Prize puzzle from the Weekend FT of March 31, 2012
I bet a lot of people had trouble with 3D (PHWOAR). I certainly did. I was not inclined to believe PHWOAR is a real word but it’s in my Chambers! My top clues this week are 4D (DISEMBOWEL), 5D (ACIDIC) and 15D (ASWAN DAM).
Across
1. STAMPEDE – STAMPED (marked) + [blad]E
5. ACIDIC – I and I (a couple) in ACDC (heavy metal band). I like ‘gatecrashers’ as an insertion indicator!
9. LIKEWISE – KEW (part of West London) + IS (is) together in LIE (fiction)
10. GAUCHE – G[ala] + AU (gold) + CHE (red)
11. GENDARME – anagram of GERMAN D[eutschmark] + E (English)
12. FREEZE – homophone (“frieze”)
14. LOCOMOTION – LOCO (insane) + MOTION (proposal)
18. STRIPTEASE – anagram of TAPESTRIES
22. ADDING – [cl]ADDING (insulation, brow wiped). Or is it [p]ADDING? This alternative did not originally occur to me but is suggested in a comment below. And I think it is better.
23. SOAP DISH – SOAP (Neighbours) + DISH (honey)
24. DETAIL – de-tail (dock)
25. SPACE BAR – ACE (wonderful) in SPAR (box)
26. MIRAGE – M[aterialise] + I[in] + RAGE (fashion)
27. PRIESTLEY – homophone (“priestly”)
Down
1. SILAGE – I (one) + L (left) together in SAGE (plant). The definition in this clue is ‘fodder crop’. Silage is, by definition, made from a crop but is it proper to term it a crop itself? I fancy that ‘fodder’ would be better by itself. What do you think?
2. ASKING – SKIN (hide) in [b]AG (sack, head unseen)
3. PHWOAR – PH (the acid test) + O (love) in WAR (conflict). ‘Phwoar’ is defined as an expression of finding someone sexually appealing.
4. DISEMBOWEL – anagram of HAS MILDEW SO
6. CHAT ROOM – CHAT (bird) + O (nothing) in ROM (memory)
7. DECREPIT – E[conomy] in anagram of PREDICT
8. CHEYENNE – YEN (money) in HEN (female) in CE (church)
13. GOBSTOPPER – GOB (spit) + STOPPER (goalkeeper)
15. ASWAN DAM – anagram of WAS + AND (with) + A[i]M. Great word play and surface here!
16. CREDITOR – RED (blushing) + IT (it) together in CO (business) + [leade]R
17. SPANKING – SPAN (bridge) + KING (card)
19. APACHE – H[eavyweight] in APACE (swiftly)
20. GIBBET – BIG (mammoth) backwards + BET (stake)
21. SHIRTY – double/cryptic definition
I wasn’t greatly worried about silage and its non-crop-ness. But perhaps I should have been. The use in 22ac of ‘brow wiped’ to indicate that the first two letters were removed worried me more. Why two?
Otherwise some very good clues. ASWAN DAM was excellent and I had to come here to see how it worked.
Hi Wil, I may have neglected to mention it but I was not happy with ‘brow wiped’ either.
I’m just catching up with the FT crosswords after a while on the road without access to a printer, so this comes so late that nobody will read it.
Re 22 across: I read it as one letter off ‘padding’, rather than two letters off ‘cladding’.
I really enjoyed this. Thanks to Mudd for the entertainment and to Pete Maclean for the illumination.
Aha! One letter off ‘padding’ works better than two letters off ‘cladding’. Thank you, Petrus.