Garry Gillard > crosswords > solutions > 4819
The Sunday Times puzzles are only blogged in Times for the Times a week later, so I'm providing this solution today. Thanks to the two people who helped me get the ones I had trouble with.
ACROSS
1. PASSABLE (OK) PASS (I don't know) + B(ishop) in ALE (drink)
5. BUDDHA (one supposedly enlightened) BUD(weiser) + (had)* [asterisk indicates anagram]
10. NEAR THING (close shave) N(ew) EAR TH[L]ING
11. PSALM (song) S(oprano) inside PALM
12. TRENT (banker - that is, a river - it has banks) R inside TENT
13. ENTERTAIN (flirt with) (E)nrolled (N)urse + (I natter)*
14. AIDE DE CAMP (military adviser) (decide a map)*
17. MISS - dd - double definition
19. IDEA (plan) I + DEA(r)
20. HAIR-RAISER - dd- Don King, Muhammad Ali's promoter, wore his hair straight up
22. NOMINATED (proposed) N (knight in chess) [d]OMINATED - (d)aughter deleted
24. COVET (yearn to have) if a vet(erinarian) with a partner, you would have a co-vet
26. ATOLL (island) A followed by L(arge) LOT rev.
27. ARMADILLO (one plated) (molar lad)* around I = 1 = one o'clock = lunchtime
28. KIT,SCH (camp) KIT + SCH(ool)
29. PROGRESS (advance) PR (publicity) + OGRES + S (last letter of diss)
DOWN
1. PUNCTUATION MARK. The 'definition' part of this clue is the comma; the wordplay is an anagram of (up mountain track)*; the anagram indicator is 'travelling'; and the 'perhaps' refers to the comma; brilliant clue
2. SHAME (Oh, that's awful) SHA(m) - fraud, without last letter ('finally destroyed') + ME (yours truly). The punctuation in the clue is just there for the surface meaning.
3. APTITUDE (facility) (IT update)*
4. LOIRE (French department) I inside LORE
6. UMPIRE (Lord's official - in cricket) U is posh (Nancy Mitford's term for Upper-class), MP is the polly and IRE is anger
7. DRAMATICS (histrionics) (mad racist)*
8. ADMINISTRATIONS (governments) (amid transitions)*
9. EGG TIMER - This is a CD - a 'cryptic definition'. You have to know that 'soldiers' is a term for toast fingers cut to tip into a boiled egg. So they are prepared before this goes off.
15. DREAMBOAT (hot chap) (rome a bad t)*
16. CLAPTRAP (cobblers - Cockney rhyming slang for cobblers' awls = balls = rubbish = claptrap) CLAP (give a hand + PART backwards
18. WATCHDOG (guard) DO (party) inside a possibly automatic WATCH followed by G(olf), a letter in the NATO phonetic alphabet
21. EN BLOC (all at once) EN(d) + B(lack) + LOC(k)
23. DEMUR (object - in the verbal sense) the vet is the DR around the bird, EMU
25. VALUE - dd, as the exhausted setter has run out of ideas. The first couple of clues - see 1 down and across in this puzzle - are often the trickiest, as the setter is fresh and has a novel bright idea or two.
to abbreviations or descriptors or symbols which may have been used
(raga man)* = anagram of 'anagram'
CD = cryptic definition
DD = double definition
incl. = inclusive (hidden word)
def. = definition (synonym, literal)
rev. = reversed
anagind = anagram indicator
homophind = homophone indicator (term invented by moi)
surface - the apparent meaning of the clue, disguising what's really going on
&lit. - a clue in which the whole clue is the 'definition'
COD = clue of the day (imo); FOI, LOI, first/last one written in
Garry Gillard | New: 7 October, 2018 | Now: 14 October, 2018