About this deal
LOW YEAR)* – the Royal We was Queen Victoria’s way of referring to herself (as in the apocryphal “we are not amused”), or her “one”, as formerly used by the more recent late Queen Now that’s off my chest: I actually found this mostly enjoyable and a touch easier than previous from the same setter. I needed help with TITOIST (would never have got there on my own, to be fair) but almost all the rest was a steady, reasonably challenging solve, albeit with some solutions from definition and crossers without really understanding the parsing til I got here. I noticed three Frenchisms which suited this Francophone but may have been a little trop for some… I still think that GREAT BRITAIN is an island but not a country, since the country in question includes Northern Ireland. If Scotland secedes it will be even less so. C (chapter) + an anagram (about) of FOUR – I have happy memories of visiting these delightful locations (worth a look) on a holiday in Corfu CORPS (large body) + a reversal (turned up, in a down clue) of DE (of French) – I remember this definition being unfamiliar to some solvers in previous blogs: it’s a word we used often used at school
The cryptic grammar (I follow) doesn’t quite work here – a pity, since the setter dealt with I effectively in the previous clue and in 8dn My favourites, from a fine set of clues, were 1ac DANISH, 9ac SEVERE, 14 BREATHLESS, 18ac ENCOURAGED, 22ac UPSTREAm, 2dn NOVEMBER, 3dn STRENGTH, 5dn DEPRESSION and 17dn EDUCATOR. You are able to comment on most crosswords for the first seven days after publication. There is a warning for users. Do not scroll down if you want to avoid the risk of seeing any of the answers. We will not have comments enabled for the Prize, Everyman, Genius or Azed crosswords as these are competitions. What is the blind and PS version? Atlanta Dave @59 – I thought the same (and given your parenthetical remarks you might want to skip the rest of this post 😉 )Arcing is a type of electrical discharge that occurs when electrons flow between two conductors, usually metal, in an environment with a gas or vacuum. The conductors can be wires, rods, or other objects that are capable of carrying an electrical current.’) ShropshireLass @55: who imagined that the proximity of the L to the colon on the keyboard could produce such striking results? 🙂 ]
Third downer is, while both are involved in corporal punishment, birch and cane are not really synonymous. This web-only prize crossword is published on the first Monday of the month. You can fill it in on theguardian.com and submit your prize entry online. I can’t believe I filled in this whole puzzle when I only got 4 and 6 down at the start. The first of those gave me THE in 13a and which with the word count gave me A _ _ _ _ _ (in?) THE _ _ _. which the wordplay helped with, and I inched on from there. DE (inDEed at heart, which took a minute or two to work out – nice misdirection) + PRESS) (iron) + I[r]ON) minus r (right)
Possible answer:
Second downer is re 20a. Although I’m a maths grad and I recognise the “below”, imho it’s wrong to include “e” for eccentricity in a cryptic of this nature Cryptic definition, a boater being a kind of hat, the question mark indicating definition by example Edit – thanks to KVa and Alan C: a reversal (up, in a down clue) of LEG (pin) + C in A lot of NAKE[d] (raw)