The rest is annoyingly elusive! Just when I think I'm getting better, I get dropped back to Newbietown. I'm stopping for tonight. I've solved 13 clues and put in and erased about five. No matter how much I was 15A to be BANANA REPUBLIC it'll never work. Too many letters. Square pegs, round holes. Ego in the mix never solves a thing.
I'll get the paper in the morning and solve along with the key. I can zone in on a single clue and not see everything in the answers. No really! I can!! Here's a pic of what I've got so far, and don't click the picture if you don't want answers, yet. I'm not going to spoil anyone's "process" here. Not much.
Look forward to lots of red pen tomorrow. And don't think I've not tried to weasel in red pen for 19A! I'll share tomorrow once the solution is publicised. Feels like cheating otherwise. You tell me, is it wrong to publish answers before the solution is available?
13/5/14
Well nothing popped out as suddenly obvious after a night's sleep. This puzzle is full of the kinds of clues I'm weakest at solving, for me, this wasn't much fun. I'm sure those who can pull an adage or quip from their back pocket found this a delight. I'm looking at 5 question mark clues and 8 phrase clues and that's half a puzzle of pure annoyance. The other 13 clues were all right and I managed 11 of them.
I'll do my best to break this down:
8A - When we see "Cockney" it's a hint that we're losing some H's from words akin to the way a Cockney speaks. -H from "head" for EAD "Found in cut grass" cut grass is MOW, put EAD inside MOW for MEADOW, a synonym for field.
9A - "Scientist" is our definition, "body odour" is BO and I guess experiments is a signpost, telling us to mix the words in "Taints" to give BOTANIST.
11A - I should've thought back to all those episodes of Embarrassing Bodies I like to ghoulishly watch. "Yeast" is our definition. A synonym for "honest" is CANDID and "answer" is there to give us the ending A for CANDIDA. I didn't get this because I thought "answer" was a signpost for something. Words aren't just dropped in clues without reason. Thesaurus.com didn't give candid as a synonym or I'd have made the connection.
12A - "Sorer" is our definition. "Earring" is an anagram but not sure "infection" is a signpost. I think this is called an &lit clue but not I'm not sure. Anyway an "earring infection gets sorer" gets ANGRIER.
13A - Charades, they used to be my worst clue but now I'm getting better at them, I'm seeking them out first. "Gai Finally" (apart from "Gai" being an unusual spelling...let's google that...Oh, it's about horses. I know as much about horses as I do cricket) take the last letter in Gai for I, synonym for "auctioned" is SOLD and put that outside the I for SOLID, a synonym for stable. So, nothing to do with horses after all Whew!
14A - What? Huh? "Start off the season" well which one? WI, SP, SU, FA?? AU? Move to next bit "with some jewellery" So many options. "Implanting" ???...go back to the start. "START OFF the season" Ok so remove the first letter of a season -W for INTER and add jewellery RING for INTERRING which isn't quite a direct synonym for "implanting." but I'm being pedantic, I suppose.
15A - A very Aussie clue and I didn't get the reference. I had the two words, but didn't know to put them together nor trust myself to do so. "Prohibit" is BAN "Alcoholics Anonymous" is AA so I thought BANANA "accepting mid-morning" confused me but I think it was supposed to be trying to get the extra N into Banana as N is the middle letter in "morning". A synonym for "binges" is BENDERS. This gives the term BANANA BENDERS, a slang term for a Queenslander.
19A - Oh, I shake my fist at you!! I missed this anagram! I got myself convinced it's red pen, red something. Red herring is what it was! "Errors"is an anagrind for the fodder "label your" to give the colour ROYAL BLUE.
21A - "Trend" is a FAD and "French" (scroll down to French) is a common used bits-and-pieces indicator that could be a few options but the one we want will be reversed as we're told by retreating and our answer is a synonym of "dwindled" FADED.
23A - "Send bullets towards" is our defintion, "owl noise" is HOOT, I'm not sure how "during the day" gets us SAT and is "during" wanting something inside? I could guess the answer was SHOOT, but I'd put UP as the second word when if I'd been a bit grammatically aware I'd have used AT for "towards". SHOOT AT is the answer.
24A - This one gave me headache. I knew "post office" was likely PO and returns was telling me it was reversed to OP and I smugly though "octopus" as a synonym for seafood - but it wouldn't fit. "Lawyer" could be anything. Moving along to "every" is ALL and "post office returns" is OP. I guessed that SCALLOP was our likely "Seafood" but SC as the lawyer term was difficult to nail down.
