Alternate Mondays usually mean having Quixote to solve.
Not much to frighten the horses today without too much in the way of obscure vocabulary. Definitions are underlined where appropriate.
Across
1 Lacking funds after holiday? Support needed (6)
TRIPOD
TRIP (holiday) & O(ver) D(rawn)
5 Bird, one quietly occupying hole in the ground (5)
PIPIT
1&P (soft musically) in PIT
10 What won’t help you remember something resembling a riddle (1,4,4,1,5)
A HEAD LIKE A SIEVE
Cryptic definition
11 Contemporary new design for alcove (6)
COEVAL
ALCOVE*
12 Nasty car crossing river in northern city (8)
BRADFORD
R(iver) in BAD & FORD (car).
14 Three (not two or four!) pennies cast into lake (10)
SERPENTINE
[T(h)R(e)E PENNIES]*
15 Don’t go melodramatic — it’s no good (4)
STAY
G(ood) removed from STAgY
17 Works with little time to lose to produce paintings (4)
OILS
T(ime) removed from (t)OILS
18 Stars of intelligence agency catching fool that is given outside work (10)
CASSIOPEIA
ASS (fool) & (OP (opus, work) in I.E.) then all of that lot in CIA
21 Attractive figure ultimately no good — getting older (8)
ENGAGING
(figur)E & N(o) G(ood) & AGING
22 Territory — it’s almost spring in this place (6)
SPHERE
SP(a) & HERE
24 Mislay personal things in playground game and go mad (4,4,7)
LOSE ONES MARBLES
Cryptic cum double def
25 Law-enforcers dispossessed to some extent (5)
POSSE
Hidden in disPOSSEssed
26 Prickly feeling means he must leave the fireside (6)
TINGLE
HE removed from T(he) INGLE
Down
2 Spreads out as a tired drunk (8)
RADIATES
[AS A TIRED]*
3 Globe-trotting Michael loses heart, suffering? (4)
PAIN
Middle removed from PA(l)IN
4 Prepare to tackle The Listener at home? This may produce tedium (10)
DREARINESS
EAR (listener) & IN (at home) in DRESS (prepare). Quixote’s view of The Listener crossword?
5 Inn with post office woman’s set up (6)
POSADA
P(ost) O(ffice) & ADA’S reversed. It’s a Spanish Inn.
6 Leader of party — therefore male when discharged to become this maybe? (4,2,3,5)
PEER OF THE REALM
[Party THEREFORE MALE]* Quite a few have become Peers in later life
7 A duty’s becoming tricky around end of the 24-hour period (7)
TUESDAY
(th)E in [A DUTY’S]*
8 Trips made by Europeans across frontier of continent (6)
DANCES
C(ontinent) in DANES
9 Tiresome lot, so annoying ultimately when it’s stormy? (14)
METEOROLOGISTS
[TIRESOME LOT SO (annoyin)G]* Not really sure if you’d call this &LIT as it’s more a cryptic rather than complete definition.
13 Feat of a person abstaining isn’t grabbing chaps (10)
ATTAINMENT
A TeeTotal & MEN in AINT
16 Like old-fashioned punishment for soldier? (8)
CORPORAL
Double def
17 Flap’s at an end with chum turning up (7)
OVERLAP
OVER & PAL rev Flap/overlap just feels a bit clumsy
19 Reluctant to use old Bible language (6)
AVERSE
Authorised Version & ERSE (Irish)
20 Neglect has upset US soldier — no English soldiers to provide support (6)
IGNORE
G.I. reversed & NO & Royal Engineers
23 Blame nobody for having the last word (4)
AMEN
Hidden in blAME Nobody
*anagram
The usual pleasant Monday morning puzzle from Quixote. There were a couple of answers that I wouldn’t have been too sure about without the wordplay, POSADA and COEVAL, and I needed all the checkers to be sure of the spelling of CASSIOPEIA even though the wordplay was clear enough in retrospect. SERPENTINE was my LOI after RADIATES.
Thanks to setter & blogger.
Not too much of a shock to the system to start the week, for which I was grateful. 11 was new to me and I would use MIND instead of HEAD for the expression in 10, but no complaints. 9 & 18 were my favourites.
All quite straightforward and solved in a couple of passes. HEAD LIKE A SIEVE is the more familiar expression to me (rather than MIND). A slight hold-up on 13dn due to mis-reading the clue as ‘Feast…’ rather than ‘Feat…’, and POSADA had to be dredged up from my Spanish vocabulary.
Thanks, Quixote and flashling.
A nice steady solve although I took a time to work out what was required in 10a. I too am more familiar with MIND rather than HEAD in the expression, and it wasn’t until I got 2d that the penny dropped. My favourite clues were 18a (simply for the joy of spelling out the word from the wordplay), and 9d for its topicality during the current spell of stormy weather. However, as a retired member of the profession, I rather wish Quixote could have found some alternative anagram fodder for METEOROLOGISTS. We may deserve to be called many things but I hope “tiresome” is not one of them!
Hmm, I know the expression, I think, as “memory like a sieve” which just wouldn’t fit.
As I was having trouble with spelling 9dn, even after identifying the letters in the anagram, I looked it up in Chambers and then managed to mistranscribe it into the grid: -ror- instead of -oro-. It was only when I got 14ac I realised my mistake.
For some reason Jeremy Paxman seems to have more than his fair share of ‘meteorologist’ on University Challenge, and he can never pronounce it properly — he always calls one a “meat-reologist”, which irritates me.
Couldn’t get 9dn until I’d corrected mind to head in 10ac. Chambers confirms that Quixote is right and doesn’t give what I initially wrote, although it seems more familiar.