I enjoyed solving this puzzle but when it came to writing the blog I realized there were several clues that I wasn’t quite happy with, as noted below. That said, I thought there were also a number of deft clues in the puzzle.
I solved this just after getting to yesterday’s Brendan in the Guardian; on the coincidence front, Phssthpok has a wine, a cheese, and twice as many Nelsons (a full to Brendan’s half).
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | STROBE ST (street) ROB (raid) E (illegal drug) I initially wrote a comment complaining that a strobe would not make a very good searchlight, then found through Google that there are in fact a number of “strobe searchlights” out there. |
| 4 | HOT AIR HOT (popular) AIR (music) This was an amusing clue (“Idiocy of popular music”) |
| 8 | PROFILE PROF (academic) + L (left) in IE (that is) |
| 9 | MALAISE *(A MEAL IS) |
| 11 | WHITE NOISE *(HIT I NOW SEE) |
| 12 | NARK N (name) ARK (chest). As in the Ark of the Covenant |
| 13 | SUSHI Initial letters (the “begins”) of Smell Unless Someone Heats It. I don’t think “begins” is a good word here; better would be “starts.” |
| 14 | ELECTRON “ELECT RON” could have been Reagan’s slogan. |
| 16 | EYESIGHT EYES RIGHT (a military order) minus the R (“run [taken] from”) |
| 18 | MAJOR dd |
| 20 | GARB BRAG (crow) reversed |
| 21 | FULL NELSON FULL (well-stocked) NELSON (Admiral) |
| 23 | SKILLET KILL (butcher) in SET (some games, in tennis). There seem to be two container indicators here: “involve” and “jumping in.” So one of them is redundant. |
| 24 | SHRIVEL SHRIVE (confess) L (lake) |
| 25 | DETEST ET (alien) in DEST. (destination) |
| 26 | PLEDGE PLED (begged) + EG (for example) reversed |
| Down | |
| 1 | SYRAH reverse hidden in ZacHARY Sometimes |
| 2 | REFUTES *(TURF SEE[d]) |
| 3 | BELONGING dd |
| 5 | ORATE O (nothing) RATE (admire) |
| 6 | AGAINST AGAIN (one more time) ST (street) |
| 7 | RESERVOIR *(RIVER ROSE) The anagram fodder works well with the surface here |
| 10 | LIFESTYLE *(FILE) + STYLE (title) |
| 13 | SKYLARKED SKYLARK (songbird in heavens) ED (journalist) |
| 15 | EMMENTHAL *(HAM MELT [wh]EN) |
| 17 | SUBPLOT A naval drama could be a SUB PLOT |
| 19 | JELLIED A homophone, more or less, of GELID |
| 21 | FREES FREE (without charge) S (society) |
| 22 | OBESE OBEs (medals) E (“earn”[‘s] first place) |
Thanks agentzero. As you say an enjoyable one with some nice clues.
I tend not to notice the little points you’ve picked up on. As long as I know what the setter is getting at and he/she knows that I know, that’s all that counts for me!