Straightforwardly enjoyable stuff from Neo today. Rather a lot of straight anagrams, and a couple of hoary old setter’s clichés, but fun nonetheless. There are topical Tour de France references, I believe, at 13,20, 3, 7, 18 (alluding to recent champions?), 27 (alluding to the maillot jaune?) and 23 (plus 25, of course). Thank-you, Neo.
ACROSS
1. CYPRIOT Cyp [sounds like sip, drink] + riot [disturbance]
5. BALLS-UP Balls [Ed, our Shadow Chancellor and god’s gift to crossword-setters] + up [finished]
9. AORTA (M)or(e) + t [tons] within a + a [two areas]
10. PARSONAGE Arson [crime] within page [servant]
11. ITCHY FEET Double definition
12. ERNIE I [one] within erne [sea-eagle]; the allusion is to the comedian Ernie Wise
13, 20. GREAT BRITAIN It [that certain something] within great brain [first-class mind]; one to enrage geopolitical pedants, no doubt
15. RECREATED Anagram of cedar tree
18. GINGER TOM Anagram of mogg(y) in tre(e)
19. SCRUB Cr(ew) within sub [u-boat]
21. RECUT R [run] + Cu [chemical symbol of copper] within ET [Spielberg film]
23. CHARLEROI Char [fish] + anagram of loire
25. ARMSTRONG Arm [limb] + strong [powerful], alluding to the notorious Lance
26. BHUNA B [Bachelor] + h [hours] + una [one in Italian]
27. YELLOWS Yellow [chicken] + (Drum)s(tick)
28. STAND-IN N [northern] + D [Democrat] within stain [smear]
DOWN
1, 23. CHARING CROSS R [rupees] within chain [shops] + c [cents] within gross [tasteless]
2. PERICLEAN Peri [fairy] + clean [innocent]
3. ITALY Anagram of Italy
4. TOP-SECRET Anagram of to spectre
5. BURNT N [knight] within Burt [Lancaster]
6. LOOSENESS Anagram of no less so
7. SPAIN S [saint] + pain [suffering]
8. PRETEND P [pressure] + re [on, about] + tend [nurse]
14. TWENTY-TWO Anagram of on wye TTT [three times] w(ith)
16. CAMPAIGNS Anagram of pans magic
17. TURNROUND Turn [resort] + round [full]
18. GERMANY G [good] + ER [Elizabeth Regina, monarch] + m [married] + any [even one]
20. See 13ac.
22. CAMEL Came [arrived] + l [left]
23. See 1dn.
24. LIBRA B [British] within lira [former currency (tender) of Italy – see 3dn.]
Enjoyably straightforward indeed, thank you Neo and Ringo.
Thanks Neo for an enjoyable puzzle and Ringo for the blog. Favourite clues 6dn (for the self-reference) and 8dn (for the use of “on”).
18ac: I was surprised to see “happy” used as an anagram lead, but Chambers 2008 gives “carefree” or “mildly drunk (inf), either of which will do as a suitable meaning.
17dn: The answer was clear enough from the checked letters and definition, and I had to come here for the parsing. Chambers 2008 gives “to take oneself” under both resort¹ and turn, and “full” under round¹, so no problems with the wordplay, but see below on linking words.
My one slight quarrel with this puzzle relates to the issue of linking words between definition and wordplay. These are often useful to the surface reading, but to my mind they should make a grammatically acceptable join from definition to wordplay. I am completely happy with most of the ones used here, but two of them did not work for me. These were “carries” in 9ac and “where” in 17dn. As always, I have no quarrel with those whose views on this sort of thing differ from my own, and I will be delighted if someone can find an alternative reading of either clue that dissolves this problem.
is not9A cont ainer?, ‘carries… in’.
Rowland @3 re 9ac: Yes that works – problem dissolved. Thanks to you and apologies to Neo.
While I am back in, apologies to everyone for failing to close a quotation mark in my earlier comment.
Re 9 ac, perhaps because the word ‘in’ appears twice within the operation sequence it’s a bit harder to see. ‘Where’ I always use, possibly rather loosely, as meaning something like ‘in the case that’, as in maths when they have ‘where X is 10, let Y equal 5’ or whatever. I enjoy a certain amount of security in that I’m by no means the only one to use it, and it provides a neat alternative to the other available options – on occasion: if I can run everything straight on, then much better than using any link.
Thanks all for stopping by, and many thanks to Ringo for a great blog.
Neo @5: Thanks for dropping in. I see what you are getting at with “where”, but for my taste it needs to be followed by a clause, so I would have no problem at all with the clue if it read (something like) “Complete reversal where resort heads full”, which in its surface reading requires “heads” to be taken in the nautical sense followed by an implied “are”. This is a counterpart to ones by various setters that I have mentioned in the past, where a linking “is” does not sit comfortably with the structure of the wordplay.
Thanks Pelham.
I am comfortable at the cryptic level with ‘(answer) x where y’, and if y happens to be composed of two elements, so be it. No-one has ever had a problem with multiple anag-fodder elements being treated as singular in the cryptic reading, so I guess I’m on a firm enough footing! The surface, of course, is entirely irrelevant from the cryptic POV.