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Morning all, and welcome to our new Sunday slot. This was the usual mixture of clue types and for the most part went in fairly quickly. However, 1dn has defeated us – I’m sure it’ll be blindingly obvious as soon as someone puts us out of our misery! Assuming our other answers are all correct it’s T–H, and the clue is given below. Resolved now, thanks Q!
We weren’t wild about the grid this week, which featured (if we’re counting correctly) 10 answers with two unchecked letters in a row. To our minds, this is ok if it enables the setter to cram in lots of thematic material or long answers or some such, but otherwise isn’t ideal.
ACROSS
1. THERMODYNAMICS (Mad on chemistry)*
8. MO ON BEAM
9. HE I G(HH)O
10. TOP ER
12. A GENT O RANGE
14. HAR(d) I COT
16. PASS AGE
17. SALVO LAT(I L)E
20. MARCH dd
22. TH ROUGH
24. RA(ILL ER)Y
25. THE WINTER’S TALE (interest and wealth)*
DOWN
1. Haven’t managed to work this one out: One small child? That’s it to a T! (4) Answers to the usual address… Now resolved: it’s TICH (T, I, CH)
2. ENGINEERS anagram of ‘serene’ around ‘gin’ for trap
3. M(IS H)IT
4. D(EMOC<)RAT
5. NE(O C)ON
6. MOBSTERS ‘set’ anagramised after OB for old boy all within MRS
7. CLA(S)P
11. REVERE dd
12. ASH RAM
13. MARI(JUAN)A
15. C A SH(FL)OW
16. PROSTYLE (Roy slept)*
18. LOVE-IN anagram of novel plus i
19. (h)ARROW
21. (p)REACH
23. HOLE sounds like ‘whole’
TICH : T+ i + ch. & lit. Thanks to you two oratorians for the blog. Q
They’re terrible those little ones aren’t they.
Late to this after Azed and Everyman.
I accidentally cheated on 1a (That’s what they all say).
For me, a tough one was MARCH, after trying to get MONTH in for ages.
Last in was RAILLERY after REACH.
I found there was a word ‘engineery’, but ENGINEERS was better.
I thought 16 was something about the way one wrote.
By the way : Sometimes I like to do dislocated grids just for the fun of it. The checking here is pretty close to 50% so I’m not too worried about that!
Answers here match today’s 25/5/15 no.1338 by Quixote.
Curious
Chris crosswords in the “i” are from the Independent of 5 years ago