A mix that included some fairly easy anagrams and some significantly trickier (and well done) clues. I really enjoyed this, even though 3 down still eludes me.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | PREVENT PRE (before) VENT (opening) |
| 5 | ARBITER BITE (what a vampire might do) in A RR (a bishop) |
| 9 | NYLON N (new) + *(ONLY) |
| 10 | LEISURELY L (money) + IS inside EU + RELY (bank) |
| 11 | CONSTRAIN CONS (prisoners) TRAIN (work out) |
| 12 | PANEL dd |
| 13 | EXTRA dd. Simple, but good. |
| 15 | IMAGINARY I (one) MARY (girl) around GINA (another girl) |
| 18 | GENEVIEVE GENE (DNA unit) VI (six) EVE (first offender). I thought Eve=first offender was brilliant. Also, a nicely misleading clue; I already had 18dn and saw the answer began with “G” and was initially sure that “Girl’s first” was the wordplay for the initial G. |
| 19 | TORCH Another nice dd |
| 21 | ANTON hidden in womAN TONight. Who knew the FT could be so risque? |
| 23 | CASSANDRA C (see) ASS (fool) AND (with) RA (artist) |
| 25 | PUT PAID TO UP reversed + *(DO IT + TAP) |
| 26 | GHOST G (good) HOST (old army) |
| 27 | EVEREST E (Expedition’s leader) + RE (about) in VEST |
| 28 | KENNEDY KEN (Scots ‘know’) + *(DENY) |
| Down | |
| 1 | PANACHE PAN (god) ACHE (pain) |
| 2 | ELLINGTON [w]ELLINGTON; ref. the Duke of Wellington and jazz great Duke Ellington |
| 3 | ERNST Not sure about this. Max Ernst was a painter and would fit with the crossing letters. If that’s the answer, I suspect that the S is signaled by “[Stour]port on Severn,” but can’t work out the rest. Per Conrad Cork: this is hidden in Stourport-on-SevERN SToke-upon-Trent |
| 4 | TALKATIVE TALE (story) around K AT IV (king at four) |
| 5 | ALIEN ALI (foreign film) EN (space) |
| 6 | BLUEPRINT BLUE (down) + R (mid-afteRnoon) in PINT. Not sure the insertion indicator quite works for me. |
| 7 | TIE-IN T (start for ‘transport’) IE (that is) IN (home) |
| 8 | ROYALTY *(TROY LAY) Good surface. |
| 14 | ADVANTAGE cd |
| 16 | AYERS ROCK *(YORK RACES) |
| 17 | AERODROME A [h]EROD (An old king, ‘Henry’ dropped) ROME (Catholic church) |
| 18 | GRAPPLE GR (Greek) APPLE (tree) |
| 20 | HEALTHY *(HATH ELY) |
| 22 | TITLE hidden in wanT IT LEft |
| 23 | CADET CAD (rotter) ET (in paris, ‘with’). “With” is normally AVEC but perhaps in French AND can correspond to WITH as they can in English. |
| 24 | ARGON *(GROAN) |
3 down is a hidden word, between Severn and Stoke.
Thanks, Conrad! I was so persuaded that there was some complicated wordplay in there somewhere that I overlooked the obvious…
Aaah! One we finished. And it was good to see the puzzle on the site the same day it appeared in the FT. Which we stole off the Tube, but there you go. Best clue ANTON? Yeeesssssssssss.
My interpretation for 5Dn is as below:
Foreign – ALIEN
film with space monster : ALIEN ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28film%29 )
From a British perspective, ALIEN can be considered as a ‘Foreign film with space monster’ too (since it is a US film)
That was indeed the intended parsing, thanks Ganesh.
And – as I should have said first time around – very many thanks to Agent Zero for the blog.