Not as straightforward as I first thought. Some witty and tricky parses even where the solutions looked like write-ins. Good puzzle. Oh, and I’ve gone back to including a grid until told otherwise. You have been warned.
Sometimes it’s fun to blog as well as solve. There are are several clues (e.g. 14, 24, and 6d in particular) where I might well have gone ‘meh’ and stuck the obvious answer in anyway if I hadn’t had to justify meself to the world. Enjoyed it. Thanks, Neo.
| Across | ||
| 1 | STUBBORN | Stiff-necked Bob turns awkwardly (8) |
| Anagram (‘awkwardly’) of BOB TURNS. | ||
| 6 | CHANCE | Different churches seizing an opportunity (6) |
| CH + CE (different abbreviations for ‘churches’) surround AN. | ||
| 9 | STUCCO | Economies turned round firm producing fine plaster (6) |
| CUTS (‘economies’) reversed + CO[mpany] (‘firm’). | ||
| 10 | REST HOME | Old institution’s established hospital in Rome (4,4) |
| EST[ablished] in ROME. | ||
| 11 | PLUS | Bonus added (4) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 12 | ECHINODERM | Duke among heroic men tortured spineless animal (10) |
| Anagram (‘tortured’) of HEROIC MEN to include D[uke]. | ||
| 14 | SCORPION | Armoured vehicle brings soldier into Swiss town (8) |
| CORP[oral] (‘soldier’) in SION, a Swiss town which happily has a football team, otherwise I’d never have heard of it. | ||
| 16 | TOUT | Time available to advertise aggressively (4) |
| T[ime] + OUT (‘available’, as in e.g. ‘out now in paperback’) | ||
| 18 | ONCE | As soon as yesterday (4) |
| Rather an elegant double def. | ||
| 19 | EYESHADE | See ghost gets protection from sun (8) |
| EYE (to ‘see’) + SHADE (‘ghost’). | ||
| 21 | MANSERVANT | Tirade from minister to hold against butler? (10) |
| V[ersus] (‘against’) in ‘MANSE RANT’, a possible ‘tirade from a minister’. | ||
| 22 | UNCO | Very posh officer without commission (4) |
| U (Mitford for ‘posh’) + N[on]-C[ommisioned] O[fficer], to give the Scots short form of UNCO[mmon] or UNCO[mmonly], i.e. ‘exceptionally’ or ‘very’ as an intensifier, sometimes with an apostrophe: “She was unco’ rude tae me”. | ||
| 24 | ON THE JOB | Busy doctor not male, with one patient? (2,3,3) |
| Anagram (‘doctor’) of NOT, then HE (‘male’), then JOB (the biblical personification of ‘patience’). | ||
| 26 | IN A WAY | Kind of bishop to leave bin out (2,1,3) |
| bIN AWAY (‘out’) sans the B[ishop]. Pleasing image in the surface: thanks, Bish. | ||
| 27 | ODDS-ON | Strange boy most likely to win (4-2) |
| ODD SON. | ||
| 28 | YEOMANRY | Freeholders from The Old Country Railway (8) |
| YE (‘old’ form of ‘the’) + OMAN (‘country’) + R[ailwa]Y. | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | TOTAL | Ruin everything (5) |
| Double D. To ‘ruin’ sth is to render it a ‘total [write-off]’ | ||
| 3 | BACKSTREETS | Sdaor? (11) |
| ROADS cryptically reversed or ‘back’. | ||
| 4 | O SOLE MIO | Song starts in Oval Office comprising one note (1,4,3) |
| First letters of O[val] O[ffice] include (‘comprise’) SOLE (‘one’) + MI (sol-fa ‘note’), to give the famous and much-parodied song. | ||
| 5 | NORTHANGER ABBEY | Maybe book residence near Bangor by the turning (10,5) |
| Anagram (‘turning’) of NEAR BANGOR BY THE. I’m not clear that the ‘maybe’ is necessary to either the surface or def. | ||
| 6 | CASINO | Better place in company that involves a function (6) |
| I had this as COSINE but sense prevailed at the death. It’s A + SIN[e] (a mathematical ‘function’) in CO[mpany]. Good clue. | ||
| 7 | ASH | Timber lifted in Noah’s Ark (3) |
| Reversed inclusion in ‘noaH’S Ark’. | ||
| 8 | COME ROUND | Be persuaded to visit (4,5) |
| DD. | ||
| 13 | DUTCH GUIANA | Former colony needing aid caught UN out (5,6) |
| Anagram (‘out’) of AID CAUGHT UN. | ||
| 15 | CONTAINED | Coin with new date in circulation restricted (9) |
| Anagram (‘in circulation’) of COIN, N[ew] & DATE. | ||
