A pretty straightforward solve today from PHSSSTHPOK but with a few interesting twists.
With forbidden fruit, deadly sins and a plague of boils in the grid, Mycroft and I were looking for something biblically cataclysmic which never quite materialised.
Nonetheless, an enjoyable romp with the linked last couple of across clues a highlight.
| Across | ||
| 1 | FORBIDDEN FRUIT | Apple, perhaps, is in favour of offer to study profits (14) |
| FOR (in favour of), BID (offer), DEN (study room), then FRUIT (profit). [The online version shows (14) instead of (9,5) for the numerator]. | ||
| 10 | MINUS | In dividing, opposite of addition sign (5) |
| ‘IN’ divides ‘SUM’ backwards. | ||
| 11 | SKINNY DIP | Diet hummus might be fun, if it’s not too cold (6-3) |
| ‘Diet’ (for SKINNY) is an adjective here, as in, say ‘Diet Coke’. The ‘might be’ goes with ‘hummus’ to exemplify your DIP. | ||
| 12 | REVENGE | Under no circumstances say each word back in retaliation (7) |
| NEVER and EG (for ‘say’), each reversed. | ||
| 13 | GASTRIC | Flatulence sounds like quirk of the stomach (7) |
| ‘Flatulence’ (GAS) and the homonym ‘trick’ combine to cause possible embarrassment. | ||
| 14 | SHRED | Split without a trace (5) |
| SHARED (‘split’) without the ‘A’. | ||
| 16 | DISMISSAL | Release princess’s letter (9) |
| Letter (‘missal’) from DI, (thus DI’S) late Princess of Wales. | ||
| 19 | BYSTANDER | Spectator sees long innings encapsulated by two runs, one scored off the bat (9) |
| In cricket a STAND is a decent innings, usually by two batsmen in partnership. Here, it’s surrounded by a BYE, an extra run conceded by a fault from the fielding side (e.g. an illegally bowled delivery) and ‘R’, for a run scored after a normally played stroke by the batsman. | ||
| 20 | GLIDE | Skim opening of literary collection by French writer (5) |
| Here, ‘L’, the opening of Literary, is ‘collected’ by author Andre GIDE. | ||
| 22 | SURPLUS | Subtract 500 from irrational number and add remainder (7) |
| In maths, a SURD is an ‘irrational’ quantity (or, according to songwriter Jake Thackray, a little flower with square roots). ‘D’, Latin for 500, is subtracted from that word and PLUS (for ‘add’) tagged on to give this rather nice construct. | ||
| 25 | MOBSTER | Male crustacean missing head and hood (7) |
| ‘M’ for male, follwed by a decapitated (L)OBSTER to give you a gangster. | ||
| 27 | TOADSTOOL | To get mushroom risotto (not Irish), load is blended (9) |
| An anagram of riSOTTO+LOAD, I take it, though I’m not clear why RISOTTO should lose its ‘RI’ which isn’t a recognised abbreviation of Ireland or the Irish as far as I can ascertain. Enlightenment, please. | ||
| 28 | IDLES | Reportedly, they get 29 loafs (5) |
| ‘Idols’, homonym for the answer, may be ‘put on a pedestal’. Some slight sneakiness here, in that the plural of the noun ‘loaf’ is always ‘loaves’, so the surface is technically ungrammatical. Nice clue, though. | ||
| 29 | PUT ON A PEDESTAL | Worship pope and salute the leader in revolution (3,2,1,8) |
| Anag. of – pay attention – POPE,AND,SALUTE, and T, the ‘leader’ of ‘The’. | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | OMNIVORES | They eat anything at movies, when cooked with last three bits of popcorn (9) |
| Anag. of MOVIES+popcORN | ||
| 3 | BOSUN | Sailor’s prize switched compass headings (5) |
| ‘BONUS’ (‘prize’) with it ‘N’ and ‘S’ (‘compass points’) exchanged. | ||
| 4 | DESCENDED | Dropped diamonds before key broke off (9) |
| ‘D’ for (the card suit) diamonds, ESC for the escape ‘key’ on a computer then ‘ended’ for ‘broke off’. | ||
| 5 | EKING | Managing to be master of the internet? (5) |
| Charade on ‘eKING’. | ||
| 6 | FINISHING | Angling to keep in type of school (9) |
| ‘IN’ within ‘FISHING’ to give us ‘finishing school’. Do those odd places still exist? | ||
| 7 | UDDER | It produces milk shake with top skimmed off (5) |
| ‘jUDDER’ without its top letter. | ||
| 8 | TYPICAL | Stock production from clay pit (7) |
| Anag. of CLAY PIT. | ||
| 9 | SMARTS | Burns brains (6) |
| Double definition. A person with brains ‘has the smarts’. | ||
| 15 | DEADLY SIN | Perhaps sloth yields and topples over (6,3) |
| Anag. (‘topples over’) of ‘YIELDS AND’. | ||
| 17 | SCRAMBLED | Struggled to get away, then ran (9) |
| SCRAM for ‘get away’, then ‘BLED’, as will a red shirt in the wash. Don’t ask. | ||
| 18 | SCINTILLA | Hint of lilac in street composition (9) |
| Anag. of LILAC+IN+ST(reet) | ||
| 19 | BUS STOP | Where to get on board and kiss captain (3,4) |
| To ‘BUSS’ is (or was) to kiss and a CAPTAIN is, I suppose, TOP in some not-quite-defined sense. I wouldn’t try this on the 199 into Sockport… | ||
| 21 | EGRESS | Oriental monster beheaded going out (6) |
| ‘E’ for eastern (‘oriental’) then an ‘oGRESS’ loses her head. | ||
| 23 | REACT | Be moved by what you do in Take Two? (5) |
| Having acted in Take One, the film actor clearly has to do it again in subsequent takes. | ||
| 24 | SLOOP | Small reservoir capsized boat (5) |
| ‘S’ for small, then POOL, for ‘reservoir’, turned over. | ||
| 26 | BOILS | Black paints cause plague (5) |
| ‘B’ for ‘black’ with ‘oils’. | ||
*anagram
28A I think LOAFS is the singular of the verb to LOAF
27a. Taxation law in Ireland refers to Republic of Ireland and RI
Thanks PHSSTHPOK & Grant B
Pedantic point re 19A: a bye is not an extra off an illegal delivery (which would be wides or no-balls, and lead to a repeat of the delivery) but run(s) off a legal delivery that hasn’t been hit by the bat and so doesn’t add to the batsman’s personal score.
Thanks Phssthpok and Grant
Interesting puzzle this one which took the elapsed day to finish off.
Went slightly different with the parsing of 10a – I thought that it was referencing the ‘-‘ component of the division sign (which I don’t have on my phone) to represent the minus sign. Otherwise addition is doing double duty – isn’t it ?
Wasn’t able to parse DESCENDED and just forgot to mark off the anagram of 29a.
Some original and clever devices used in the puzzle which I enjoyed a lot.
Finished with the tricky BOILS and SCINTILLA followed by the very clever misdirection in SHRED.
Oh … and I skimmed off the top of SHUDDER at 7d.
Thanks and welcome back oh most esteemed unpronounceable one. And thanks Grant for an enlightening blog.
I found this far from straightforward and struggled to explain a few – thanks in particular for explaining SURD and BUSS.
Because I work from the downloaded pdf, I was irritated by the two word answer to 1ac – which got me looking to pick nits.
I did end up marking a few but my only real gripes are “word” in 12ac – eg is not of itself a word – and surely Andre Gide is pretty obscure (or am I unusual in not being so well read in French?)
But thanks Phssthpok for the challenge which I did enjoy.