A top-notch puzzle from a setter that, in my opinion, does not appear often enough in the Guardian.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | CREW,TUC(k)< – nicely misleading clue to start things off. |
| 5 | BUCOLIC – “bee you see oh ell I see”. Very cleverly done, making good use of the phrase “spelling bee”. |
| 10 | (NEEDLE CUT)* – the full definition is “quango is so” and the anagram indicator “badly”. Again this is good stuff because “so badly” is a natural phrase and you have to put a gap in it to parse the clue properly. |
| 11 | ON(l)Y,OUR,B,IKE – lots of bits to put together here and I think the surface reading of the clue is a little strained because of that. |
| 14 | MALE V(i)OLENCE |
| 21 | AL(b)UM – you could argue that it’s stretching things a bit to call the “soul” the middle of something but the definition and wordplay are quite straightforward so there’s little doubt that this is not the right answer. |
| 22 | ROBERT PEEL – excellent cryptic definition and misleading surface. Robert Peel helped to create the modern concept of a police force, or “old Bill”. |
| 25 | (A SLY)* in PARIS |
| 26 | ESSEX – “s” “x”. |
| 27 | odd letter in “DuEt SeEs ReViEw” – these alternate letter clues generally seem to be quite easy to spot because there probably aren’t many options for indicating alternation (you’ve also got specify odd or even) and also I think because it must be tricky to find a convincing combination of words that contains your alternate letters. |
| Down | |
| 2 | MY,NOPE< – the definition gives it away a little bit. |
| 5 | BREAK EVEN – didn’t understand this when I was solving and have only just worked it out. ELEVEN is EVEN broken by LE (“the Parisian”). |
| 6 | C(AS)HEW |
| 7 | ((d)ATING,TIL) – I filled in LITIGANT pretty much straight away with only a hazy idea of what the wordplay was doing. |
| 15 | (GELAT(i)NOUS)* |
| 17 | US,UR in (USSR)* – had to confirm this in the dictionary as it looked like an improbable combination of letters. UR is standard crossword fare. |
| 19 | SEESAW – Clever idea this. SEE and SAW are the present (now) and past (then) tenses of a word for “spot”. |
| 20 | XI in RILE (going up) |
| 23 | hidden in “keEP SO MAny” – I hate it when hidden clues hold me up for as long as this one did. |