Good quality puzzle from Phi with a handful of great anagrams. One clue has left me foxed. I think the grid was pangrammatic too.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 8 | DIPSOMANIA — (I SIP ON MAD)* + A — this is an excellent anagram &lit. |
| 11 | ALLIANCE — A in ALL IN + CE — exhausted = all in. |
| 12 | ECO-LABEL — E+COLA+BEL(t) — nice neologism and partial &lit. |
| 15 | BUTTERFLY KISS — cryptic def? — is there more to this |
| 20 | INTIFADA — (AND IF IT)* + A — another excellent anagram. The Intifada is the Palestinian uprising, the whole clue providing an augmented definition. |
| 22 | DEATHBED — cryptic def. — very nice cryptic definition. |
| 25 | KILOGRAMME — (EMMA OK GIRL)* — and another good anagram leading to the less common spelling of kg. |
| Down | |
| 4 | LOLLOP — LL in LOOP — a lovely word! |
| 5 | PAGANINI — PAGAN+IN+I — …and another. Paganini was a great violinist as well as a composer. |
| 6 | DISCOURSED — DISC+OURS+ED |
| 9 | PEARL OF WISDOM — (MOPED’S AIRFLOW)* — I didn’t know that gnome meant a pithy and sententious saying, I do now. |
| 13 | CYBERNETIC — BERNE in (CITY+C)< — Oddly Igor Aleksander, the father of cybernetics, had a letter published in the Independent yesterday. |
| 16 | TELETHON — ELE(ven) in ? — I’m lost on this one. I can see half of ELEVEN and H(our) but not much else of the word play. TE(am) + H in LET ON — thanks to Niall and Will. |
| 17 | YATTERED — (infantr)Y + (b)ATTERED — not a word I knew but it seems to fit. |
| 24 | PUNY — PUN+Y — great surface to close the puzzle. |
Yes, it was a pangram which made it a bit harder than usual from Phi. TELETHON – TE(am) LET (H) ON ie let on. Really liked the clue to Quaker, which made me suspect a pangram.
TELETHON: Te(am)+ h in let on, defn. ‘long programme’.
I couldn’t see why it was a pangram since I couldn’t find a Q. But that was because I had a quite unjustifiable MUCKER instead of QUAKER.
Thanks to both for the explanation of TELETHON. I convinced myself about ELE(ven) and so failed to see TE(am).
Yes, the clue to QUAKER was good as were several of the ones I neglected to comment upon.
Phi always seems to be on top form but I thought this one was especially good.