An enjoyable and fairly challenging Friday Phi. The grid seemed to fill from the bottom up for me, and I was perhaps held up by some unfamiliar terms, for example at 15ac and 19ac. Still, those proved to be solvable from wordplay and checking letters, so all in all a very pleasing solve.
*=anag, []=dropped, <=reversed, hom=homophone, cd=cryptic definition, dd=double definition.
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | MERGANSER – ANS in MERGER. A childhood membership of the YOC continues to pay dividends. |
| 6 | BLAND – B + LAND. |
| 9 | TOMPION – (I’M NO TOP)*. |
| 10 | FALLACY – F + (AC in ALLY). |
| 11 | GET THE RUNAROUND – nice reverse cryptic: “hunter” is (THE RUN)*. |
| 12 | NEHRU – HEN< + RU[n]. |
| 13 | ANDROMEDA – A + MODERN* + D + A. |
| 15 | CARTOUCHE – CAR + TOUCHÉ. |
| 19 | DECKO – DECK + 0. |
| 21 | RENEWABLE ENERGY – (BEEN + GREEN LAWYER)*. |
| 22 | CHAOTIC – CHA + OTIC. |
| 23 | ORIGAMI – (I’M A GIRO)<. |
| 24 | POKER – PO[r]KER. |
| 24 | EMERGENCY – EMERGE + (C[risis] in NY). |
| Down | |
| 1 | MUTAGENIC – (MAGIC TUNE)*. |
| 2 | REMATCH – REM AT CH. |
| 3 | A FISH OUT OF WATER – [o]AFISH + OUT OF WATER. |
| 4 | SANGRIA – SANG + AIR<. |
| 5 | REFINED – FINE in RED. |
| 6 | BALLROOM DANCING – (MOR[e] + OLD)* in BALANCING. |
| 7 | AS A RULE – RU in A SALE. |
| 8 | DRYAD – DRY AD. |
| 14 | ANONYMITY – (M[agnify] + IT) in (AN + ON + Y + Y) . |
| 16 | RANSACK – RAN + SACK. |
| 17 | CUBICLE – CUB + (L in ICE). |
| 18 | EYESORE – E + YES + ORE. |
| 20 | CURTAIN – CURT + AIN[‘t]. |
| 21 | RECAP – PACER<. |
Thanks, Simon.
I thought there was some super stuff in this. Having done a bit of twitching in an earlier existence I got MERGANSER from the definition and then smiled at the wordplay; GET THE RUNAROUND fell eventually but then took ten minutes after finishing to see what was going on; and EYESORE was a clever charade. I’m sure others will have enjoyed different ones, though.
I knew DECKO at 19ac but was motivated to look online for its derivation (Hindi, apparently).
Does the final A in ANDROMEDA come from ‘acting’ as abbreviated? A for ‘orses, but A for acting? No doubt missing something.
Happy to be corrected, but Chambers does have lower-case “a” as an abbreviation for “acting”.
Great blog, Simon, and puzzle, which I found on the easy side with fairly straightforward wordplay for the less familiar words. Favourites GET THE RUNAROUND and POKER, the RENEWABLE ENERGY one had a nicely appropriate surface too.
ANDROMEDA: I too was wondering where the final A came from (or Y from day was lost)
I particularly liked ANONYMITY – but I’d better keep quiet about that.
Similarly, I’m not going to make a big thing of it, especially as I’ve seen DECKO spelled like that elsewhere in crosswords of late, but I would spell it DEKKO.
Didn’t know of Tompion but it could hardly be anything else. Spent far too long trying to get Androcles to fit (I know it’s a fable but). Got there in the end, thanks Phi.
Re comment 4, while DEKKO is the more usual form, dicts give DECKO as an alternative spelling.