Solving time: 16 mins (23ac wrong and another possible mistake at 10/27ac)
Similarly to last week’s puzzle, this was very hard until I spotted the theme (a class of creatures like anteaters) and then it was fairly straightforward.
Some of this I found very strange, the first three across clues in particular, none of which I fully understand, and I also can’t explain 12ac or 18dn. There was a handful of good clues, such as 14ac, 16ac, 4dn, 22dn, all of which are simple and elegant, but I thought many were poor, especially with regard to their surface readings.
Music of the day was going to be At The Zoo by Simon and Garfunkel, but with England opening their World Cup campaign tonight it really has to be Three Lions, even though they aren’t technically edentate (which is more than can be said for Emile Heskey).
* = anagram, “X” = sounds like ‘X’.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | ODONTIC – am I missing something here? |
| 5 | ANTBEAR; ANT (?) + ‘BEAR [it]’ – does ‘one dentally challenged’ give ANT? The bit in brackets alludes to the phrase ‘bear it’ but as part of a cryptic clue makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. |
| 10/27 | EDENTATA? – ‘Paradise’ must be EDEN but I can’t see why ‘Lost’ should give TATA, which to my knowledge only means ‘goodbye’. Can you say something has ‘gone ta-ta’? An alternative (and what I actually entered here) might be ‘edentate’, but I can’t justify that either. Anyway, these creatures have no front teeth and seem to feed mostly on ants. |
| 11 | RE-ENTRANCE; rev. of NE’ER, + TRANCE (= ‘unconsciousness’) |
| 12 | SLEEVE – this is obviously ‘record protection’ in the sense of a musical record sleeve, but why ‘maybe for heart’? Perhaps it’s a reference to the phrase ‘wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve’ but that doesn’t really seem sufficient. |
| 13 | AARDVARK; A + ([h]ARVARD)* + K (= ‘£1000’) – not the easiest of words to clue, perhaps, but I think ‘Harvard’ might have been clued more explicitly given that it is an indirect anagram (i.e. a clue to a word to be anagrammed). |
| 14 | ARMADILLO; A + R + MAD + ILL + O – good wordplay. |
| 16 | ASIDE; (IDEAS)* – an ‘aside’ at the theatre being something intended to be heard by the audience but not the other characters. |
| 17 | SLOTH (2 defs) – one of the seven deadly sins. |
| 19 | IMPLODING; 1 MP, + DIN (= ‘sound’) in LOG (= ‘record’) |
| 23 | PANGOLIN; ANGOL[a] in PIN – my last entry, looking for a ‘number’ to fit ??N I guessed ‘ten’ and shoved in ‘tangolen’ which didn’t look very likely. Should probably have looked further, especially as I knew this word, but I regret I had long since bored of this puzzle. |
| 24 | NUANCE; [conti]NUANCE – obvious answer (‘Subtle point’ being the definition) and intractable wordplay, for me anyway, having never heard of Scottish actor Tom Conti. |
| 26,29 | ENDANGERED SPECIES; END (= ‘last’) + ANGER (= ‘sin’), + EDS (= ‘journalists’) around SPECIE (= ‘money’) – could someone explain how the word ‘specie’ might be used? This may or may not be intended as a thematic answer. |
| 28 | ORPHANS; rev. of PRO (= ‘in favour of’), + HANS – of course, not all Germans are called Hans; others are called Fritz and Otto, but all take better penalties than John, Frank and Peter. |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 2 | DIDDLER; RIDDLED with first and last letters exchanged |
| 3 | NON-C.E. – as in ‘nonce word’. |
| 4 | IS + R.A. + ELI |
| 6 | NOTARY; NO TRY around A – arguably ‘no try’ is only an adverse decision for 50% of the players, but that’s a nitpick. |
| 7 | BE ADVISED; BEAD + V + (SIDE)* |
| 8 | ASCARID; A + SID[e] around CAR – ‘sidecar’ needs to be split into two words for this clue to work. |
| 9 | LEGAL LUMINARY; LEG (= ‘part of course’) + ALL + (MAY RUIN)* |
| 15 | AUTOGRAPH; A + (TOUGH)* around RAP (= ‘responsibility’) |
| 18 | LEARNER – this is presumably something to do with ‘One making some money’ = EARNER and ‘plate’ = L, as in L-plate, but I can’t really make sense of it. Perhaps the cryptic reading is ‘L earner’ where ‘L’ refers to monetary pounds, but there’s more wrong with that than there’s room here to write. |
| 20 | LINED UP; LIP around (NUDE)* – ‘Speaker’ = LIP? Just about, I suppose. |
| 21 | NECK ( = ‘isthmus’) + TIE (= ‘link’) – another disjointed surface reading. |
| 22 | FLAG ON |
| 25 | AZTEC; TEC (= detective = ‘sleuth’) after A,Z (= ‘extremes’) |
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