* = anag, < = reversed, () = dropped
A slightly easier puzzle from Tees compared to some recent entries, although I have no idea who the person in 24 across was.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Tennis: (Sin + net)< |
| 5 | Pub Crawl: Cryptic def. |
| 9 | Cornelia: Cornea around li. |
| 10 | Oracle: (C)oracle. |
| 11 | Rocking Chair: Cryptic def. |
| 13 | Beef: Ref to Beef Wellington. |
| 14 | Glad Rags: Gags around lad + r. |
| 17 | Pastrami: Past + ram + i. Good surface definition based on “smoked”, which referred to the type of meat but appeared to mean cigarettes. |
| 18 | Troy: Try (rugby score) around o. |
| 20 | Sea of Galilee: (Feel as goalie)*. The anagram wasn’t difficult to spot, but it was good to see the apparent football theme kept going with the use of “nets” as the definition. |
| 23 | Potter: Double def. |
| 24 | Saunders: The wordplay is obviously SAS around under, but I have no idea who Saunders was. Tried to look it up in Wikipedia, but there were dozens of entries. |
| 25 | Werewolf: Took me a while to get the wordplay in this one, but I think it’s (few)< around (lower)<. |
| 26 | Exmoor: (Romeo)* around x. |
| Down | |
| 3 | Nonprofit: (on for pint)* |
| 4 | Select: Double def, but well-disguised to look like an anagram. |
| 6 | Brougham: (Mab)< around rough (long grass in golf). |
| 7 | Reach: R + each. |
| 8 | Wellington. W + ellington (Duke Ellington, a jazz player). |
| 12 | Sea Anemone: (Aeneas)* + mone(y) |
| 15 | Rotterdam: Rotter + dam. |
| 16 | Kangaroo: (Go + anorak)* |
| 19 | Claude: laud in CE (Claude was Debussy’s first name). |
| 21/5/2 | In the playing fields of Eton: (y + define fight Napoleon lost)* + &lit. |
| 22 | Argo: (C)argo |
24a – Jennifer SAUNDERS, as in “French and Saunders”.
I’d completely forgotten about her. I think the slight Napoleonic theme in some of the other clues convinced me it must be the name of someone who collaborated with the French.
You’re not alone, Neal. For some reason I couldn’t place the Saunders either and had to query it with Tees.
Cracking puzzle though – great start to the crosswording week.
“French collaborator” for Saunders is great – nice one.
I got the long phrase straight away which helped me a lot so like others I found it quite easy. Like others I did not understand Saunders at first – it was cleverly clued with the theme to sound like it might be a historical figure who collaborated with the French. So a nice PDM when light dawned.
One of these days I’ll crack a Tees puzzle – today wasn’t destined to be it. Completly ignoring the fact that ‘gig’ would be a dodgy anagram indicator at best (‘jig’????), and the fact that the number of letters per word was completely out, I was so taken by the fact that ‘or seat’ and ‘Led Zep’ is an anagram of ‘Redtop Sleaze’ that I confidently (!) put it in for 11ac (vaguely hoping for some obscure link to Red Riding Hood – Grandma?), and that really finished any chance of completing this one!
Jon, I like the way your mind works – I always thought there was something sleazy about grandma. She’s caught in the cupboard with a dangerous, charismatic male when Little Redtop Riding Hood turns up unexpectedly with her groceries, and it’s ‘Help, help, it’s the big bad wolf!’. Pull the other one Grandma, it plays ‘Stairway to Heaven’!
🙂