My first blog after a two and a half week break away from crosswords and luckily for me and my sleep-deprived brain, it’s a Phi. I did actually manage to solve a few puzzles during my paternity leave but they took about twice as long as usual due to baby-related interruptions.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my fellow bloggers for minding the shop for me while I was away and ensuring that posts kept appearing on a regular basis. Thanks to all our readers and commenters too, for not minding too much if a post was late or didn’t appear at all. A full service resumes next week.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 9 | (BARLEY HOP)* – excellent clue with a misleading surface. |
| 11 | W,ANS in SEA |
| 14 | (a)SKED,ADDLE |
| 16 | (MANIPULATE T(h)E,NET)* – I’d never heard of this before but it wasn’t too tricky to work out. The checked letters I had suggested a word ending in -ULTIMATE, which in turn suggested PENULTIMATE. After that, it’s just a matter of seeing what letters are left over in the anagram fodder and coming up with the most likely combination. |
| 19 | I’D< SPENSER – Edmund Spenser (who’ll be very familiar to Azed solvers) is the “prominent Elizabethan”. |
| 23 | T,CARTER< – I filled this in without really understanding it but looking at it again I can see that it’s quite a clever clue. |
| 24 | U in (per)USAL |
| 25 | ST,A(r)TISTIC |
| Down | |
| 1 | (H ACROSS BED)* – the other kind of mating. |
| 7 | AL(l) in HERD |
| 14 | SON,G,STRESS |
| 17 | REAM in PB,LE – another one I filled in without really understanding. “Lead” is the misleading bit here as it refers to the metal (whose chemical symbol is Pb). |
| 18 | ART in A LACE – another one I really liked because the surface reading is completely convincing and misleading. |
| 20 | HAM in SUS |
| 22 | G,RUB |
| 23 | A in ROM or O in RAM – another excellent clue. RAM (Random Access Memory) and ROM (Read-only Memory) are two different types of computer memory. |