Sunday Toughie 185 (Hints)

Sunday Toughie No 185

by Light

 

Hints and Tips by Sloop John Bee

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As I was solving this last night the following popped up on Bluesky;

Hi John

Assuming you’re on prize Toughie duty today, the interactive puzzle (Firefox / iMac) has ‘Kova?i?’ at 7d. It should be Kovačić. Obviously, some software doesn’t like the diacritics.

It’s fine in the facsimile of the newsprint version, so hopefully fine in the actual newspaper too.

Thanks

Michael

I hope that misprint didn’t affect your enjoyment of some lovely surfaces, and once I had revised my grammar prep and musical notation, I enjoyed this a lot.

 

Here we go, Folks…

As it is a Prize puzzle I can only hint at a few and hope that will give you the checkers and inspiration to go further. I’ll return with the full review blog just after the closing date. Don’t forget to follow BD’s instructions in RED at the bottom of the hints!

Most of the terms used in these hints are explained in the Glossary and examples are available by clicking on the entry under “See also” Where the hint describes a construct as “usual” this means that more help can be found in The Usual Suspects, which gives a number of the elements commonly used in the wordplay. Another useful page is Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing, which features words with meanings that are not always immediately obvious. Don’t forget the Mine of Useful information that Big Dave and his son Richard so meticulously prepared for us.

A full review of this puzzle will be published after the closing date for submissions. Some hints follow: Remember the site rules and play nicely.   

 

Across

1a          Yak lying down on bedding (6,4)
Yak is an informal term for loose chat; to do so when lying down may lead to a Doris Day and Rock Hudson film.

10a       Graves will probably be dug by this aficionado (9)
Nothing to do with coffins or cemeteries, those who “dig” the produce of grapes grown in the Gironde department.

14a       Crack radius and maybe ulna when Gloucester’s back goes in flying (8)
Lego™ time. An alphanumeric synonym of crack or the best, the abbreviation of radius, the part of the body that ulna is an example of but the back of Gloucester goes in.

21a       King’s work involved gripe about messenger (7,6)
The first published work of Stephen King, an anagram of gripe and a usual about. They used to fly about with messages.

24a       Practise writing English with hack (9)
Writing that is not in verse, a synonym of hack and E for English.

25a       Learner driver stuck in pit, getting AA (5)
A pit for the extraction of minerals around the letter that a learner driver is obliged to display.

27a       Captivated, lust misled me occasionally, on reflection (10)
A reversal (on reflection) of a synonym of lust and occasional letters of misled me.

 

Down

3d         Words that launch an invention for children? (4,4,1,4)
If you invent a story for children this is how it may begin.

5d         Amp taken out of shed slowly (5)
A type of shed that is up against another structure loses the abbreviation for Amp.

7d         Smart Pep keeping Kovačić in the centre for City (7)
Nothing to do with the Man City or their central midfielder Mateo Kovačić, but a very smooth surface nonetheless. A synonym of smart and some pep or vigour around the centre of Kovačić.
The diacritic marks did not appear in some of the early electronic formats of this puzzle, but I am led to believe they have been corrected or changed to plain c’s now.

11d       Goes off crew in a boat (6,7)
A preposition for each or a contains gone off as in what may happen to eggs, and a crew

13d       This could be present one is expecting (10)
I should have paid more attention during grammar lessons. One is expecting is an example of a non-finite form of a verb, active in meaning, referring to roughly contemporaneous action. Apologies to my English teachers.

16d   

 

18d       Copies last couple of ingredients to go with salmon and bagel (7)
A young salmon up to two years of age, before it becomes a smolt. Bagel as another score in tennis and the last two letters of ingredients. Copies you like a talking bird.   

23d       Price departs, but this keeps The Animals going! (4)
The price charged with an abbreviation of departs. Another smooth surface and the perfect opportunity to listen to this again.

Compiler

Light

 

 

 

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