Solving time: About 15 mins I think.
The eight answers clued by definition wordplay only (asterisked below) were all types of camera, which took me a long time to spot; I think a combination of DIGITAL and PINHOLE provided the breakthrough. I’d never heard of PLATE or BROWNIE cameras, while I found the wordplay to POLAROID the hardest.
Brummie’s clues tend to have more accurate wordplay than those of most Guardian setters, while retaining the slightly off-beat element which sets this newspaper’s crossword apart form the other broadsheets’. 11ac was my favourite clue today.
Sorry this is late, for the second week running – real life and lack of Internet access have intervened over the last week and a half. WordPress has an ‘autopost’ facility which allows blogs to be written in advance and scheduled for posting, so I’ll try to use that in future to avoid delays (although it wouldn’t have helped in this case).
Music of the day: would be ‘Somewhere In My Heart’ by Aztec Camera, but I haven’t managed to fix the sound on this prehistoric machine so no link I’m afraid.
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | CUP(I’D)S |
| 4 | M(RSM)OP – RSM = Regimental Sergeant Major. It didn’t occur to me that ‘Warrant Officer’ might be anything other than WO, which made this and 5dn rather tricky. |
| 9 | EMMA; rev. of [h]AMME[r] |
| 10 | GIRLFRIEND; (FIELDING + R + R)* – nice definition (‘Bird some say’). |
| 11 | CAVE A[r]T – excellent. |
| 12 | A VERSION |
| 13 | ETYMOLOGY; (GLOOMY YET)* |
| 15 | GENE – Gene Kelly of Singin’ In The Rain fame. |
| 16 | BACK (double definition) |
| * 17 | MINI + A + T + URE – the rock star is Ultravox’s Midge Ure, who co-wrote the original Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas?. |
| * 21 | PO(LA ROI)D – ‘le roi’ is French for ‘the king’, hence ‘the effeminate French ruler?’ = ‘la roi’. This was my last thematic entry. |
| * 22/25 / 5dn |
SINGLE + LEN’S + REFLEX – ‘reflex’ = ‘unconscious’ is fair but not easy. |
| 24 | UNHINDERED; (HUNDRED NI[n]E)* |
| 26 | ER + SAT + Z – Z as in Zzzzzz… |
| 27 | URANUS; rev. of (SUN + A + R.U.) |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| * 1 | COMP. + ACT – ‘comp’ short for ‘competition’. |
| * 2 | PLAT[h] + E – I was expecting a classical poet here; Sylvia Plath would never have occurred to me, especially as I’d never heard of a plate camera. |
| * 3 | DIG + I.T. (= ‘computing and stuff’) + A + L |
| 6 | MAINSHEET; MAINS (= ‘Electrical supply’) + E in (THE)* – a sheet can mean a rope in nautical terms. |
| * 7 | PIN + HOLE – clever! |
| 8 | ORGAN(GRINDER)S – with several letters in place this looked as though it had to contain an anagram of ‘in rags’, but no. |
| 14 | MO(C,C + AS + I)NS |
| * 16 | BROWN (= ‘PM’) + I + E (= ‘a quarter’) |
| 18 | INSIDER; “INN CIDER” |
| 19 | RULINGS (double definition) |
| 20 | HOLD IT – ‘Stop’ is the definition; a ‘gin & it’ is a gin and Italian vermouth, which explains the second part of the clue. |
| 23 | NYLON; N + (ONLY)* – here ‘short and’ gives ‘n’ as in ‘his ‘n’ hers’. |
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