Please excuse the later than usual post; a plumbing emergency kiboshed my morning routine. But now that an 18A has been successfully issued and implemented on the pipe in question, I got to belatedly enjoy one of Mudd’s rare weekday outings.
Across
1 ANTELOPE – ante lope.
5 AMORAL – a M + oral.
10 CASH COW – I didn’t much care for this one, as it’s simply a reverse engineering of the phrase’s punning/metaphorical origins.
11 HANDBAG (and b[lack]) in hag.
12 NEEDS – D[emocrat in seen<.
13 RHEUMATIC – (hurt, I came)*.
14 MICROCLIMATE– (croc + Lima) in mite.
18 DEATH WARRANT – war in (threat and)*. Some may take issue with ‘veiled’ as an anagrind, but I’m feeling indulgent as it affords an irresistible surface reading.
21 BUTTERFAT – (utter + f) in bat.
23 RHINE – r + in in he. Another tidy and oh-so-innocent looking surface.
24 LAWLESS – {f}lawless.
25 IMITATE – it in (I mate). ‘Do’ as in “The office jokester does a great Frank Spencer, you must hear it”.
26 SKYLAB – Ky in slab.
27 OKEY DOKE – (key + do) in {y}oke. A phrase that I’m partial to over-using.
Down
1 ASCENT – a scent.
2 TASTER – s{een} in tater (‘something eyed = potato).
3 LOCKSMITH – def’n/punning cryptic.
4 POWER BREAKFAST – brew< in (partakes of)*. In my youth a power breakfast would have been construed simply as having three Shredded Wheat!
6 MINIM – cryptic allusion to the palindromic structure.
7 REBUTTAL – butt in real.
8 LEGACIES – cage< in lies.
9 THREE-CARD TRICK – (There)* + card + (R in tick). A little prolix, but a strong contender for clue of the day.
15 INNER CITY – (nice tiny r{esidences})*. Isn’t, strictly speaking, ‘urban sprawl’ the overspill of suburbs into green belt land though?
16 ODDBALLS – odd + balls. A generously similar definition in the clue.
17 CASTAWAY – “When the cat’s away….” with a minor tweak to the s. An original idea, albeit tough to implement coherently.
19 FIGARO – GI< in Faro. Re: The Barber of Seville. Good to see ‘Iberian’ meaning Portuguese for a change.
20 SEVERE – sever + {knif}e.
22 ENEMA – hidden reversal. I’ll leave you to decide whether or not it’s a semi-&lit…
Thanks Smiffy and Mudd
I’m new to FT puzzles and was happily tempted by the weather to try this one. I understand Mudd may be none other than Paul whom I am used to seeing in the Guardian.
An enjoyable puzzle. I was nearly tripped up on 26 across mistakenly first plumping for NY instead of Kentucky but otherwise it went straight forwardly. As you say, 16d was generous – almost unbelievably so.
Amoral = unethical in 5a seems slightly
‘iffy’ since it is used in distinction to immoral and there is no similar neutral term for unethical which usually means unscrupulous.
I liked 13 and 14a and 18 but my favourite was 17d.
Thanks Smiffy. In 15dn, surely “sprawl of” is the anagram indicator; the definition is just “Urban” (giving the adjectival sense of INNER CITY).
22dn – oh yes!
Completed this on the Severn Valley Railway Didnt like screwballs /oddballs, and not sure how power breakfast actually works Otherwise a very pleasant way to spend a very damp day!
Hi folks – thanks for stopping by. I’m guessing it’s a rainy day over in Blighty?
During my attempts at smart-arsery, I omitted the parsing for 4D. It’s a reversal of brew (“tea”) in an anagram of “partakes of”. Now updated in the main body above.
Andrew, you are quite right on the role of ‘sprawl’. Shame on me: blog in haste, repent at leisure.
thanks for the parsing of 4d
I think the clue for 24ac should use Anarchic to match the adjectival nature of lawless.
Otherwise, strictly speaking , the result would be lawlessness.
Arthur, I think in 24ac the definition is “Anarchy is so [like that]”, which justifies the adjective.