I tackled this, waiting with unusually disgusting instant coffee, while M. Grimaud put my car through 104 tests for the Controle Technique; At first I thought this was going to be 'setter's revenge' and my first DNF-blog but things soon improved. I finished in an extravagant 35 minutes, just as he completed his tests. Parsing a couple didn't fall into place until I returned to write the blog; apologies for the slightly late appearance.
| Across | |
| 1 | TENSE - I assume this is a double definition (d.d.), 'tensed up' being one sense; please enlighten me if there's more to it. |
| 4 | AGAMEMNON - ANON = soon, around GAME, M, for the Greek chap who came after Paris's Dad. |
| 9 | IN THE SOUP - (HE IS PUT ON)*. |
| 10 | LOWER - Cows and oxen 'low' so an ox is a lower, which also has much the same meaning as glower, to look menacing. |
| 11 | LOLITA - LA (smoggy city) around (TOIL)*. I looked up Lolita Haze on Wiki and discovered Dolores Haze was the full name of 12-year-old Lolita in Nabokov's novel; Lolita Haze is also the name of an 'adult' actress. I haven't read the book, or seen her movies, yet. |
| 12 | ANTIGONE - Remove L from LANE, put around TIGON (cat), AN(TIGON)E, name of Greek Tragedy plays by Sophocles and Euripides. |
| 14 | GRAND TOTAL - Cryptic def. My easy starting point. |
| 16 | SKUA - AUKS backwards. Species of seabirds. |
| 19 | TITO - TRITON (sea god) has R and N removed. Josip Broz Tito ran Yugoslavia for 27 years or so. |
| 20 | STREET ARAB - S (TREE) TAR AB, south, two sailors, round a bay tree, def. 'stray'. Intricate, and great misdirection. |
| 22 | SERENADE - SEREN(A D)E, def. 'piece'. |
| 23 | CARPET - CARP (find faults with) ET (the film, again), def. 'lecture'. |
| 26 | NAOMI - I MOAN reversed. |
| 27 | INCOGNITO - (NOTICING)* plus O (surprised cry). The setters for these puzzles are indeed incognito. Nice clue, I thought. |
| 28 | ANNULMENT - ANN (girl) followed by U (posh) LT (officer) insert MEN (soldiers). I thought countermand was a verb and annulment a noun, but someone with a big dictionary will doubltless prove me wrong. |
| 29 | TAMES - THAMES, with H (husband) removed, def. 'calms'. |
| Down | |
| 1 | TAIL LIGHT - TAIL = dog, follow; LIGHT = happy, sort of, def. 'something on vehicle'. Mine have just been checked. |
| 2 | NATAL - FATAL (deadly), replace the F with N, old bit of South Africa. |
| 3 | EVENTIDE - EVEN (matching), TIDE (trend), def. 'later period'. |
| 4 | ATOM - A (alpha) TOM (male cat), def. 'scrap'. Personally defining an atom as a scrap offends my scientific mindset, but it's doubtless fine with the literary crowd. |
| 5 | APPENDAGES - A PP (very quiet) END (death) AGES (a long time), def. 'things going on'. |
| 6 | ECLAIR - EC (city, as in 'of London'), LAIR (den), def. 'something sweet'. |
| 7 | NEW YORKER - NEW (fresh) YORKER (kind of delivery in cricket), resident of Brooklyn. |
| 8 | NERVE - Cryptic d.d. Nerves convey senses, nerve as in courage, bottle. |
| 13 | DOTTED LINE - It was obvious and amusing once I saw it, but I had to go through the many alphabetic possibilities of *O*T** *I*E for quite a while first. |
| 15 | AFTERNOON - AFTER (seeking) N N (news) around O O (old love). Once you've stopped thinking about Attlee and other old PMs, you realise it's the other sort of PM. |
| 17 | ALBATROSS - ALBA (Gaelic for Scotland), followed by S SORT (family) reversed, def. 'baggage', as a handicap. Reference to the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. |
| 18 | STRAIGHT - (RIG THAT'S)*, def. 'reliable'. |
| 21 | ONEILL - ONE ILL. Eugene O'Neill, American dramatist who was, ironically, ill for much of his life. |
| 22 | SENNA - ANNE'S reversed. Ayrton Senna, F1 champion tragically killed in 1994 aged only 34. |
| 24 | PRIAM - PRAM (transport used by mum), insert I, for the chap who was Paris's Dad. |
| 25 | SCUT - S, CUT (division), def. 'game's end', as in a rabbit's tail. |