Plenty of familiar words in here for me, but I didn’t find it much easier than the obscure offerings. Thank you Azed.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | CHLORDAN | Something to zap bugs after hospital peer kept in tin (8) |
| following (after) H (hospital) is LORD (peer) all inside CAN (tin) | ||
| 7 | UPAS | Javanese tree erected on a square (4) |
| UP (erected) on A S (square) | ||
| 10 | SOI-DISANT | Nothing I’d found in letters of saints somehow not deserving the label? (9) |
| O (nothing) I’D inside anagram (letters of…somehow) SAINTS | ||
| 11 | SAND | Polish, like one of my lovers, might one suppose? (4) |
| SAND (George Sand) was the lover of Chopin (who was Polish) | ||
| 13 | DELTA | Among Model-T automobiles, Ford’s last? (5) |
| found inside (among) moDEL-T Automobiles – the letter D, the last letter of Ford perhaps | ||
| 14 | PRENUP | Clause often included in Hollywood contract? Writer accepts rule completely (6) |
| PEN (writer) contains (accepts) R (rule) then UP (completely) – a marriage contract | ||
| 15 | INNUIT | Those used to arctic conditions during the dark in Quebec? (6) |
| IN (during) NUIT (the dark, in French, as spoken in Quebec perhaps) | ||
| 16 | STILLER | Member of Scotch company, comparatively inactive? (7) |
| a distiller of Scotch whisky | ||
| 19 | TRANSDUCER | One facilitates power switch and numberless currents possibly (10) |
| anagram (possibly) of AND with CURREnTS missing N (number) | ||
| 20 | POETASTERY | US writer, one relishing yen for second- rate versifying (10) |
| POE (Edgar Allen Poe, US writer) TASTER (one relishing) and Y (yen) | ||
| 24 | ERRATIC | I’ll be seen entering crater, terribly unpredictable (7) |
| I inside (…will be seen entering) anagram (terribly) of CRATER | ||
| 25 | TERROR | Earth yielding area with gold, a real handful (6) |
| TERRa (earth) missing (yielding) A (area) then OR (gold) – a disobedient child | ||
| 26 | ARCHON | Magistrate in the past identified in search, onerous (6) |
| found inside seaRCH, ONerous | ||
| 28 | HAZAN | Cantor requiring hour before call to prayer (5) |
| H (hour) then AZAN (call to prayer) | ||
| 29 | SIDA | Shakespearean heroine surrendering most of plume for hempen plant (4) |
| cresSIDA (Shakespearean heroin) missing (surrendering) CRESt (plume, most of) | ||
| 30 | ERASEMENT | Scraping away seed stops weed coming back (9) |
| SEMEN (seed) inside (stops, like a cork) TARE (a weed) reversed (coming back) | ||
| 31 | STAT | Significant number in the country, not English (4) |
| STATe (the country) missing E (English) | ||
| 32 | DISTANCE | Sit out during knees-up – social one’s widely observed of late (8) |
| anagram (out) of SIT inside (during) DANCE (knees up) – a social distance, one observed of late | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | CUSP | Mixed bevvies, only half taken up? What’s the point? (4) |
| CUPS (mixed bevvies, eg claret cup) with half the letters reversed (taken up) | ||
| 2 | HEART-TO-HEART | I agree wayward tot should be kept in before time for serious talk (12) |
| HEAR HEAR (I agree) contains (…should be kept in) anagram (wayward) of TOT then T (time) | ||
| 3 | LINE ITEM | Chaps I left about to fasten up proposed piece of US legislation (8, 2 words) |
| MEN (chaps) I L (left) contains (about) TIE (to fasten) all reversed (up) | ||
| 4 | ROTULA | Patella a lout’s broken after start of rough-house (6) |
| anagram (is broken) of A LOUT following Rough-house (first letter, start of) | ||
| 5 | DISPENSERS | Pharmacists are contemptuous of allowing poet in (10) |
| DIS (are contemptuous of) containing SPENSER (Edmund Spencer, poet) | ||
| 6 | NIDNOD | Rising mafia boss with racket? Keep bowing slightly (6) |
| a reversal (rising) of DON (mafia boss) with DIN (racket) | ||
