It looks like I’ve previously covered just one Wiglaf puzzle, and apparently found it tough going.
Perhaps feeling a little daunted, then, I made a slow start this time, but patiently picked off a few of the more accessible ones. Spotting (though not understanding, see below) the long 2/1 down early on helped the left side of the grid to fill up. Similarly, some persistence with the anagram at 8 down paid dividends on the right.
There was plenty to enjoy here, and indeed plenty to learn from the definitions in particular. 7 down perhaps a favourite if I had to pick one. Last one in was 21 down, as I simply hadn’t come across the term before.
Thanks to Wiglaf for a tough Saturday workout.
| Across | ||
| 9 | ORWELLIAN | Blair’s alien world finally lost battle (9) |
| Anagram of (ALIEN WORL[d]). George Orwell’s real name was Eric Arthur Blair. | ||
| 10 | RATIO | 5 mph to 100 mph? That’s some acceleration (5) |
| Hidden in [accele]RATIO[n]. | ||
| 11 | LYSENKO | Ukrainian pseudoscientist modified extremists in Kabul? Yes and no (7) |
| Anagram of (K[abu]L + YES + NO)*. I hadn’t heard of Trofim Lysenko, but was aware of the Ukrainian surname from things like gymnastics on TV. He seems an interesting chap, all the same. | ||
| 12 | RELIEVE | Remember to secure terminal in game console (7) |
| [gam]E secured by RELIVE. A very nicely hidden definition, I thought. | ||
| 13 | WAUL | Couples involved centrally in swap duly cry (4) |
| [s]WA[p] + [d]UL[y]. I tend to think of this as a dialect word perhaps more at home in a barred crossword, but it’s familiar from things like “caterwaul”, I guess. | ||
| 14 | EASY STREET | ‘The Life of Riley’ could be clue for setter (4,6) |
| You have to think backwards here. If you treat EASY as an anagram indicator and STREET as the fodder, you could end up with “setter”. | ||
| 15 | NUTTIER | More crazy headline, following split (7) |
| If you split “headline” you get wordplay for NUT (head) + TIER (line). | ||
| 17 | POSTBUS | Multi-purpose transport‘s possible, but with difficulty fitting inside (7) |
| BUT* in POSS. Do these still exist? | ||
| 19 | ON ALL FOURS | Everybody goes through broken sunroof, crawling? (2,3,5) |
| ALL in SUNROOF*. | ||
| 22 | TSAR | Heads off to Syrian Arab Republic to see ruler (4) |
| The first letters, of “heads” of T[o] S[yrian] A[frican] R[epublic]. | ||
| 23 | DRAGNET | Police search transvestite attire and lace (7) |
| DRAG + NET. | ||
| 24 | NEPOTIC | Relatively partial to nice bit of pie freshly baked (7) |
| Anagram of (TO NICE P[ie]). A nice whimsical definition too. | ||
| 26 | ROACH | Enormous bird eating a husband’s fish (5) |
| (ROC eating A) + H. | ||
| 27 | MARINIERE | Around lunchtime, sailor has entrée for starters served in white wine and onion sauce (9) |
| (I in MARINER) + E[ntree]. | ||
| Down | ||
| 2/1 | I WAS JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS | Sit down, shut up and listen! Wiglaf ruled fairly in defence of Nuremberg (1,3,4,9,6) |
| I’m beaten here. Perhaps “just” comes fom “fairly”. | ||
| 3 | CLAN | Group knocked over non-alcoholic drinks (4) |
| Hidden and reversed in [no]N–ALC[oholic]. | ||
| 4 | DINOSAUR | Engineer runs over Saudi national, a reactionary fellow (8) |
| Anagram of all of (R + O + SAUDI + N). | ||
| 5 | ENERGY | Generally, not all divers go (6) |
| Anagram of GENER[all]Y. | ||
| 6 | PRELATES | Clergymen in crowd endlessly pinching behind (8) |
| LATE in PRES[s]. | ||
| 7 | ETHENE | Description of centre for refreezing hydrocarbon (6) |
| The central letter of “refreezing” are E THEN E. | ||
| 8 | POVERTY-STRICKEN | After revolution in Kyiv, in retrospect, one’s left bankrupt (7-8) |
