The puzzle can be found here.
An enjoyable solve with a fair smattering of not-too-obscure general knowledge required to complete the puzzle.
Some of the definitions were a little loose, particularly at 29ac. but, all in all, I had fun completing this one. I may have had more fun had I spotted the theme, which is LIONS (see comment 4 below for an exhaustive list – thanks, Gaufrid.)
Thanks, Julius.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SACRED RELIC | Byzantine cleric’s dear treasure (6,5) |
| *(clerics dear) | ||
| 7 | THE | Article about Henry Lawrence (3) |
| T.E. (“Lawrence”) about H(enry) | ||
| 9 | EDWIN | Chap’s losing bet on 2015’s General Election . . . . (5) |
| Someone betting on a WIN on ED Milliband would have lost. | ||
| 10 | CAMCORDER | . . . . filmed by the winner using this? (9) |
| A CAMeron reCORDER may have filmed David Cameron winning the election referred to in 9 ac. | ||
| 11 | PARRICIDE | I gather Ms Hilton considered killing her father (9) |
| Homophone of PARIS EYED
Refers to Paris Hilton. |
||
| 12 | SPLIT | Leave Diocletian’s retirement home (5) |
| Double definition, the second referring to the Croatian port where Roman emperor Diocletian built a palace (which I visited six months ago). | ||
| 13 | SELL OUT | Shop to have nothing on the shelves (4,3) |
| Double definition | ||
| 15 | TOYS | Starts to throw out young son’s playthings (4) |
| Starts to “Throw Out Young Son” | ||
| 18 | LION | Beastly British rugby tourist trashed centre of European capital (4) |
| LI(sb)ON (“European capital” with centre trashed)
Refers to the British Lions, a selection of British rugby union players who tour every couple of years. |
||
| 20 | RUDDLED | Plastered with rouge, the home secretary went first (7) |
| (Amber) RUDD (“home secretary”) + LED (“went first”) | ||
| 23 | EMOTE | Show one’s feelings when reviewing electronic book (5) |
| <=E-TOME (“electronic book”, reviewed) | ||
| 24 | COCKHORSE | Rocker to prepare to shoot heroin (9) |
| COCK (“prepare to shoot”) + HORSE (“heroin”) | ||
| 26 | POMERANIA | Arian poem about Baltic region (9) |
| *(arian poem) | ||
| 27 | AWNED | Under canvas, daughter dropped off as day broke (5) |
| (d)AWNED (“as day broke”, with D(aughter) dropping off) | ||
| 28 | RED | Embarrassed friends every now and again (3) |
| Regular letters (every now and then) from “fRiEnDs” | ||
| 29 | BLOODSTREAM | Last bedroom to be renovated? It’s No. 28! (11) |
| *(last bedroom)
Not sure that “it’s red” is much of a definition. |
||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SHEEPISH | Dickens’ Heep is humble; somewhat timid . . . . (8) |
| Hidden in “dickenS HEEP IS Humble” | ||
| 2 | COWARDLY | . . . . shy, hiding awkward drawl, lacking courage (8) |
| COY (“shy”) hiding *(drawl) | ||
| 3 | ENNUI | Boredom leads to English neo- Nazi urging insurrection (5) |
| Leads to “English Neo Nazi Urging Insurrection” | ||
| 4 | RECEIPT | Confirmation of right to hold gun overturned (7) |
| Rt. (“right”) to hold <=PIECE (“gun”, overturned) | ||
| 5 | LAMBERT | German scientist left warning light on top of transponder (7) |
| L(eft) + AMBER (“warning light”) on T(ransponder)
Refers to Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-77), who was born in Alsace, which was actually an enclave of Switzerland at the time, although he did spend some time in Germany. |
||
| 6 | CROSS-EYED | Burden Julius had reportedly to bear, being optically challenged (5-4) |
| CROSS (“burden”) + homophone of I’D (“Julius had”, reportedly) | ||
| 7 | TIDDLY | A bit squiffy with 10cl on board, neat (6) |
| DL (decilitre, or “10cl”) on board TIDY (“neat”) | ||
| 8 | ERRATA | A sailor about to turn up in bloomers (6) |
| <=A TAR RE (“a sailor about” turned up) | ||
| 14 | OLIVE DRAB | Grey-green wild boar gobbles Old Nick up (5,4) |
| *(boar) gobbles <=DEVIL (“Old Nick”, up) | ||
| 16 | CLARENCE | Christian name for Irish county’s new church (8) |
| CLARE (“Irish country”) + N(ew) + C.E. (“church”) | ||
| 17 | ADDENDUM | A few more pages thrown in to madden Dumbledore (8) |
| Hidden in “mADDEN DUMbledore” | ||
| 19 | NO CAN DO | Surrounded by rebel cannon, Duke disobeys orders (2,3,2) |
| D(uke) surrounded by *(cannon) | ||
| 20 | RICHARD | Cliff right above entrance to idyllic Somerset town (7) |
| R(ight) above I(dyllc) CHARD (“Somerset town”) | ||
| 21 | KEEPER | Footballer least likely to be transferred? (6) |
| Cryptic definition | ||
| 22 | DOOMED | Condemned party’s revolutionary protest (6) |
| DO (“party”) + <=DEMO (revolutionary “protest”) | ||
| 25 | HEART | Courage, passion to overcome resistance (5) |
| HEAT to overcome R(esistance) | ||
*anagram
I assume Julius has made a gaffe at 19d. Needs two O’s and two N’s. Spotted CLARENCE the CROSS-EYED LION not that it helped any. Spent a while at 1a wondering how a relic could be scared then the penny dropped. Didn’t know PARRICIDE and didn’t parse LION. Thanks to S&B.