| 17 | NEUTRINO | New woody plant discussed? No, science gives it little weight (8) |
| Homophone (‘discussed’) of ‘new tree no’, to give a particle of zero mass when at rest. I dunno, ask that Higgs bloke. | ||
| 20 | TROJAN | Tredegar’s vergers love month in Paris for instance (6) |
| ‘Vergers’, i.e. boundary letters of TredegaR + 0 (‘love’in tennis) + JAN[uary], to give e.g. Helen’s inamorato. | ||
| 23 | CHAIR | Hotel in African capital, unfinished, requires furniture (5) |
| CAIRo (incomplete ‘African capital’) includes H[otel] (on maps). | ||
| 25 | HAS | Husband given arsenic suffers (3) |
| H[usband] + AS (As = arsenic). One ‘has’ an illness. | ||
*anagram
Unco is odd but perhaps technically fine. In a way .. i dont think thats kosher at all…
A very enjoyable solve – I did wonder whether the ‘very’ should have had a bit more to the definition, but let’s face it, there wasn’t much else it could be with those checking letters and it does appear fairly regularly.
Thanks to Neo for the fun and Grant for the explanations
A good middle difficulty solve. The DD at 11a struck me as being a bit weak but that’s a minor quibble at best. Loved 24a, where neither doctor nor patient are taken as in the surface reading. Thanks to Neo and Grant.
Hadn’t realised UNCO might be vaguely controversial (my partner’s Glaswegian and uses it often). So I ran it past Chambers, which reckons it’s short for ‘uncouth’. Far be it from me, etc, but I disagree: I’ve seen “She was unco’ guid-lookin’ “, which wouldn’t work except ironically, were Chambers absolutely correct. Although it’s interesting that I should have instinctively used the example I did in he blog. H’mm.
I have a Scottish friend who uses it a lot to mean ‘very’. No idea where it comes from. If from uncouth, the meaning has changed somewhat which sometimes happens.
To Hovis:
Does yr friend use it mostly negatively? That would be the test. (My partner’s abroad on Big Business & she ‘s pfft about crosswords anyway so would resent the interruption).
I had trouble with the ‘Very’ def as well so thanks for the explanation. I’ve probably heard the word plenty of times in TV shows like ‘Taggart’ without bothering to think what it meant. Fell for the ‘month in Paris for instance’, one of those defs which (only) seems so obvious post solve. I agree with Hovis@3 about the surface for 24 and also liked the MANSE RANT and NEUTRINO.
Thanks to Grant and Neo.
Grant@6. If only used negatively I haven’t picked up on that I’m afraid.
http://chambers.co.uk/search/?query=unco&title=21st
…helps us a bit probably.
Very enjoyable solve, and fine blog.
Thanks both.
The OED agrees that “unco” is originally a shortening of “uncouth”, but in its older sense of “unknown”. The “couth” part is related to “kith”, as in “kith and kin”, meaning “acquaintances (those you know) and family”.
Thanks to all who contributed to the ‘unco’ debate. I am, as they say, none the wiser but certainly better informed.
For completeness: it’s just struck me that I missed out the ‘H’ in REST HOME. Curiously, this means the puzzle contains ‘ospital, ‘otel and ‘usband as un-dropped Hs.
My kids call me ‘unco’ when I struggle with the remote or X-box controller, which in NZ means ‘uncoordinated’.
Thanks Neo and Grant
Found this one fairly challenging at times and did need multiple sessions to work through it. Didn’t help myself by writing in DUTCH GUINEA without taking due care of the anagram fodder – that held me up badly with IN A WAY (which I thought was an ingenious clue). Wrong enumeration with the words of the song O SOLE MIO made that initially impossible to get. Those two were my last ones in and took as long as the rest of the puzzle to unravel.
The FV101 SCORPION tank and the ECHINODERM marine invertebrates were both new learnings and along with some tricky parsing made this an interesting and enjoyable solve.
PS Thanks Grant, for re-inserting the grid.