Reasonably easy Monday morning fare. At a rough count, one third cryptic definitions, generally pretty straightforward but several pithy and apposite enough to be quite satisfying even if they don’t take a lot of thought to crack. In fact those account for the better clues. The title is my alternative clue for 22ac.
ACROSS:
1. BULLDOG. As in a bulldog clip – well, it had to be a kind of dog, didn’t it?
5. AGATES. A, STAGE*. Gems might be used in a setting.
10. CO, PIER.
12. YANKEE DOODLE. Nice clue with misleading surface.
19. DOE. I.e. a female rabbit.
22. GUARDIAN’S HIP. Good surface, very economical.
29. RANK LED.
DOWN:
1. B(O)AT.
2. LORD – hom. of LAUD.
3. DISTANCE. You keep your distance when being reserved.
4. GREEK. Read ‘tongue’ as ‘language’ and it makes perfect sense. I suppose it could have been Albanian, but not with 5 letters.
6. GOOGOL. very large number, which I’ve always assumed inspired the founders of Google.
7. THIRD PARTY. A good cryptic def.
13. HURDY-GURDY. This one I felt could have benefited from a further indication.
14. VEGETARIAN. V ARE EATING*. Not too keen on this one. It’s not +lit, so the definition is ‘eating fresh vegetables and fruit only’, which relies on using part of the anagram fodder and is not accurate anyway. ‘Eating vegetables only’ might work as a loose definition, but what’s with the fruit? Isn’t that a fruitarian? (See below for clarification)
18. IGNITION. Pretty clear, but a nice idea.
24. TELL. I was thinking William Tell must have been a count, but now I see the two definitions are ‘Heroic Swiss’ and ‘count’ as a verb.
14 dn.: Definition of Vegetarian came from Collins: “Strictly, consisting of vegetables and fruit only”. “Eating” is, as you say, part of the anagram.
I stand corrected, though I’m not that keen on Collins’s definition personally. As to the second point, I was thinking of the word as describing a person, but of course as a description of food it doesn’t require the word ‘eating’, so fair enough!
Can someone please explain hurdy-gurdy – I got it only because nothing else could possibly fit, but according to Chambers its just a barrel-organ
I think it’s because hurdy-gurdies were traditionally played by beggars and their ilk in the road, i.e. in the gutter.
And you grind an organ – hence ‘ground’.