I struggled to get going with this, only solving one of the Across clues on my first pass. A few nice, long cryptic definitions eventually got the ball rolling and everything else then fell into place. Good stuff as usual, though the wordplay in one clue (22A) has me stumped, which is a rarity for Phi I must say!
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 7 | ANNEX – ANNE[-x] |
| 8/10 | PEDESTRIAN CROSSING – CD. Needed a few checking letters before I got the first half of this |
| 11 | HEAVEN – H,A in EVEN |
| 14 | TEAR DUCT – (A CRUDE)* in TT – “A source of salt water” is a neat definition here |
| 15 | CAPITAL ASSETS – CAPITAL,SET in ASS |
| 18 | CLERICAL – ERIC in (CALL)* |
| 20 | IMPOST – IM,POST |
| 22 | PAELLA – As above, am stumped by this one. Any help appreciated |
| 24,25 | COMPUTER SCIENTISTS – Another CD. Even with ???E?T?S?S, this took a while for me to get |
| 26 | KELP – [-la]KE,L,P |
| Down | |
| 1 | UNCRITICAL – CR in UNIT,I CAL[-l] |
| 3 | OPTIMIST – IT rev. in (IMPOST)* |
| 5 | ORGANDIE – ORGAN,DIE – A new word for me. It’s like muslin apparently |
| 9 | DIGITAL CLOCKS – CD number 3 |
| 14 | CASUS BELLI – C(“initially captured”),AS,US,BELL,I – I think I first came across this phrase in a Listener or Azed puzzle. An odd one if you’re not familiar with random Latin, but this is as good a clue as I’ve seen for it |
| 16 | PARALLEL – PAR ALL,EL – Clue of the day! (“Hole out consistently – and for Olazabal the equivalent?”) |
| 19 | CRAFTY – CRAFT,Y |
| 21 | PLUCKY – P,LUCKY |
| 23 | ARCH – [-p]ARCH |
22ac: could it be PA[t]ELLA [kneecap] without ‘hat ultimately’?
Ah, yes, that makes sense. Cheers
I found this harder than usual from Phi – esp SW corner. Thanks for explaining PARALLEL and PAELLA which I did get right but did not understand.
I got all bar 25ac, which was the most unsatisfactory kind of CD – I guessed immediately what it meant, and got COMPUTER, but couldn’t see the second word. Wot no wordplay?
I wouldn’t count 8/10 as a CD. It is a definition by example, “Zebra, say”, followed by word play PEDESTRIAN + CROSSING.