Solving time: 10 minutes, one mistake (7 dn).
This felt a cavalier solve, with numerous across clues to which I didn’t look closely at the wordplay while solving (e.g. 1, 11, 14, 18, 25/26). The down clues seemed more straightforward, especially in the lower half; almost as if the compiler wrote the clues in order and ran out of inspiration three quarters of the way through!
Beginners’ tips of the day: ‘political party’ = ANC, ‘investigator’ = EYE, ‘Lincoln’ = ABE.
* = anagram.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | SCREW (= No 10, possibly) + UP (in revolt) – this wordplay took me ages to fathom after finishing. A ‘number 10’ is a standard screw size; very tricky but I like it. Reminds me of the furore recently when an ITV phone-in quiz asked ‘Name items found in a women’s handbag’, to which one of the answers was ‘Rawlplugs’ (see here). |
| 4 | B(HANG)RA – spotting this got me going. |
| 9 | RA’S TA – Ra was the Egyptian sun-god. |
| 10 | UTTER + ANC + E – ANC is the African National Congress; less common than CON, LAB, LIB or even TORIES but still worth remembering (I didn’t, so this held me up). |
| 11 | BRACHIOPOD; O in (CHIPBOARD)* – another wordplay I didn’t get. ‘Buggy’ can mean ‘crazy’ in America, according to Chambers; having an adjectival (or even nounal) anagram indicator after the noun is something to watch out for in Guardian puzzles. |
| 12/21 | REED (rev. of DEER) + MACE – a tall herb also known as ‘cat’s-tail’. |
| 14 | RESUSCITATE; I[njured] T[humb] in (SECATEURS)* |
| 18 | PARTY (legalese for ‘person’) + POO(PE)R |
| 22 | ECUMENICAL; (CLUE)* around (CINEMA)* – even for The Guardian, the cryptic grammar in this clue does not work. |
| 25/28 | NEW STREET STATION; NEWS (= word) + TREE (= cherry, say) + T (first sign of ‘the’) + STATION (= (TV) channel) – for some reason I read ‘Cherry’ as ‘Cherie’ and started to write ‘New Labour’. Another baffling wordplay which overseas solvers might have found very difficult (‘Brummie’ = someone from Birmingham). |
| 26 | SAM + MY (= well) – Sammy Davis was an American entertainer; Sam Weller turns out to have been a character in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. I don’t know what ‘before’ is doing in the clue. |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | STROBE; [cour]T in (BORES)* |
| 2 | R(E’S)EAL – trying ‘rep’ for material held me up. |
| 3 | WEATHER (= brave) + EYE (= investigator) |
| 4 | PLUTO; PL[ace] + (OUT)* |
| 5 | BOTTOM + SUP |
| 6 | [ch]AIRS |
| 7 | G(UNMET)AL – should really have got this, even though I didn’t know the word. I thought ‘western girl’ was a bit over-specific for ‘gal’ so thought it might indicate ‘gun gal’, and knowing that ‘ne’ can be dialect for ‘not’ I entered ‘gunnegal’. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. |
| 8 | ABERDEEN; ABE (= Abraham) + R + (EDEN)* – ‘of’ as a link word: bleugh… |
| 13 | MICRONESIA; (CAMERON I[sle] IS)* – …and again. This is a curious clue, as Cameron Isle doesn’t exist but Cameron Island does (e.g. here in Vancouver and here in Nunavut), and this would have fit the wordplay equally well. I suppose the compiler used ‘isle’ to make the anagram more confusing (which it was, for me at least). |
| 15 | SPOT + CHECK |
| 16 | SPUMANTE; M in (PEANUTS)* |
| 24 | STOA[t] – a portico or covered colonnade in ancient Greece. |