Usual excellent puzzle from Phi, solving time 32 mins.
* = anagram < = reversed
Themed, NW corner I found the hardest.
ACROSS
1 LAM Back Theme of the puzzle, was 4A (MEATS)
4 M EATS
7 VEAL Hidden in loVE A Lot
9 BROOK Excellent double definition
10 TALE N(o)TED o = love (nothing)
11 B (RAKE M) AN M = edge of mountain (first letter). A man at the back of a bobsled or bobsleigh who operates the brake, I learnt today.
12 MA LAY A
13 (p)LEADING ARTICLE (recital)* perverse indicates the anagram with wordplay/definition splitting after it.
16 KIDNEY (meat) MAC (H I N) ES maces = sticks
16 Gurnard RAMME(d)
20 S AND S (limits needed in scrupulous ie first and last letters) HOE (garden vb)
22 T OE TO T OE heartless one = OE child = TOT
23 Q O R (first letters) A N An alternative spelling of KORAN
24 B (E) E F End of battlE in British Expeditionary Force.
25 FARCE Double definition farce = farcemeat = forcemeat (used for stuffing)
26 P OR K Things considered a boundary to park ie first and last letters p or k
DOWN
2 AM BE R
3 B (LOCK A D) ED
4 MAKE MINCEMEAT OF I guessed this on first run through from definition and enumeration without knowing why till later. Second definition = work on a meat
5 AN (TENN) A Tenn = Tennessee (US State)
6 SALAMI TECHNIQUE (tequila machines)* salami = meat Taking small amounts of money from a lot of accounts
7 V IN Y(a)L lay< = song less one = a
8 ACETYLENE (clean e yet)* e, abbrev for energy used in the anagram
14 EUKARYOTE (you retake)* A member of a domain of organisms. Good to give us an obvious anagram here, which was intriguing with 5 vowels and a Y in its nine letters. Even when I’d all the crossing letters, I could not guess it and looked in dict.
15 CHINSTRAP (starch pin)*
17 M I SHEAR M I as in M I 5 etc
19 M O (modus operandi) TIF fit<
21 (d)OWNER My favourite clue, with a tip-top surface
Thanks for the blog, nms – a few I didn’t understand the wordplay for that you’ve cleared up. As you say, usual Phi excellence, but quite an odd theme – meats? It’s not International Carnivore Day or anything, is it?
Good to see a couple of science-related clues – ACETYLENE was a good surface and I did know EUKARYOTE – big division of the living world into prokaryotes and eukaryotes (although c rather than k is the more usual spelling, I think). All something to do with the way the DNA is packaged in the nucleus, if I remember well, but it’s a long time since I studied it.
I liked 21dn too, but 3dn gets my vote as best clue.
I’m with Niall re EUKARYOTE. Even with the necessarily helpful anagram I had no chance! And I’m at the age where I’ll never remember it unless I meet it again at least a dozen times in the next few weeks. I can’t even remember words from my own clue archive. So, all you setters, a liberal helping of EUKARYOTE please.
EUKARYOTE? Swine of a word!!! My dictionary (Shorter Oxford) didn’t have it so gave up – left me thinking 16A wasn’t Kidney.
Into the Hall of Infame (?) with that one.