It appears I’ve been caught out by the very passing of time, and that this Beelzebub is from two weeks ago, so apologies for that. I’ll try to get up to date in due course.
I don’t remember a great deal about solving this one, other than it seems to have been relatively smooth sailing, with 3 down and 17 down being the last two in and requiring some slightly cheaty dictionary searching.
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | CATERPILLARS – C + (ILL in (TRAPS ARE)*). |
| 10 | NEUCHATEL – HATE in UNCLE*. |
| 11 | TIRE – two definitions, dictionary confirms: make weary/a volley or broadside. |
| 12 | DRAMA – DRAM + A. |
| 13 | STORYBOOK – (OR + BY<) in STOOK. Here, “shock” and “stook” both refer to “a propped up group of sheaves”, so now I have two words to choose from next time that comes up in conversation. |
| 14 | ACINUS – [estell]A + C + [m]INUS. |
| 15 | LIANG – L + GAIN*. A Chinese ounce. |
| 16 | ROUNDEL – R + O + UNDÉ + L. For example the famous London Underground logo. |
| 21 | CLERISY – (Y + SIRE + L + C. |
| 23 | ATLAS – two definitions: a column in a building shaped like a bloke/a collection of maps. |
| 24 | ALERCE – [de]ALER CE[rtified]. |
| 25 | INCAPABLE – INCA + (B in PALE). |
| 27 | SNIDE – N in SIDE. |
| 28 | PONS – [transactio]N in POS. Those years of working in Victoria Wine in Edinburgh continue to pay off when solving. |
| 29 | AUTOPISTA – ST in A UTOPIA. |
| 30 | SEAMUS HEANEY – (A + MUSH) in (SEE + A) + YEN<. |
| Down | |
| 1 | COTTAR – OTT in CAR. |
| 2 | TERTIUS – (SUIT + RET)<. |
| 3 | RECRUDESCE – REC[k] + SECURED*. “Reck” meaning care was new to me. |
| 4 | PULY – P + [d]ULY. |
| 5 | ICEBALL – I + (BA in CELL). Apparently similar to basketball, but played on ice. Which must get interesting. |
| 6 | LAROID – (0 + I) in LARD. |
| 7 | REMINISCENT – (Tracy EMIN + IS + C) in RENT. |
| 8 | SLANGY – NG in SLAY. |
| 9 | DISCONTINUE – DISC + (UNIT< in ONE). |
| 12 | DOLCELATTE – [s]O-CALLED* + TT + E. |
| 17 | ECTASIS – (TAS[k] in ICE<) + S. |
| 18 | SIRLOIN – (R in SILO) + IN. |
| 19 | KANSAS – KAN[t] + SAS. |
| 20 | RANDOM – (N + DO) in RAM. |
| 22 | YEASTY – YEA + STY. |
| 26 | POSH – PO + SH. |
No need for apologies Simon, it is us who owe you, not the other way around.
Never worked in Victoria Wine, so needed you for 28. 🙂
And I’ve never felt guilty about dictionary searching. If the wordplay elicits something you have never heard of, surely it is OK to ask the dictionary ‘is there such a word as….?’. (Similarly, whenever there is a pop music theme – elsewhere of course – I often ask my Significant Other ‘is there a song called…..?’
Beelzebub continues to be the high spot of my week, so respect where it is due.
I, too, remember little about this except that as I was out on the Sunday evening I probably didn’t finish it till Monday. And I usually annotate clues I couldn’t parse with little question marks and as there are none on this I assume I was able to parse everything.
There are dictionary searches and there are dictionary searches. Yes, I do sometimes guess an answer and look it up to see if it exists. But sometimes I find a word there in the dictionary which wasn’t the word I guessed but is the right answer. And sometimes I go through the dictionary looking for possible answers based on the letters I’ve got. It’s a short step from there to doing an e-search, which does seem like cheating to me, but if there are a couple of letters left to get in the grid I’ll resort to it just for closure.
Thanks, gents. It is indeed the use of searches based on wildcards (the Chambers app has the feature, in fact) which feels a bit naughty, and I try to avoid it until it becomes the only way I can get a blog post out.