It’s 4am and yesterday’s Guardian hasn’t been blogged yet, so as I have ‘flu and can’t sleep I thought I’d fill the breach. Please excuse any mistakes.
Easier than usual for Paul, I think – I had most of this done in about 8 mins, then slowed down on 10/26ac, 1dn and 8ac. Gave up after 15 mins or so with 8ac blank. Or maybe it wasn’t easier, and I was just cavalier – looking through the clues I realise that there were loads that I wrote in without understanding fully, or even mostly.
* = anagram.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 8 | MAGAZINE – double definition. I don’t know why I couldn’t get this. That said, while I might begrudgingly accept that you ‘store’ ammunition in magazines, the title of the magazine is not OK but OK! so I claim a foul on this clue. |
| 9 | ORPHAN; “OFTEN” as the Queen might pronounce it. See here for a more detailed analysis. |
| 10/26 | WIFE SWAPPING; F in (WISE)* + WAPPING – a clever definition (“Liberal Party agenda?”). Rupert Murdoch’s News International is based at Wapping in London; the move from Fleet Street led to the Wapping dispute. |
| 12/14 | TOILET TRAINING; (I LET (= obstacle)) inside TOT (= baby) + RAINING (= wetting things) – this &lit doesn’t work for me as toilet training isn’t an obstacle to stopping a baby wetting things. |
| 15 | DE(I)CIDE |
| 17/7 | NIGELLA LAWSON; (rev. of IN) + GEL (= set) + LA LAW‘S + ON ( = showing) |
| 20 | THANK YOU; HANKY inside (OUT)* |
| 23/24 | HOLIER-THAN-THOU – a definition (‘Sanctimonious’) and half a cryptic definition (a pun on ‘holier’). I don’t understand the bit about ‘claim of crusader’; maybe the first definition is meant to be read as ‘Sanctimonious claim of crusader’? |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | CAM + I + SOLE – for some reason I had a blank on three-letter rivers and couldn’t remember the word, though I knew it when ‘CAM’ occurred to me. |
| 3 | hidden in ‘masterminD I’M WIThdrawing’ – Mastermind is a classic British TV show. |
| 4 | S(EVEN)TY – ‘quits’ = EVEN came quickly so I wrote this in straight away. Napoleon was one of the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. |
| 5 | (Helmut) KOHL + rev. of BAR + I – I didn’t know the vegetable kohlrabi so this was an unconfident guess, but BAR was the best I could think of for ‘stick’ = ?A?. |
| 6 | A + P + PO + IN (= current) + TEES |
| 13 | LICENTIOUS; LICE + (IN TO)* + US |
| 16 | DAYBREAK; (BY A DARK [tim]E)* |
| 22 | SUNDAE; “SUNDAY” |
| 24/2 | TYPE + FACE (= features) |
I see what you mean about toilet training — though as a young parent it certainly felt like hard work (the training part I mean).
In 5A: pedantically speaking shouldn’t it have been former or ex-Chancellor or are German Chancellors like American Persident: referred to as Mr. President until the grave?
Thanks for stepping into the breach – I intended to do the write-up after my lunchbreak, but it kind of didn’t finish till 2am…