Independent 6708/Dac

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Dac was described last week as a “class act” by a fellow blogger – I couldn’t agree more.

Across
1 HAS,TEN – I briefly considered N for “mid-morning”.
10 IRAQI – I think the spirit is “raki”.
11 LO,(A GENT)*,ON – I knew it was a place but wasn’t sure that it was in Derbyshire – not much doubt with the wordplay though.
13 E,A in SEMIS< – I had S?A???? so SIAMESE went in without too much thought. Looking at it now, it’s quite a tricky clue to parse, with “offering accomodation” serving as a containment indicator.
14 IN,DUB[-a]I,TABLE – This was also a tricky one to parse, mainly, I think, because the clue reads so smoothly that it’s hard to see the joins.
18 (A NUT TRE[-e])*,RAIL – I filled in NATURE TRAIL when I had most of the checking letters in place because I couldn’t see what else would fit but the wordplay went completely over my head. Working out now, I accounted for everything except RAIL, which turns out to be a type of bird.
22 GETS in GEN (reversed)
26 O,NAN in REST
 
Down
1 HAIR,GRIP – the last one in for me. In TV, a GRIP is someone who manouevres the camera.
5 (STRONG BEER)*,NINE – I think I would have struggled with this one for a while had I not immediately thought of NINE for “one over the eight”.
6 AVER,P (going up),LENT – “forty day period” made this very easy, for me at least.
8 CANNED – yet another synonym for “drunk” apparently, although I don’t think I’ve heard it before.
16 FILE (going up) in F,ACT
17 PLUG,L in (GUY)* – this is a great clue: “Tough guy shaking, clutching top of leg after getting shot”. Some lifting and separating needed on “tough guy” – the first word is the definition, and the second starts the wordplay.
19 DANCER – a ref to Wayne Sleep.
20 [-h]ALTERS

11 comments on “Independent 6708/Dac”

  1. 24. Nothing was said about 24, my only doubtful entry. I have cream corn, but can’t see the wordplay. Please explain.

  2. 24a I put CREAM HORN (“pastry concoction”), which is RE (“about”),(HAM)* in CORN. The Reveal feature in the online version confirms the answer.

  3. In 11A I presume ON is indicated by “in the vicinity of”. Is this just because if something is on top of something it will be in the same vicinity or is there a more definitive link between ON and “in the vicinity of”? Not knowing the town I initially assumed that “in the vicinity of” would indicate BY and had considered pencilling in LONG TEABY.

  4. I wondered about ON too but Chambers Online dictionary has “very near to or along the side of something” for the fourth meaning of it and gives the example: “a house on the shore”. So, “in the vicinity of” seems fair to me.

  5. Fair enough. BTW I forgot to say that I thought this was a really good puzzle with, as ever, brilliant surfaces and (as you mentioned) extremely well concealed breaks between wordplay and definitions.

  6. Some very good clue here as always from Dac, and it’s always nice when I can attribute some random knowledge to the hundreds of hours of my life I’ve spent watching The Simpsons. I’d never heard of Ernest Borgnine until I saw him in the Boy Scouts episode!

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