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9. African imprisoned, denied special surrounding HUTU (sp.
taken from shut up) A
well-taken opportunity. The solver gets plenty of information about what to
remove from what and where..
11. Party to duck, held in the local? IN ON (0 in inn) Azed carefully
conceals the definition ‘party to’.
14. Rabbit? What one may be when brought before
HM? PETER (pet + ER) A
reference to Beatrix Potter’s Peter
Rabbit. The ‘when’ in the wordplay is a nice misdirection, making it look
as though there’s some causal connection between the parts of the solution.
18. Toxic substance that’s ruined dinner ENDRIN (anag.) Here’s
a clue that practically writes itself.
22. What’ll help you get a grip? As things are,
tea, among group of seven? SNOW CHAINS
(now cha in sins) A
lovely misleading surface that hangs together very well. The ‘group of seven’
is the Deadly Sins.
30. Mouldings in warehouse, front to back TORES (s to end
in store)
With T, O and E in place, Dr Watson spent some time looking for a
variation of DEPOT to no avail. ‘Tores’ here is the
plural of ‘tore’, which can be found in Chambers
under the entry for ‘torus’ but doesn’t appear to be cross-referenced.
31. One practising turns in front of the author
produces CV RESUMÉ (user, rev. + me) Azed might like to recheck
the sense of the cryptic reading, which really needs to have ‘turning’ or
‘producing’ to work grammatically. Not a clue for the resumé?
32. Mosque officer? Don’t give —— for ’is
supper! IMAM (i.e. don’t give (h)im (h)am) A rather cheeky clue, but it stays just about
on the right side of the PC boundary.
33. Ides possibly? Character ending life enters
underworld DIES
(anag., e in Dis, & lit.) This double wordplay & lit. is effectively two clues. ‘Ides possibly’ leads to ‘dies’,
the Latin for ‘day’. The second part is more semi-& lit., with ‘enters
underworld’ as the definition. Perhaps rather too rich a clue.
1. Tempo Bach varied when involving River Jordan CHAMBERPOT (R in anag.) Regular solvers will have come across this
meaning of ‘Jordan’ before. The anagram looks new, though..
3. Church reformer dominating north window LUTHERN
(Luther + N) An
interesting cryptic use of ‘dominating’ to mean ‘standing over’.
5. Classical country group – hempen
homespun? RUSSET (rus
set) ‘Rus’
is Latin for ‘country’, and can be found in the etymology of ‘rural’ in Chambers. Rus is also another name for
the region covering a large part of the Near East and known in classical times
as Ruthenia. Either
explanation works.
11. Façade of temple flanked by wings recently (but
no longer) ALATE
(t in alae) ‘Recently
(but no longer)’ cleverly disguises the definition as part of the wordplay.
24. Revolutionary group around active Red CADRE (ca. + anag.) Although
the wordplay is simple to resolve, you need to find it first, and work out
what’s required. That’s not so easy, as the each of the words could be used in
a number of different cryptic ways. CADRE was set by Ximenes
as the competition word for puzzle no. 179
back in 1951. X admonished competitors who defined the word indirectly through
its alternative meanings of ‘skeleton’ and ‘nucleus’.
Other solutions:
Across: 1. CHILD-CROWING (child + crowing); 10. RAUN (a in run); 13. AMYTAL (y, t in
a mal); 16.
MISHMASH; 29.
ENERGETICS (anag.); 25. PUTTIE (put tie); 29. MEDUSOID (anag.
less o in Med); 34.
OWER (initial letters);
35. MALAPERTNESS (anag. in mess).
Down: 2. HUMIC (c to end in
chum I); 4.
DRAMA (dram a); 6.
WIELD (I in weld); 7.
INTARSIA (I in anag.); 8. NOETIAN (anag.); 15. RINGSIDERS (ings in riders); 17. VESTURAL (u, r in vestal); 20. NEUROMA (euro
in anag.); 21. CAISSON (a is so for lea in clean); 23. WEENIE (wee + n
+ i.e.); 26.
THEMA (hem in ta); 27.
QUEST (hidden); 28.
LIMES (2 mngs.).