I have mixed feelings about Spoonerisms puzzles — they can be fun, but they can also score pretty highly on the cringe-inducing scale. They can also depend on one’s accent (see 27d, which took me some time to get because I don’t pronounce my a’s like that).
The best method seems to be to spot the really obvious ones first, and take it from there. There are a few which I haven’t completely worked out, which wouldn’t bother me too much if I weren’t blogging it. As usual, I will feel stupid when someone tells me the answer.
My fave this week: 23a, mainly because ‘cardy’ is somehow funny in its own right (in a Victoria Wood kind of way, like ‘gusset’). And I have vague memories of a great-aunt serving lardy-cake.
| Across | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CATCHPIT | “patch kit” — repair clothes | CAT = ‘smart dresser’; CHIT holding P (head of pin). |
| 7 | URSA | “share bee” = “she bear” | Hidden in neighbour’s apiary. |
| 10 | OKAY | “isle-wrought” = “all right” | Tokay, a wine, without its opening. The ‘temperature’ here improves the surface reading, and it is also wordplay for T; but it seems to be, strictly speaking, redundant. |
| 11 | ARGONAUT | “organ art” — skill at the keyboard | ARNAUT, ‘an Albanian, formerly applied esp one in the Turkish army’; about GO, to turn out. |
| 12 | DEBILE | “bead aisle” — old prayer; division in church | *(be led) around I. |
| 13 | CLIMBS | “hoes Gaia” = “goes higher” | C = college; LIMB = branch; S = spades. One of those clues where the words were there entirely to create the Spoonerism. |
| 15 | SNED | “Hithe sand’ll” = “scythe handle” | ‘dense’ reversed, without E (end of nuisance). A sned (Chambers primary entry ‘snath’) is the curved handle or shaft of a scythe. |
| 17 | HAIR-WAVER | “wear haver” — waste; oats (‘haver’ is ‘(Scot and N Eng) oats’) (but, given that it’s the basis of ‘haversack’, is it pronounced ‘hay-ver’, as it would have to be here?) | I *(raw); fed to (inside) AVER, ‘possessions; cattle; a draught animal, esp an old or worthless cart-horse’. |
| 19 | AUDIBLES | “Paul’s clan” = “calls plan” | SEA = ‘the main’, reversed; including *(bluid). ‘Audible’ can be used as a verb in the context of American football, meaning ‘to call an audible (a tactic or game plan)’. |
| 22 | GEMSTONE | “stem Joan” — stop martyr | GONE = ‘dead’; about ‘ME’ reversed; ST = ‘saint’. Deceptive word breaks here. |
| 23 | LARDY-CAKE | “cardy lake” — knitted jacket, reddish (lake is a reddish pigment) | LADY = ‘mistress’; around R = ‘king’; CAKE = ‘a madcap or fool (archaic slang)’. |
| 28 | PEON | “goalie loafer” = “lowly gofer” | O = ‘ball’; in PEN = I’m sure I worked out how this could be ‘net perhaps’, but right now I can’t remember; doubtless someone will enlighten me. A peon is ‘a day-labourer or farm worker, esp formerly in Spanish-speaking America’. |
| 29 | PILE UP | “[???] pup” — Press arrogant youngster (someone please tell me what sounds like ‘isle/I’ll/aisle’ and means ‘press’!) | PIP = to kill (Chambers entry no. 3); accepting LEU = the standard monetary unit of Romania and Moldova (100 bani). |
| 30 | TANTRA | “Rowley hit” = “holy writ” | Hidden in ‘Cretan tragedy’. A body of beliefs. A clue where the extra words don’t much contribute to the surface reading. |
| 31 | SKILL SET | “Sell skit” — market satirical sketch | KILLS = ‘is greatly amusing’; in SET = ‘group’. |
| 32 | ATOM | “Spiny ’tec” = “tiny speck” | anATOMy, minus ‘any’. |
| 33 | TEXT | “German’s cist” = “sermon’s gist” | TT = ‘dry’ (teetotal); EX = ‘except’, inside. A text can be ‘a short passage from the Bible taken as the ostensible subject of a sermon’. |
| 34 | PURSLANE | “slur pain” — Disparagement hurt | L AN in PURSE. Purslane is a herb/salad veg which I have grown. |
| Down | |||
| 1 | CODSWALLOP | “[???] scallop” — ranker slice of meat (I can’t find anything that sounds like “wod” to mean ‘ranker’ (a person who serves or has served as a private soldier; an officer who has risen from the ranks.) | ALL in SWOP after COD. |
| 2 | AKENE | “[???] fruit” — type from fried root (Another one I can’t work out. An akene, or ‘achene’ is a dry, indehiscent, one-seeded fruit, formed of one carpel, the seed separate from the fruit wall, as in the buttercup.) | weAKENEd — ‘became less strong’ with ‘we’d’ removed. |
| 3 | TABERDAR | “dabber tar” — ink pad, black stuff | TA = Territorial Army (sometimes called ‘Terriers’); *(barred). |
| 4 | HALFA | “force Khyber” = “coarse fibre” | HALF = part; A = accepted. Halfa is North African esparto grass. |
| 5 | PREDILECT | “dee prelect” — damn discourse | RED = rubbish (also spelt ‘redd’); in PILE = heap, before CT = court. |
| 6 | TOLA | ”lota” — brass pot | ‘A lot’ reversed. A tola is an Indian unit of weight equivalent to 180 grains troy (11.66 grammes). |
| 7 | UNIPART | “bar kits” = “car bits” | *(Puritan). Not being part of the car culture, I was only marginally aware of Unipart, but TEA knows about it. |
| 8 | RAMI | “Tranches of Brie” = “branches of tree” | Rami is the plural of ‘ramus’, a branch. It is also an alternative spelling of ramie, a plant (Boehmeria nivea) of the nettle family, cultivated in China for its fibre. |
| 9 | SUBTEEN | “tub seen” — boat spotted | *(tubes); almost ‘end’. |
| 16 | STREET NAME | “straight neem” — upright Indian tree | RE ETNA = ‘on volcano’; *(stem) round. |
| 16 | CREMASTER | “mick raster” — (offensively) Catholic screen lines | C = about; RE-MASTER = make fresh original copy. |
| 18 | VIOLETTA | I can’t work this one out — it should be “leo vetter”, or thereabouts. | I O LET = ‘I love licence’ (shouldn’t this be ‘license’? Chambers doesn’t give ‘let’ as a noun meaning ‘permit’); in *(a TV). |
| 20 | UNALIKE | To be clued. | The one for competitors. |
| 21 | INDWELT | “end wilt” — stop plant disease | IN = fashionable; D = Dutch; WELT = ‘a band, strip or ribbed border fastened to an edge to give strength’. |
| 24 | KEATS | “I vend purses” = “I penned verses” | Hidden in ‘broke at stitching’. |
| 25 | BORON | “raw bonne“ = inexperienced French maid | BORN embracing O. |
| 26 | FLIX | “Bown on divas” (ref: photographer Jane Bown) = “down on beavers” (best not to Google this one!) | Sounds like ‘flicks’. |
| 27 | GULP | “Darn Faust” = “down fast”. This requires you to have a Southern accent — the Spoonerism, as far as I’m concerned, is “Dan Faust”. I was similarly miffed in a previous puzzle, when Azed presumed that we’d refer to a female relative as an “aren’t” rather than an “ant”. | ‘plug’ reversed (‘stopper coming up’). |
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