Guardian 24158/Araucaria – Araucaria?

Not a cross-reference in sight nor a long anagram. Was this really Araucaria? I can’t even detect a theme of sorts.

Now that I’ve said this, will someone prove me wrong?

Across

1	LAID-BACK – def is “relaxed” but not sure about “thinking about England?” though it seems like a good candidate for “wordplay in the answer” which would produce DIAL.
10	HELL,AS – not a bad clue albeit my last: “Dis”=HELL, “like”=AS.
12	TRA(NSIT CA)MP – (cast in)* in TRAMP for “walk” and “about” indicates the containment.
17	BIL(AT,ERA)L – AT, ERA in BILL (Brit slang for the heat, i.e. CONSTABULARY which is 4D). OK, so there was one cross-ref here after all.
19	AM,I,GO – I is the “setter” here. The question-mark in the clue is necessary because the answer is a question!
20	W(IRE,T)APPING – guess-hazard time: I suspect that there are printing presses in WAPPING (?).
24	AL,LIED – yeah, that’s how they got AL Capone finally – for tax evasion.
26	JINGLE BELLS=”belles” – Goodness, is it that time of year already? Anyway, ref Alfred JINGLE (“Pickwick Papers”).
27	STIMU=(I must)*,L,US

Down

1	LEG,I[n]TIMACY
2	INST,A[i]LMENT
4	CONSTABULARY – two slang terms for the coppers: “nick” is a Brit term for a police station.
6	CLEOPATRA – (parcel to a)*. Cryptic def of the empress as a “needlewoman” ref. Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment (didn’t know this but she has two sisters in Paris and NYC).
7	IDLENESS –ref. MSND: turns out that Puck is sent by Oberon to find a flower called “love-in-IDLENESS”.
11	HA(R,LEY S)TREET – R, LEYS in theatre* – ref. HARLEY STREET which is where all the rich consultants are but I’m not sure how LEYS is produced by “lines” in: “Medical centre on right lines having operating theatre outside”.
16	CART(W,HE)EL
21	PRO(E)M – I’ve always thought of a PROEM as a hybrid of a poem with prose but it is in fact an introduction (or overture).
22	HAD,J

5 comments on “Guardian 24158/Araucaria – Araucaria?”

beermagnet

#1 - Fri 17th Aug 07, 13:35

1A is a ref. to the phrase “lie back and think of England”.
Very obvious to us Englanders.

Michod

#2 - Fri 17th Aug 07, 14:44

And leys is a reference to ley lines, the mystical ancient lines of influence supposed to criss-cross the country linking places like Glastonbury. cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line.
Thanks for explaining 2 down – I thought ‘immediate’ would give ‘instant’ round the outside, but couldn’t work out where ILME came from.