thanks loonapick for the blog, and thanks to Hovis.
I’m absolutely mortified about the error, which inexplicably has slipped through my checking process.
My apologies to everyone
Is there something going on with lions, or maybe even “the lions”?
muffyword @3
A good question! So far I have found:
Richard the Lionheart
Clarence the cross-eyed lion
The cowardly lion (Wizard of Oz)
Lambert the sheepish lion
The Red Lion (pub name)
Lion keeper
There could well be more.
Thanks to the commenters who noticed the theme. My eye was taken off the ball by an alternative possibility – RED, RUDDLED, BLOODSTREAM, and so the lions passed me by.
I will edit accordingly.
26ac is also partly thematic as there is a lion cut for Pomeranian dogs.
Thanks for the blog, loonapick.
Super puzzle! [Hard lines, Rob, re the error – I never even noticed and it certainly didn’t take anything away from it, as far as I was concerned.]
I was congratulating muffyword on spotting Clarence and since there were several proper names in the grid, I wondered if there were people associated with the film but, while I was doing my research, Gaufrid had gone off in a different direction, with great results – well done!
Theme aside, I thought 1ac was a beautifully constructed allusive clue and also really liked 29ac!
I smiled at the nod to the mondegreen ‘Gladly, the cross-eyed bear’ in 6dn.
Huge thanks to Julius for putting a smile on my face for the rest of the day.
Gaufrid @4,6. Well spotted. Didn’t know Lambert the sheepish lion or the Pomeranian lion cut. Thought there must be more of a theme than just Clarence, given Julius is a master of this imo, but still didn’t spot it. Like Eileen@7, I was thinking along similar lines.
Nice puzzle. I failed putting RIDDLED in without parsing. There’s a Rudd in Aus but hadnt heard of his UK equivalent.
I did not get the theme and had SOLD-OUT for 13a.
Having nothing better to do I did some Googling and found that one of Sir EDWIN Landseer’s LIONs is at the base of Nelson’s Column.
A lovely puzzle. Thank you.
Another theme I missed, but this was all fairly entertaining. SPLIT was last in because the Diocletian reference was lost on me. I would probably have missed the error had Julius not alerted me to it, but it’s nice to see the Guardian doesn’t have a monopoly on such things…
Thanks to Julius and loonapick
Thanks to Julius and loonapick. Lots of fun. The LION theme was beyond me but I got most of the solutions except for EDWIN which I guessed but did not parse. I had trouble deciding between RUDDLED and raddled (which works) until I googled Rudd-Radd.
19D is plainly wrong- at least with that explanation.
Really enjoyed this but missed the lovely theme, my usual failing. Thought I couldn’t parse 19, so pleased to see I got it right. Thank you, Rob.
Excellent fun. Thank you, Julius.
A late comment, I’m afraid. I came to this crossword on a tip-off and thoroughly enjoyed it. I wasn’t expecting a theme and, as is usual with me, I didn’t spot one. But I do like ghost themes, even if my time for appreciating them is too often after completion of the grid!
I particularly liked RUDDLED, COCKHORSE, RECEIPT and OLIVE DRAB. I got BLOODSTREAM readily enough and tut-tutted at the time at the lightweight definition, but now I think it’s a great clue. SAhame about NO CAN DO – it did hold me up, but I concluded that it must be just a slip-up.
Thank Julius and loonapick.
Thanks Julius and loonapick
Found this quite tough going and it spilt over into the second day – still failed to get the proper parsing of CAMCORDER and LION – and didn’t see the ghost theme. New learnings for me included where Diocletian retired to (and on him in general after reading a bit more about him), the incumbent Home Secretary (Amber RUDD), the whole RUDDLED word and the region of POMERANIA.
Was able to work my way around the wrong anagram fodder at 19d and really enjoyed the variety of the rest of the clues.
Finally finished with TIDDLY – couldn’t get why 10cl wasn’t 10 x c(100) = 1000 (or M)L until it finally dawned that 10cl = decalitre or a DL