25A - I'll take a stab at breaking this down, but i'm not confident I've gotten this right. "Gazed" is our definition, "crazy" is MAD "on pills" is EE for "Es" plural, slang for ecstasy, and "certainly" is YES to give MADE EYES.
26A - "Mass" is our definition, WEIGHT is the answer but i have no idea how "delay reported" fits to make the answer.
1D - Charades "Top students" means take the first letter of students S, "makes fun of" is to MOCK and definition is "art teachers' clothes" is our definition with a plural S for SMOCKS.
2D - I guessed this with cross letters. "No magical innovation" had me wondering about skeptics or atheists. and "Carbon plant", well if I googled carbon plant I got a list of American carbon plant facilities. When I added AU to the search, I got a list of carbon reducing plants to better our environment. I thought that was interesting. Also it was half an hour of wasted googling. "No magical" is anagram fodder is "innovated" the anagrind? "without carbon" is a hint to remove the letter C from the fodder to give letters for MAGNOLIA. Not on the list of preferred CO2 absorbing trees.
3D - Woodend? Not another Aussie clue!? No, it's not. It's a word with instruction included "wood end" or the last letter of Wood. Sneaky! Definition is "Impersonated", "policeman" is COP "that is" is IE and the Woodend is D for COPIED.
4D - A common phrase clue. These are frustrating because you either get it or don't. I didn't. I had "To ban all noise" as a"Mime's aim" but what is wanted is a similar phrase to "putting it mildly" or TO SAY THE LEAST.
5D - Seeing the answer it's now obvious, but I was certain Annoyed was an anagrind and set about trying to find the anagram. It's not there. It's a charades clue. "Cop's ID" is a BADGE and the colour of a "stop light" is RED for a synonym of "annoyed" BADGERED
6D - I got this one in early. Synonym for "cycle" is BIKE "without energy" tells us to remove the -E "in one's" is IN I and synonym for swimsuit becomes BIKINI.
7D - I knew the ending was going to be AGE after seeing the update of the compiler that the word "Newspaper" was missing from the clue.
@caffeinator doh 7-down has a typo! Not sure how that happened! Should read "Melbourne newspaper retention" :)
— LR (@LRxword) May 12, 2014
I still didn't get the "tale abridged" to mean Story -Y to give a synonym for "Retention" as STORAGE. I see abridged by definition means to reduce so maybe we're not spoonfed every instruction, but are to figure it all out ourselves. Aww...
10D - Question mark clue, you know it or you don't It's extremely literal/lateral. "How to start a sentence" grammatically? With a CAPITAL LETTER, and we're even given the hint with ACT being the capital of ...no wait. Canberra is the capital. ACT is its territory. ACT is just a collection of capital letters. Somewhat Spurious.
16D - Puzzled? Anagram? Something? What? I guessed "AT SEA" and just hopes the first would fall into place. Having missed 19A and not confident for 15A, I just left it.
17D - This one was hard! I immediately thought BAD OMENS. It fits, it works...doesn't work well with the clue but definition. It was wrong. I can see how "China" gives RED but not sure about "Vietnam and Turkey symbolically" gives FLAGS for definition of "Worrying signs" RED FLAGS"
18D - We are supposed to take the first letter P in "Penny" and add that to a synonym for "restart" RESUME for PRESUME which, I'm sorry, is not a good synonym for "Expect" Perhaps, maybe at a very long stretch, with tolerance and if in a good mood.
20D - This is a combination clue. Hidden word with deletion. The definition is "Antiquated" and the rest is "dyed holden stripped" When you strip you remove the outer layers, in this case the the two Ds from dyed and the H, N in Holden to give YE OLDE.
21D - This made me laugh with the visual it provided. It's a double definition clue. A word that is both "SOS device" and "trousers" are FLARES.
22D - I went far too military on this looking up line of command and titles, dabbled in Star Trek where Picard calls Riker "Number one" as his number two but we wanted something more Barney Fife. Wordplay is "Record" is an EP entering a "chore" or DUTY for DEPUTY.
That was the whole terrible mess. I say that because I'm disappointed with myself for not getting the easier questions. I get easily frustrated, easily distracted and always thinking these clues are harder than they really are.
I'll be late with Tuesday's puzzle as today is my daughter's 10th birthday and she's got a party tonight with her Guides unit and I'm their leader and cake wrangler. Wishing your day to be a full of fun as hers shall be. A look at my finished puzzle, doodles included.
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