The critics would have a field day (Solution No. 1,634)

Since there wasn’t a new issue of The Nation last week, we launched a summer-long look back through Frank Lewis’s puzzles, starting with the last one he constructed for the magazine, No. 1,634 in May of 1976.

I’m a little late with the post because it took a lot longer for me to get the solution.  I needed to look up the answers a couple of times, but they gave me enough other letters to allow me to solve some more of the clues.

It’s also a lot harder to write up the solution because of the clues that don’t fit the Ximenean rules: they go way beyond where Hot and Trazom consider the limits to be.  Part of it is the British influence; another is that Lewis didn’t have all the electronic tools today’s constructors and solvers take for granted, so the universe of conventional constructions of a word or phrase was more limited.

So there’s much more of a Puns and Anagrams feel to these puzzles, or at least the Puns part.  The best way to open your mind to them is to be prepared for a word association game.  So here goes...

Solution to The Nation puzzle No. 1,634

Across

1a, 9a	FIRST PERSON SINGULAR	Pun
9a	See 1a
10a	*DEATHS	*THE ADS (anagram indicated by “making up”) Definition is cross-reference to 26a (BIRTHS)
11a	*OPEN-AIR	*RE PIANO (anagram indicated by “composition”)
12a	see 25d
14a	§BELONG	§BE LONG
15a	§HATRACKS	§HA TRACKS “cover” for “hat” is pretty obscure
17a	MANS IONS	MAN’S (“person getting”) IONS (“something charged”)
20a	COD *DLE	COD (“fish”) + *LED (“came first,” anagram indicated by “sort of”) An anagram where fodder isn’t given literally.
22a	FIDDLER	Pun
24a	*ANTIOCH	*TO CHINA (anagram indicated by “get”)
26a	~BIRTHS	~BERTHS (“a lot of bunk,” homophone indicated by “one hears”) Definition is cross-reference to 10a (DEATHS)
27a	*EX(AMPLE)S	*SEX (anagram indicated by “aberration”) containing (“is about”) AMPLE (“enough”) This is probably the closest to a typical Hot and Trazom cluing in the whole puzzle.
28a	COME TO ORDER	Pun

Down

2d	*INGENIOUS	*IN NO GUISE (anagram indicated by “however contrived”)
3d	SOLVING	Riddle. Only one definition here.
4d, 16d	PURE AND SIMPLE	Double definition
5d	REDCOAT	Reference to “the redcoats are coming!” Another one-definition clue.
6d	<O VALS<	<SLAV (“such as a Bohemian”) + O< (“circle,” reversal of the whole thing indicated by (“in an uprising”)
7d	RI(PP)LE	PP (“very quiet”) contained in (“in”) RILE (“anger”)
8d	SHRINK	Double definition
13d	WHIST	Double definition Turns out that besides being an old card game akin to bridge, “whist” is an alternate spelling of “whisht” which is an old Scottish word akin to “hush”
16d	See 4d
18d	*ALIBIS	*BAIL IS (anagram hinted at by “perhaps”) Excellent wordplay at the expense of a proper indicator
19d	OVER SEE	Double definition
20d	C*ENTAUR	^C^at (first letter indicated by “head”) + *NATURE (anagram indicated by “freak”) Hmmm.  The carets on “cat” look like kitty ears!
21d	LOCKER	Double definition. Kind of weak to have both definitions coming off the same root.
23d	DITTO	Double definition?  “do” is an old-fashioned abbreviation for “ditto”
25d, 12a	HERO WORSHIP	Pun