| Anagram of (KYIV [i]N RETROSPECT). | ||
| 16 | IOLANTHE | Satellite network put on the work of Gilbert and Sullivan (8) |
| IO + LAN + THE. Io is a moon, thus “satellite”, of Jupiter. | ||
| 17 | PARTNERS | Some geek’s daughter going West and East? (8) |
| PART + NER[d]’S. West and East are partners in bridge. | ||
| 18 | BESOTTED | Elizabeth and Edward getting so involved is foolish (8) |
| SO in (BET + TED). | ||
| 20 | ANANAS | Yellow fruit, not black fruit (6) |
| [b]ANANAS. | ||
| 21 | OPTIME | Mathematics student‘s work schedule (6) |
| OP + TIME. I don’t feel too bad for not knowing that this was once a student graduating with second or third class honours in maths, specifically at Cambridge. | ||
| 25 | PONY | £25 a glass? (4) |
| Two definitions. That it can be a type of glass is another thing I’ve learned today. | ||
* = anagram; < = reversed; [] = removed; underlined = definition; Hover to expand abbreviations; BOLD = letters forming part of entries.
2/1d:
I (Wiglaf, the setter) was just (ruled fairly) following orders (the aforementioned phrase is placed in the clue after a set of generic orders: Sit down! Shut up! Listen!)
Definition as in blog.
Hope that helps
Will.
Also, Simon, may I ask how you had access to the crossword so early? You seemed to have the blog up by 10 past midnight, by my reckoning.
Also also, as I should have said above, thank you to blogger and setter.
Will
Agree with Abulafia’s parsing of 2/1d. It was my FOI and I thought at first it was an anagram and put it in the wrong way round without checking if all the letters were accounted for. That it was wrong became obvious fairly soon after, which forced me to reread and reparse it correctly.
OPTIME was new to me too, but I hypothesised it correctly. Not so PONY, whose only slang meaning I’m aware of goes with ‘trap’.
Can somebody explain how you get I for lunchtime in 27a? I spent ages trying to fit ‘mate’ in there. I hadn’t heard of the sauce, only the striped shirt.
Abulafia @2, put your parsing skills to work on the URL. Then you can check out Loglady’s Monday puzzle. It’s totally 1 across!
Thanks all.
Swatty – I should have explained that better. I assumed “I” is 1, and 1pm seems to be deemed lunchtime in crosswords from time to time. But there could be something I’m missing.
Thanks Simon @5. It never occurred to me that it might be a time. I’d been trying to fit in an N for noon. Must remember that one.
Quite a while since I’ve tackled a puzzle from Wiglaf and now I remember why I usually give them a wide berth!
Several things that I had to look up – Orwell’s real name, the pseudoscientist, WAUL as a stand alone word, hydrocarbon and OPTIME. Then I failed to completely parse either 7 or 17d.
Probably too high a grade for me but I do appreciate your talent, Wiglaf. Thanks to you for the challenge and to Simon for all the explanations.
Quite a challenge but we managed it all without help, apart from checking various guesses (WAUL, OPTIME, &c) in Chambers. We knew ETHENE but it took some time to see the parsing; it’s a while since we encountered the ? then ? device. Others we liked, once we’d managed to parse them, included NUTTIER, DRAGNET, DINOSAUR and PARTNERS.
Re 17ac, Postbuses no longer run in Britain (the last one was withdrawn last year) but they still operate in other countries.
Thanks, Wiglaf and Simon.
Second only to Nimrod in degree of difficulty amongst Indy setters for me and I was chuffed to finally solve this, admittedly after a very long time (>2 hours). I had the same parsing problems as others, but surprisingly only two new words – OPTIME & MARINIERE – in the end.
About time for a nice gentle Monday solve!
Thanks to Wiglaf and Simon