20 down: Kiss and make up? Fair dinkum? (6)
Fair dinkum = really is clear as day, but the rest?
19 down: Fan of a juvenile explorer on radio
Adorer = fan is all that’s certain here.
21 across: Leading female experiment curtailed mid-step… (padre) (9)
Here, leading female = matriarch, which implies that mid-step = arch, but how does experiment curtailed = matri?
22 across: (matriarch)…for father to step about? (5)
The answer here is padre, which kinda means that to step = pad, about = re and to step about = padre = for father, but how does to step = pad?
20 down: Kiss and make up? Fair dinkum? (6)
Kiss and make up = re-ally (become friends again)
22 across: (matriarch)…for father to step about?
My copy of the Collins Concise dictionary gives pad = walk with a soft or muffled tread, or travel a route on foot
Intriguingly in Sanskrit/Pali, ” pada = a step, pace, stride; a footstep, trace, vestige, mark, the foot itself” (from Vedic “pad”).
Almost certainly a coincidence…
19 Down. You obviously don’t have contact with small children or you would be painfully aware of Dora the Explorer. But would you adore her?
Thanks for the help there, NC; re-ally is actually quite clever!
The Sanskrit, though, is quite probably not a coincidence.
English is part of the Indo-European language family of which Sanskrit is one of the main branches from which the Germanic, Romance, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Celtic, Armenian and Slavic languages amongst others all originate.
Because of this, there’s a whole bunch of similarities between the languages despite the fact that, through phonological change and semantic shift, most are not immediately evident.
re 21 across;
”experiment” = trial curtailed gives ”’tria” mid step = “march” gives maTRIAarch. You need to be around to know abour little Dora! sheesh!
Had no idea about Dora, and, not surprisingly, I don’t have kids!
That might also explain why all Harry Potter references go right past me.