TIMES 25515 – Gardeners’ Answer Time

I was going along swimmingly until I was bitten, as so often before, by my bete noire, that little blighter at 19. Even those who get him right will be struggling with 20, I reckon, as it could so easily be something else, and only a gardener would know the difference. So, expect chuntering from the Square Mile…

We’re given a holiday in Hong Kong on 1 July so we can plan various ways to protest against the one-party rule we’re ultimately saddled with. That’s why this effort is a little late, and since I’m doing this from home without my normal blogging toolkit, there may be more than the usual number of glitches, errors etc.

ACROSS

1 CLOUDED - Neofelis nebulosa(the clouded leopard) is found in SE Asia, though for how long who knows?

5 COCK+PIT

9 OP+TOME+TRY

10 LET-UP

11 FLYING SAUCERS – we had one of these last week when UY was on duty; you need to anagrammatise ‘Scare us’ to get the answer.

13 L+ITERATE – L is represented by ‘opening piece in Latin, initially’

15 GANNET – NAG nag reversed + NET (overall)

17 SECEDE – DEC reversed in SEE; China wants to enact draconian legislation in HK (‘Article 23’) to stop just this. Or is to muzzle the press? A quarter of a million will be on the streets later today to give their opinion.

18 AIRED+ALE absolutely no comment – if I see one at the march today I will not be responsible for my actions

22 CROW(N)ING + GLORY

25 RODE+O

26 TOOK ISSUE
27 SCRATCH – dd; scratch is in Chambers as ‘cash, ready money’

28 MINI+MUM

DOWN

1 C(L)OT – the first of two answers with COT

2 OUT OF IT – a virtual write-in; it’s OUT (away) + O (round) before FIT (match)

3 DUMMY – sporting dd; one bridge (the ‘hand’ on the table), one rugby (when a player pretends to pass to another player but doesn’t)

4 D(ETON)ATE

5 CO(YES)T

6 CALCULATE – C (about) + ACULL* + ATE (worried) for the solution ‘think’

7 PATTER+N

8 TYPE+SETTER – COMP is an abbreviation used for ‘compositor’, a person who sets up type for printing; rarer than the clouded leopard, I reckon.

12 FLASH CARDS – FLASH (‘loud’ as in showy or vulgar in class-conscious Britain) + CARD’S (as in ‘Ooh, John’s a real card, isn’t he, duck?!’)

14 RIDING OUT – I (one) + DING (hit – perhaps ‘on the head’ in some dialects?) in ROUT for surviving as in ‘riding out the storm, crisis’ etc

16 RINGWORM – GROWN* in RIM – what I sincerely hope that Airedale has

18 CHOW+DER

20 ALYSSUM – not ‘Alyssem’; MUSSY reversed following A + L[ine]

21 SNATCH – S[on] + a truly horrible word corrupted from ‘naturally’ used by chavs

23 OR+I+ON

24 SEE+M