Financial Times 13,468 – Sleuth
Posted by smiffy on August 19th, 2010
Only one potential slice of esotericum (at 28A, one of those “you either know it or you don’t” answers) as far as I could discern. Overall, this one didn’t really float my boat – but perhaps that’s more a case of my own Plimsoll line having become a tad decalibrated.
Across
1 ARCHIVE - (chair)* + ve{nues}.
5 BACKLOG – (a + c{ler}k) in blog.
9 GRASS - R(oyal) in gas + S. Recent Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass; the atypcial/hybrid treatment of ‘royal society’ was a neat touch.
10 CATERWAUL - cryptic def’n.
11 INFANTILE - in + fan + tile. Now, I wonder why would this surface reading would make me thing of “Mr Portsmouth“?
12 ABATE – a + homophone of “bait”.
13 HINDI - hidden.
15 ARBITRARY - a + (bit in RR) + a Ry. Not particularly whelmed by ‘brief time’ = bit, although I have heard people say “See you in a bit”, so I suppose it’s local/colloquial.
18 DEHYDRATE - (earth Eddy)*.
19 SOMME - M in some.
21 AUDEN - a + U + den. I know that the government is committed to raising the legal age of retirement, but shouldn’t this clue have been pensioned off by now?
23 TAKE ISSUE - (a + k{eepsak}e) in tissue.
25 SHIPSHAPE - hip in (phases)*.
26 PRIDE - PR + ide{a}.
27 THERAPY - the rap + Y.
28 KILVERT - (Rev)< in kilt. I learned of this chap only a few months ago, when he cropped up in a Times puzzle.
Down
1 ANGUISH - {l}anguish. Entered without understanding the wordplay, so subsequently ended up trying to justify something from anagramming ‘causing’ minus the c (‘initially cleared’)….
2 CHAFFINCH – (a f + fin) in Ch x2
3 IBSEN - BSE in in.
4 ENCHILADA - Ch in (Neil)* + Ada.
5 BATHE - hidden.
6 CERVANTES - van in (Secret)*.
7 LHASA - l + has + A(fternoon).
8 GALLERY - r in galley.
14 INDONESIA - one’s in India. If you don’t know me by now, then you’ll never, never know me…oooooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ohh.
16 BREAKNECK – Homophone of “brake” + neck.
17 ARMISTICE - (It’s a crime)*.
18 DEAD-SET - Sporting pun.
20 EVEREST - eve + rest.
22 DRIVE - double def’n.
23 TEARY - {t}ea{m} in try.
24 IMPEL- imp + e{asy} l{iving}. ‘Young offender’ for imp struck me as a little harsh, rather than a little wry.
August 19th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
smiffy
The typo in the answer to 16d needs to be fixed.
August 19th, 2010 at 4:45 pm
Thanks Rishi. In my defence, the tool-bar that contains the spell-check facility was mysteriously absent when I posted the blog, so I had to go through and manually scour the numerous original typos! Back in business now, thankfully.
August 19th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I found this quite easy by FT standards, did have to think quite a bit about 22D, before coming to the same conclusion as you that it was DRIVE and a double definition. Esp liked CATERWAUL, KILVERT (was familiar with him all right so that may have helped), GALLERY, BREAKNECK.
August 20th, 2010 at 12:14 am
Thanks smiffy and sorry to hear of your decalibrated Plimsoll line – sounds painful.
I found this easier than recent puzzles from Sleuth but an enjoyable solve nonetheless.
FIN meaning bill was new to me – American slang is not my strong point.
Top clues for me,1 and 6 down.