Spectator 1936

[Lubumbashi]

1D? I have ????A?A?S?
28D B?L?I?

nearly there.

[baitress]

It would be nice to know the clues.

[turnerjmw]

1d LACKADAISY
28d doesn't have a clue, but I went with BILLIE

[Lubumbashi]

Thanks Turnerjmw, I was also going with Billie. Baitress, The Spectator crossword is characterised by omitting eight or so clues.

[mintyman99]

I have completed it - I think.

I was going with BILLIE too.

I am going with LEADING NOTE for 1 ac and NUDGE for 15ac (tee?) but not happy.

Feels like this puzzle doesn't quite work.

[Mysterons]

Nudge (gee)

Baltic (sea)

[turnerjmw]

Interesting, Mysterons. I'd love to know what your group of ten was. Clearly not the letters on the top row of a typewriter. I had LEADING ROLE (E-T), by the way.

[AHearer]

Yes, I went with Baltic too. For a while I was distracted by Judge Dee, but decided that didn't work as well as the nudge alternative.

[slaney]

I keep changing my mind on this one, but thought it might be BUDGE (jee).

[crofter]

We all appear to be stumped over the somewhat ambiguous 15a.

For what it's worth , I have BALTIC (C) for 28d and LEADING ROLE (XL) for 1a.

The pair ET only sounds like EATY (?), so cannot be correct.

The problem with JUDGE (D) and NUDGE (G) is that they use only a single letter (leaving letter usage one short)

The title WHEREFORE (Y?) doesn't provide the tenth, as the ten letters should be linked to "unclued lights"

Either 1a needs THREE letters ~ or 1a and one other (15a?) each need TWO letters!

[MLN:RUGBY]

Another spanner in the works:-
JUDGE = SEE (C)

[Helveticus]

Like many, I was initially attracted to the top row of the typewriter idea, but could not make all the suggested homophones fit. It seems to be merely an unfortunate coincidence that (a) so many of the suggested homophones can be found there and that (b) this row of keys has ten letters. The rubric reads "(...) suggest homophones of ten of a set". Most of us (including me) seem to have taken this to mean that the set has ten elements, but one could argue that the rubric should be understood as "(...) suggest homophones of ten (elements) of a set (of unspecified size)". If this reading is correct, many problems disappear at a stroke: 10D suggests homophones of 2 members of the set. One other unclued light (possibly 15A?) must also suggest homophones of 2 members of the set. I think 1A suggests only one homophone. I can find no really persuasive answer to 15A.

[Mysterons]

I apologise folks, slaney clearly has the correct answer for 15. 'Jee' ('budge' in Chambers) is a homophone for G, 'gee' is not, and although 'jee' can mean'gee', Chambers doesn't give 'nudge' directly as a synonym for 'gee'.

[smithies]

I think that Helveticus has solved the problem about the sets. I am not sure that I follow his argument about 15A and I prefer Slaney's solution. This leaves two homophones to attach to 1A and at the moment Crofter looks the most plausible to me.

[Helveticus]

I think Dumpynose has, deliberately or not, been a bit mischievous with the ambiguities in the unclued lights.

I am sure that slaney and Mysterons are right about 15A: JUDGE/see/C (or Dee/D) and NUDGE/gee/G are seductively close, but (for me at least) not as persuasive as BUDGE/jee/G.

crofter's suggested solution and homophone for 1A (LEADING ROLE and excel/XL, respectively) are neat, but don't quite persuade me. For what it's worth, I had LEADING NOTE and ti/T, but this leaves me short of one suggested homophone (10D suggests homophones of 2 members of the set).

[crucifernz]

Hi folks
Usually I have posted the Speccie by now, but there seem to be so many differences of opinion on this one, that I am now unsure about my own choices. Are we even agreed on each member of the set of 10?

I currently have:

1 ACROSS LEADING NOTE (musically this can be anything in the scale?), but what are/is the homophone/s?

7 ACROSS Synonym of homophone of the letter 'I'

15 ACROSS Could be NUDGE or BUDGE or JUDGE?

38 ACROSS Synonym of homophone of the letter 'Q'

40 ACROSS Synonym of homophone of the letter 'P'

10 DOWN Synonym of homophone of the letter 'B'

23 DOWN PODOCARP - what's the homophone here?

28 DOWN Suggested by homophone of the letter 'C'

But how to account for 10 homophones in only 8 solutions?

[slaney]

For 10d there may be three homophones - BE (B) and ESSE (SA)

[crucifernz]

I find that a 'yew pine' is a podocarp - so perhaps a synonym of a homophone of the letter 'U'.

[crucifernz]

Hi Slaney - ESSE did occur to me for 10 DOWN if you pronounce it SA.

[crucifernz]

If I'm right, ESSE is actually a noun meaning 'being', 'existence', but then the preamble states SUGGEST, so I guess the solution doesn't have to be a precise synonym.

[slaney]

Hi crucifernz - I agree ESSE lacks precision, but have got to the stage of clutching at straws.