Nice and easy start to the week, with quite a few hidden or similar clues.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | DUTCH COURAGE | I didn’t know the various meanings of Dutch wife, but still got this easily enough. |
| 8 | WARRANT | W[ife] and ARRANT=complete |
| 9 | SANDALS | The (land)* is in the SAS, hence “on the contrary” |
| 11 | FEASTER | F for following (page, e.g. in research papers), EASTER |
| 12 | SOLDIER | I=unit inside SOLDER=join |
| 16 | ADDRESSES | AD DRESSES |
| 21 | ILLNESS | STILLNESS losing the holy man=ST |
| 23 | ILLEGAL | ILLNESS minus NESS – (executed i.e. off with its head=NESS? or am I stretching it) by SENEGAL minus SEN[ator] |
| 24 | SWISHED | S[outh] WISHED |
| 25 | NATALIE | [ru]N A TALE around I |
| 26 | THE MOUSETRAP | |
| Down | ||
| 1 | DORMANT | DOORMAN minus O=no, T[ime] |
| 2 | TRAITOR ? | Pretty sure it’s not TOASTER or TRACTOR, but can’t quite make the wordplay work. tory regularly could give ToRy, and top conservative leaders maybe TOR[ies], but then I’m stuck for an AI. |
| 3 | HAT TRICKS | Busby being both a hat and a football player/manager. |
| 4 | OASIS | Ignoring the odds, nOmAd SwImS. |
| 5 | RONALDO | rev(OR = ordinary ranks = men) (an old)*. take your pick as to the footballer. |
| 6 | GRANITE | GRAN ITE[m] |
| 7 | TWO FAT LADIES | (flaws to date I)* |
| 10 | STREETWALKER | =SOLICITOR, someone who solicits. WALKER STREET switched around. |
| 15 | NESCIENCE | (incense)* CE |
| 17 | DOLTISH | (stolid)* H[usband] |
| 19 | ALL STAR | |
| 20 | LEG SLIP | LEGS LIP |
| 22 | SADHU | SAD H[ind]U. A Hindu ascetic. |
2d – AI = A1 = top, I think, but the repetition of ‘Tory’ seems a bit clumsy. Any better ideas?
As well as the meanings of Dutch wife you’ve found there, ‘dutch’ on its own is Cockney slang for wife, as in ‘my old Dutch’. I always understood it was short for duchess, and indeed Chambers offers it as poss rhyming slang from ‘Duchess of Fife’. Anyway, I think that’s what the clue refers to. Bit of a husband and wife mini-theme going on here?
I had TRAITOR as ToRy + A1, but then it would have to be TORies, which does seem a bit odd.
I agree 2dn is a bit clumsy – I read it as ToRy + A1 + TORy
25ac – I’m surprised this got through: treating “about me” as the same as “about I”. Tut tut.
I had the same interpretation for 2dn and the same as you, Manehi, for 23ac. – very neat, I thought: ‘ness’ crops up often but I haven’t seen it used this way before. I also liked 13ac and 7 down but have to agree with Andrew about 25ac!
3dn was clued as being a 9-letter word in the paper.
“3dn was clued as being a 9-letter word in the paper.”
It was online as well. Chambers and Collins show the singular as two words (3,5) but COED has them hyphenated so the singular could have been correctly clued as (8) since hyphens are now generally ignored when determining the word length.
Quite a few of these clues seemed a bit “clunky” to me (eg 13A, 1d and comments on 2d) though the answer often was clear from the inserted letters. 18d, which you’ve not quoted, had a poor indicator for the run together words. Repressed in the sense of kept under control, I suppose. Been better if the geography matched the surface, too.
I was slightly disappointed by 18d a well, but mostly because it didn’t have the definition at either the beginning or end of the clue, while being neither an &lit nor a compound anagram…