No 12991, Saturday 18 Jul 2020, Arden

ACROSS

1   Some salt water barnacles, in short (6,8) SODIUM CHLORIDE  (NaCl = SODIUM CHLORIDE) Role of water?
10 Starved of fund, managed to rope in middlemen (5) UNFED {FUND*} around {mEn}
11 General design unravels, one’s involved (9) UNIVERSAL {UNRAVELS*} around {I}
12 Shouts “get over, they’re chums!” (7) CRONIES {CR{ON}IES}
13 Old historian’s understood by us (7) TACITUS {TACIT}{US}
14 Strip of cloth on girl as cover (5) THONG (T) &lit
16 Complaint over devil deed (9) IMPACTION {IMP}ACTION}
19 Course takes time, a keen beginner will look after things (9) CARETAKER {CARE{T}{A}{Keen}ER}
20 Short introduction to a cold war feature (5) DWARF (T) Good enough hidden word indicator?
22 Holy man’s regular cassock with name returned (7) ASCETIC {cAsSoCk}{CITE<=}
25 Antique gets first prize, a copy? (7) REPLICA {RE{Prize}LIC}{A}
27 Heard celebrity’s lost interest, right? (9) STARBOARD {~STAR BORED}
28 It’s seen in many a land holding in South Africa (5) NYALA (T) &lit
29 Girl’s turn at the window (9,5) CATHERINE WHEEL {CATHERINE}{WHEEL}

DOWN
2   Not on red, perhaps blue? (3-6) OFF-COLOUR {OFF}{COLOUR}
3   Animal you’ll find right inside (5) INDRI (T)
4   Claws make a mark under hand rest (9) MAULSTICK {MAULS}{TICK}
5   Stolen item is in the lift (5) HEIST {THE*} around {IS}  HOIST{HO{IS}T} See comments
6   Special education for processing peanuts and peanut derivative (5,4) OLEIC ACID {OLEIC+ACID+PEANUTS=SPECIAL+EDUCATION}
7   Putin has no right to be in the picture (5) INSET {INSErT} Putin=Put in
8   US novelist Bill's taken ill, is back (7) ELLISON {NOS{ILL}E<=}
9   Port wine — not with the Spanish (6) MUSCAT {MUSCATel}
15 Request to a restaurant manager, “be approachable” (3-2-4) GET-AT-ABLE {GET A TABLE}
17 Separate ledge for a game bird (9) PARTRIDGE {PART}{RIDGE}
18 Not living at home, team in a disarray (9) INANIMATE {IN}{A+TEAM+IN*}
19 Excellent form, just missed a ton (7) CLASSIC {CLASS}{IC}
21 Dispute arises during trials, a car fails (6) FRACAS (T<=)
23 Talk about mid-evening prayer (5) CHANT {CHA{eveNing}T}
24 Film on Indian animal (5) COATI {COAT}{I}

26 Magazine covers, keep unchanged (5) PUNCH (T)

Reference List

One=I, Over=On, Time=T
Right=R,  The Spanish=El,  At home=In, Indian=I

Colour/Font Scheme

Definition, Solution, Component letters, Embedded links, Theme word,  Anagram Indicator, C/C indicator, Reversal Indicator, Hidden word Indicator, Letter Pick indicator, Deletion Indicator, Homophone Indicator, Movement Indicator, Positional Indicator, Substitution, Indicator, Opposite indicator, Link/Connector, Extraneous

Dr RKE's TalePiece

In my school campus was a Roman Catholic church, said to be a REPLICA of the St. Lourdes church in France. The architecture was CLASSICal and it was magical to see the sun filtering through the CATHERINE WHEEL window fitted with multi-coloured stained glass. ELLISON Arokiasamy, the CARETAKER, would HOIST himself up expertly on a rope to clean that high window one day every month. This man was quite a character. He liked to tell tales to me and my CRONIES and we would be left wondering if the tales were  real or simply spun from his imagination. I suppose he had seen much of the world working on a ship in the past, as many stories referred to a halt in the MUSCAT port or Cape Town or some such place. He also used to throw in terms like ‘STARBOARD side’ that confirmed my presumption. It is a UNIVERSAL truth that we learn and remember things better when they are told as a story than in a didactic lecture. Thus, we learnt more from Arokiyasamy’s yarns about strange creatures like the NYALA, INDRI, COATI and  PARTRIDGE, than we did from our teachers about SODIUM CHLORIDE or OLEIC ACID. His easygoing GET-AT-ABLE manner was in sharp contrast to the stern, forbidding air that our teachers had.

 I was utterly surprised to find him decades later, outside an old age home to which I was the visiting doctor. He looked bedraggled, UNFED and OFF-COLOUR and without recognizing me, he was begging for alms. I called him out by name and reminded him about our days in the school church. Instantly, life returned to that INANIMATE countenance. He told me he had been dismissed from the church job as he had landed a PUNCH on the church priest. Arokiasamy had caught the priest red-handed, when the latter was making away with the cash offerings of the parishioners. In the FRACAS that ensued, the errant priest had managed to shift the blame for the theft on poor Arokiasamy.

I arranged for him to be housed at the old age home at my cost. On my visit there after a few months, I was happy to see Arokiasamy, back in his elements, regaling the inmates with his stories from distant lands.