A slightly odd mixture of nice neat and pretty easy cluing with rather a few obscurer pieces of general knowledge meaning that there may have been the odd place where you could see what the answer should be but weren’t quite sure what it was (I’m thinking 19ac, 21ac, 22ac, 25ac, 2dn, 4dn, 6dn and 8dn in particular).
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | CHANCER – CHANCE + R |
| 5 | SOFA BED – DOES* around FAB |
| 9 | TIGER – TIER around G |
| 10 | ROGAN JOSH – JO in SARONG* + H |
| 11 | ASSAULT – A + “SALT” |
| 12 | ACRONYM – AM around CRONY |
| 13 | SHOOTING GALLERY -SHOOTING + GALLERY |
| 15 | OBSERVATION + POST – OBSERVATION + POST (as in a post in a picket fence) |
| 19 | LENTIGO – ONLEGIT*. A lentigo is a spot of brown skin pigment like a freckle. |
| 21 | ATELIER – IRATE* around EL. An atelier is an artists studio. |
| 22 | QUASIMODO – dd. Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) was so called because he was found on Quasimodo Sunday, or Low Sunday; the Sunday following Easter Sunday |
| 23 | LOOSE – LOOS + E(uston) |
| 24 | EMERGED – E(gypt) + MERGED |
| 25 | ERNESTO – TENSEOR*. Ernesto is Don Pasquale’s nephew in the lesser Donizetti opera Don Pasquale |
| Down | |
| 1 | CUTLASS – CUT + LASS |
| 2 | AUGUSTO – AUGUST + O. Augusto Pinochet was a Chilean dictator |
| 3 | CIRCUIT TRAINING – an ever-so-slightly cryptic definition. |
| 4 | RURITANIA – ITURNARIA*. Ruritania is a fictional country in The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequels written by Anthoy Hope, thus being a Land of Hope… |
| 5 | SIGMA – [AM + G.I.S]< |
| 6 | FUNERAL IN BERLIN – FUN + ALINER* + BERLIN. Funeral in Berlin is a novel by Len Deighton |
| 7 | BROWNIE – B + RE around [OWN + I] |
| 8 | DAHOMEY – HOME in DAY. Dahomey is the former name for The Republic of Benin |
| 14 | GO IT ALONE – GOAL around IT + ONE |
| 15 | OBLIQUE – dd |
| 16 | SANTA FE – ANT in SAFE |
| 17 | OMINOUS – O + MINUS around O |
| 18 | TORPEDO – TO-DO around [R + P.E.] |
| 20 | OVOID – O(bject) + VOID |
Common crossword abbreviations this week:
river = R
grand = G
hot = H
American = AM
the Spanish = EL (“the” in Spanish)
old = O
bishop = B
Italian = IT
nothing = O
oxygen = O
right = R
drill = P.E. (as in an army drill)
Thank you Arthur
Last in was ACRONYM – too easy perhaps. Didn’t understand BROWNIE.
Didn’t know LENTIGO. Had heard of ATELIER, but had to check on it – it sounds like a restaurant worker. “I’ll call the atelier sir”.
Knew RURITANIA, but had to look up ‘Hope’ connection.
I took a while to spell ROGAN JOSH properly.
Worked out ERNESTO as the only likely name. Can’t remember hearing Don P.
By the way your 12 has a typo.
Thanks Arthur,
An enjoyable puzzle with some good clues. I always put a tick against those worthy of mention and this one has three ticks. As above, the last one to go in was ACRONYM but if it was too easy why wasn’t it the first to go in ?. Anyway, I liked the structure of this clue and it had a superb surface. Similarly, OBSERVATION POST and BROWNIE (which I did understand) had me thinking for a while.
Thanks Everyman.
Thanks Arthur
Although for me most of the words you mention as obscure were no problem, my knowledge of Indian culinary terms is seriously deficient, and that includes those invented by the English 🙂
Thank you, Arthur. I remember enjoying this as usual, but also – like you – being struck by the comparatively high number of slightly obscure bits of general knowledge. All gettable, though: I was helped with DAHOMEY by the fact that we’ve had it in the Indy/Grauniad recently, and I knew ATELIER from the French.
QUASIMODO I got without understanding why, so thank you for the explanation that it has Pascal connotations and comes from the Latin quasi modo – ‘as if in this manner’. One of those bits of knowledge that for me comes into the ‘how can I have been on the planet for this length of time and not known that?’ category.
Ehm… 9ac: is there a reference I’m not getting here? TIER around G I get, but ‘Aslan animal’? Aslan is Turkish for lion, not tiger, isn’t it? (Hence the character in Narnia).
cc. Is that a joke? Aslan ASIAN??
FOREHEAD SLAP…. on my printout that looks most definitely like a lower case ‘L’. No wonder I’ve been puzzling over that all week.
Now I am off to have stern words with my printer.
Typo amended. Thanks, all, for the comments.