A lovely way to start a Thursday
At first, I thought that this was going to be difficult as on my first scan through the clues, I only filled in a few of the obvious shorter solutions (ODER, ALIEN. MILAN, ABUZZ and ALGA. However, working out some of the longer anagrams (DISAGREEABLE, CONSOLIDATED and SMOKE ALARM), these gave me enough crossing letters to complete the grid without too much trouble. The parsing of a couple of the answers (TENET and NORTH-WEST) were not immediately obvious, but I must have been in a better frame of mind than I was on Tuesday, when I left two unparsed, as it didn;t take me long to work out what Wanderer had done.
No quibbles with the puzzle, and I really enjoyed the experience. Thanks, Wanderer.
| Across | ||
| 1, 6 | PERFORMING ARTS | Some hesitation creating content for roles in opera, musical theatre etc (10,4) |
| ER (“some hesitation”) FORMING (“creating”) in PARTS “(roles”) | ||
| 9 | SMOKE ALARM | Moral: ask me about what could save your life (5,5) |
| *(moral ask me) | ||
| 10 | ODER | River flowing through to Derbyshire (4) |
| Hidden in (“lowing through”) tO DERbyshire | ||
| 12 | FRENCH WINDOW | One of a pair of openers in a sort of cricket, batting just the same between wickets (6,6) |
| FRENCH (cricket) + IN (“batting”) DO (short for “ditto” = “just the same”) bewtween W and W (“wickets”) | ||
| 15 | AVALANCHE | See boy in pain due to heavy fall? (9) |
| V (short for “vide” = “see”) + ALAN (“boy”) in ACHE (“pain”) | ||
| 17 | ALIEN | A right stranger! (5) |
| A + LIEN (“right”) | ||
| 18 | TENET | Rule 101? (5) |
| (TE(N)ET)
101 needs to be seen as 10 and 01 (ie “ten” forwards and back), with 0 in the clue and N in the solution doing the same kind of double duty. |
||
| 19 | AFTERMATH | Consequences of getting further behind with subject at Harvard (9) |
| AFTER (“further behind”) + MATH (American version of “maths”, therefore “subject at Harvard”) | ||
| 20 | CONSOLIDATED | United lost 1-0? Danced merrily! (12) |
| *(lost i o danced) | ||
| 24 | PEAK | Top dog, say (4) |
| Homophone of PEKE (“dog”) | ||
| 25 | CASUS BELLI | Justification for fighting bullies, as chaos begins to develop? (5,5) |
| *(bullies as c)haos | ||
| 26, 27 | ELLA FITZ GERALD | The Spanish city reportedly suits male jazz singer (4,10) |
| EL (“the Spanish”) +L.A. (“city”) + FITZ (homophone of “suits”) + GERALD (“male”) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1, 13 | PAST PARTICIPLE | Old man’s tip: claret is drunk without one drop ultimately getting wasted – or spilt? (4,10) |
| PA’S (“old man’s”) + *(tip claret) around I (dro)P | ||
| 2 | ROOK | Small jumper on short man’s man (4) |
| ROO (“short junper”) + K (in chess, short for “king”, so “short man”) | ||
| 3 | OVERREACTION | Gone about fighting as an OTT response (12) |
| OVER (“gone”) + RE (“about”) + ACTION (“fighting”) | ||
| 4 | MILAN | Piece about one large city (5) |
| MAN about I L | ||
| 5 | NORTH-WEST | The point of some chin- wagging (5-4) |
| N-W is hidden in “chiN-Wagging” | ||
| 7 | RED ADMIRAL | Pop space station into concrete casing, one able to fly at some stage (3,7) |
| DAD (“pop”) + MIR (“space station”) encased in REAL (“concrete”) | ||
| 8, 23 | STRAW IN THE WIND | Breaking waters? Hint: wife at home with daughter is a sign of things to come (5,2,3,4) |
| *(waters hint) + W(ife) +IN (“at home”) + D(aughter) | ||
| 11 | DISAGREEABLE | “Nasty geese!” bad liar snarled (12) |
| *(geese bad liar) | ||
| 13 | See 1 | |
| 14 | CANNONBALL | “Big shot” pair of comedians (10) |
| Refers to Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball, who as Cannon and Ball were never off TV screens in the UK in the late 70s and the 80s. | ||
| 16 | CHARIVARI | Unholy din as Indian stood up, having been sat in slightly rickety chair (9) |
| <=RAVI (“Indian”) in CHARI (“slightly rickety chair”) | ||
| 21 | ABUZZ | A second man walking on the moon, humming (5) |
| A + BUZZ (Aldrin – the second man on the Moon) | ||
| 22 | ALGA | Seaweed with length in range required (4) |
| L (“length”) in AGA (“range”) | ||
| 23 | See 8 | |
*anagram
Thanks for the blog. Usual good stuff from Wanderer. Re 18, I took this to be a palindrome clue with TENET being an example of this, and 101 being a numerical type of palindrome, hence the question mark.
@jmac
A neater way to summarise what I was trying to describe – thanks!
Wanderer is such a magician that I always need at least one explained — this time North-West and tenet. So thanks for the explanation, loonapick, and above all thanks to Wanderer for making explanations necessary (they’re always obvious after the event)
Thanks loonapick and Wanderer. A lot to enjoy here. A few things threw me: the word ‘required’ in 22d, after as further behind rather than just behind in 19. Many clues a bit wordier than I’m used to. I expect I’ll get used to the style. I would never have worked out that the subtlety in 101. Could anyone get 1d 13d from the actual clue? I struggled to parse it well after I’d written in what it had to be. I can never quite decide if that is fair or not. Certainly the danger is to give up on the parsing.
Thanks Wanderer and loonapick
Picked this one up this afternoon after a two-hour session of SUPing – it was a perfect way to relax !! Started off with ELLA FITZGERALD down the bottom and progressed steadily through the rest of it. Unlike loonapick, it was a couple of the little short ones that were my last in – ROOK (which I found very tricky until getting into chess mode) and the clever homophone with PEKE.
Didn’t parse a couple of them at all – PERFORMING ARTS and RED ADMIRAL – mainly because I forgot to go back them to do so before coming here – still dunno whether I would have got the latter anyway. Also messed up a couple of the parsings – CHARIVARI (had gone with VIRA as the Indian name, obviously got mixed up with Virat Kohli after his efforts in the T20 World Cup) and got the PAST PARTICIPLE a bit wrong with the S.
Like the style of this setter and look forward to his puzzles when they pop up.
Thanks loonapick and Wanderer.
I finished this quickly thinking that I must be cleverer than I really am.
Remarkably – for one whose grammar died when he was a baby – I got PAST PARTICIPLE and parsed it with only the P of PERFORMING ARTS which made me feel inspired.
Last in was CHARIVARI – new word for me but in the bedside dictionary.
My only failing was a full understanding of TENET – thanks for the explanation.
So all in all, a very enjoyable puzzle which made me feel good about myself too.
Marvellous!