A welcome return for our friend Orense, who always does a sound job on a Thursday.
Having said that, however, the structure of this morning’s puzzle (with its 4 x 15-letter word perimeter), as well as burdening Orense with a lot of words ending in ‘i’, made this perhaps a little on the easy side. Not always a bad thing, though – thank-you, Orense.
ACROSS
1. POINT OF NO RETURN Cryptic definition
9. INCOMER Income [salary] + r [right]
10. ENTREAT Entr(y) [access] + breakfast [eat]
11. TESTS Jests [jokes] with t [time] replacing j [judge]
12. MAHARISHI Ma [mother] + anagram of his hair
13. HARMONICA Harm [damage] + anagram of a coin
15. MULCH L(inen) within much [a lot of]
16. TASTE Double definition
18. INSIDE OUT In [at home] + side [spin] + out [banned]
20. WATCHCASE Watch [see] + case [patient]
23. CAIRN I [one] in car [vehicle] + N [north, bearing]
24. ROSSINI (C)ross [angry] + in [home] + I [international]
25. BENGALI Ben [mountain] + gal [girl] + I [one]
26. DRY STONE WALLING Anagram of lets down any girl
DOWN
1. PAINT THE TOWN RED Cryptic definition, playing on the colour of Manchester United’s shirts
2. INCISOR In [popular] + CI [Channel Islands, island group] + odd letters of ScOuRs
3. TOMBSTONE To + MB’s [doctor’s] + tone [quality]
4. FORUM F [female] + O [zero, nothing] + rum [odd]
5. OVERHEADS Over [completed] + heads [bosses]
6. ESTER Hidden in interEST ERror
7. UTENSIL Anagram of let us in
8. NOTWITHSTANDING Not with standing [having no status]
14. IMITATION (L)imitation [restriction]
15. MEDICINAL Medici [Italian family] + initial letters of Nuts And Leaves
17. SATISFY Sat [Saturday, day] + I [one] + final letters of loadS oF moneY
19. ORIGAMI Rig [equipment] within O [old] + ami [French for ‘friend]
21. HOIST I [one] within host [crowd]
22. ELBOW L [left] within E [English] + bow(l) [dish]
Thanks Orense for a pleasantly straightforward puzzle and Ringo for the blog.
Two quite nice cryptic definition clues here at 1ac/1dn – in each case more help than a straight definition would give and additional help from the enumeration means that they are a lot more than one-part clues.
I would put 16ac somewhere in the middle of the range for double definitions – as I have said before, I feel the best of these are generally when words from two different derivations have converged in spelling. Here we have two somewhat different meanings derived from the same root.
A particularly well-connected grid with over 50% cross-checking in all answers and Orense has done very well to fill it in without any answers that I would regard as really obscure.
Thanks for the blog, Ringo. Agree this was on the easy side (particularly when compared to Redshank’s FT offering earlier this week). As a Yank, I’ve been forced to pick up cricket terminology to work British crosswords. But spin = side (18a) is a new one. Would someone be kind enough to explain that term? Thanks!
Hi Keeper. As I understand it, “side” for “spin” is not cricket but snooker. If the cue ball is hit to one side of the centre, it will have spin on it and therefore come at a different angle off cushions and possibly when striking other balls.
Ah, thanks PB. Looks like there’s another UK-centric sport I need to get familiar with…