (1-5) |
| EVE (the night before) inside ALL (everything), instead of the other way round There was a mistake in the enumeration which I changed to (1-5). |
||
| 8 | ELYSEE | Foreign presidential address in cathedral city diocese (6) |
| ELY (cathedral city) + SEE (diocese) | ||
| 12 | ANOTHER | One more construction on earth (7) |
| (ON EARTH)* [* = construction] Nounal anagrams are usually fine (by me) but positioned before the fodder? |
||
| 15 | SPY | Man of intelligence? (3) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 16 | SPA | Spring in Regent’s Park (3) |
| Hidden answer [in]: Regent’s Park | ||
| 18 | HITS BACK | Retaliates and strikes a player (4,4) |
| HITS (strikes) + BACK (a player, rugby or football) | ||
| 19 | TWO HEADS | Better than one – if you want to cheat at tossing (3,5) |
| Two heads are better than one and the second part of the clue seems to be added just for fun I don’t think there’s a real definition here but no problem to find the answer. See also comment #2 below. |
||
| 20 | BYPASSES | Circumvents, with the aid of permits (8) |
| BY (with the aid of) + PASSES (permits) | ||
| 22 | DRACHM | Doctor’s bill to queen has little weight (6) |
| DR (doctor) + AC (bill) + HM (Queen, Her Majesty) A drachm is a (dated) unit of apothecary weight equal to 1/8th of an ounce. Funny enough, it is also a measure of volume. It’s where ‘a wee dram‘ comes from, they say. |
||
| 23 | SPARED | Let off for free day (6) |
| SPARE (free) + D (day) | ||
| 24 | ARTFUL | Unnatural cunning (6) |
| Double definition | ||
| 25 | SEVERN | It flows always from south to north (6) |
| EVER (always) between S (south) & N (north) In real life the river Severn flows initially north-east and then with a curve southward. |
||
*anagram
Thanks Dante & Sil.
In trying to solve this I had the same experience as you except that the SW corner remained blank.
For 9 across I thought that “flourishes” alluded to the writing to be found on VELLUM, so was unable to solve 3 down.
In 1 down the question mark indicates that the definition is not literal. A divorcee has gone through the process of “unmarrying”.
19d. Sorry to be late (as I was out most of yesterday) but I think you are unfair in parsing this clue.
In the game of spinning (tossing) coins to guess which side came down on top the old joke was to mint a coin with two heads. This is a different definition from arriving at a conclusion with two peoples’ heads.
Thanks Dante and Sil
I do enjoy this setter better when he puts on his ‘hard’ hat. The first two commenters have picked up on the couple of points that I was going to make – viz. the getting un-married trick at 1d and the use of the double-headed coin to give the double definition at 19d. Thought that they were both great clues!
Also finished in the SW corner and initially plonking for CRAFTY at 24d didn’t help the cause.
Nice puzzle.