| 7 | USEN’T | Part in indecorous entertainment was unwonted (5) |
| found inside indecoroUS ENTertainment | ||
| 8 | ANTIPERIODIC | Drug for malaria practitioner’s half mixed with iodine (12) |
| anagram (mixed) of PRACTItioner (half of) with IODINE | ||
| 9 | STATURE | Eminence certainly limits shabby clothes (7) |
| SURE (certainly) contains TAT (shabby clothes) | ||
| 12 | FIRST-RATES | Sailor uplifted in strife’s involved in top-class warships (10) |
| TAR (sailor) reversed (uplifted) inside anagram (involved) of STRIFE’S | ||
| 17 | SCYTHIAN | Former Asian nomad sacked Shan city (8) |
| anagram (sacked) of SHAN CITY | ||
| 18 | SPATHES | Bracts, not those mostly seen after spring (7) |
| THESe (not those, mostly) following SPA (spring) | ||
| 21 | ATONED | A fashion editor getting us made up (6) |
| A TON (fashion) ED (editor) | ||
| 22 | ERRANT | Quixotic knight in Terra Obscura (6) |
| N (knight, chess) inside anagram (obscura) of TERRA | ||
| 23 | BRAST | Unruly kids, pair latterly misdirected, broke out up north (5) |
| BRATS (unruly kids) with the last pair of letters the wrong way round (misdirected) | ||
| 27 | NAZE | Head sounds like an ass to audience? (4) |
| sounds like (to audience) “neighs” (sounds like an ass) | ||
Thanks PeeDee for the GK. needed for SAND.
Particularly like HAZAN and SCYTHIAN.
Thanks as ever to Azed.
Thanks, Azed and PeeDee. For NAZE at first I had NOLE, but that did not parse, and then did not fit once I got the crosser with SIDA. For me, SAND was a little obscure. I got the “polish” definition, and with SAN_, what else could it be? I did think of George Sand, but I was not really sure about the back story. All in all, the clues were entirely gettable this time.
As a pedantic lawyer, I wasn’t entirely happy with the definition of PRENUP, which is a contract, not just a clause. But it made me think of the famous Marx Brothers line “there ain’t no sanity clause”, so did bring a smile to my face.
I too had a problem with 27dn in that I confidently entered BRAE. Sounds like bray, it’s a Scottish hill side and a hill is a head. It was spotting the hidden 26ac that set me right. But then, something in a dim memory, suggested the word should be NASE, which I couldn’t find in Chambers. Tried a whole load of different letters to find NAZE.
Hi Dormouse – perhaps you already know this, so apologies in advance if you do, but in Scotland a brae is a hillside or slope, not an actual hill. It means hill only in the sense of rising ground, a hill on a road for example. It does not indicate the top of anything.
I did say hill side in my post – I’d looked it up in Chambers (only after I realised it was wrong). In the heat of solving, it seemed right.
What does the surface meaning of 1ac mean exactly? Why is a peer kept in a tin. or am I missing something?
Nick: add a ‘which’ before ‘peer’.
Sorry Dormouse, I missed the “side” and only saw the hill. Just trying to be helpful!
I may have an old edition of Chambers but how come STAT is a “significant number”? An insignificant number is also a “STAT”.
Thank you for explaining SAND.
It all seems straightforward now but I found it very hard going at the time.
Stefan
Hi Marmite Smuggler, I understood STAT to be an abbreviation for “statistic”. A statistic is a calculated value (a number in this case) that represent some characteristic of a population: a mean, variance, median etc. It is significant in the sense of being statistically significant. Statistically significant meaning the value can be taken to have a sufficiently high probability of being representative of the thing it purports to describe, as opposed to a value that might easily have been produced by chance.
A value that was not significant (in a statistical sense) would not be a statistic.