One or two pleasing wrinkles in a very fair Tuesday puzzle from Sayang, a new setter to me.
Apologies for being late on parade today for reasons given below. This wasn’t my quickest FT solve but then my mind was elsewhere. Good grid well clued. Thanks, Sayang.
| Across | ||
| 1, 5 | AMERICAN INDIAN | In a rain dance, I’m involved (8,6) |
|
Anagram (‘involved’) of ‘IN A RAINDANCE IM’, plus a whole-clue charade as the definition. |
||
| 9 | THRILLER | Michael Jackson song for a Hitchcock movie perhaps (8) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 10 | NAPALM | Horrible weapon ally used in war (6) |
| PAL (‘ally’) in NAM. a common US abbreviation for the Viet Nam war with, I perceive, a slightly tendentious whole-clue ref. to Britain’s non-combative support thereof. | ||
| 12 | ANNOY | Some mayonnaise poured back to drive you crazy (5) |
| Reversal (‘poured back’) of inclusion (‘some’) in maYONNAise. | ||
| 13 | TERMAGANT | Witch’s spell is a yawn (9) |
| ‘TERM’ (a ‘spell’ as in, say, a presidential term in office) plus A GANT, ‘gant’ being Scots for ‘yawn’, apparently. New one on me. | ||
| 14 | COPPER | Arrest a policeman (6) |
| COP as informal verb for ‘arrest’ and PER for ‘a’, as in ‘a shilling per (a) pound.’ | ||
| 16 | WEARIED | Exhausted don having limeade? Not odd (7) |
| WEAR for ‘don’ (put on clothes) and even (‘not odd’) letters of lImEaDe. | ||
| 19 | HOSTILE | Unfriendly compere upset high priest (7) |
| HOST (‘compere’) and reversal (‘upset’) of biblical priest ELI. | ||
| 21 | BADGER | Harry the weasel’s relative (6) |
| Double definition. Whether weasels and badgers are closer then kissing cousins is for the biologists to tell us. | ||
| 23 | REPLICATE | Reproduce altarpiece without a hassle (9) |
| Anagram of ALTARPIECE missing out one of its ‘A’s. | ||
| 25 | SCARE | Shock Mark with drug (5) |
| SCAR (‘mark’) + E (‘ecstasy’, a drug). Simple little clue but my last in today: there were so many possible variables for ‘mark’ and ‘drug’. | ||
| 26 | ANSWER | Respond to a couple of points we rebutted at the start (6) |
| ‘A’, then N+S (a couple of compass points), then WE, then ‘R’ (start of Rebutted). Quite a complex parse. | ||
| 27 | BIGAMIST | Criminal with an extra match (8) |
| Whole clue charade. ‘Arsonist’ was clearly in Sayang’s mind as a piece of michievous diversion. | ||
| 28 | ELEVEN | “One by One” for the team (6) |
| 1 and 1 together give a soccer or cricket side. Other team sports are available but not in this house. | ||
| 29 | CEMETERY | Burial ground for church to gauge by the end of Saturday (8) |
| CE (Church of England), + METER + Y (end of SaturdaY). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | ACTUAL | Tangible deed twin did not start (6) |
| ACT (‘deed’) + UAL, being ‘dual’ (‘twin’) without its ‘D’. | ||
| 2 | ERRONEOUS | Misguided neurosurgeon operating without gun (9) |
| Anagram of NEUROSURGEON without GUN. I’m always impressed by these addition/exclusion anagrams: the setter’s possibilities are clearly endless… | ||
| 3 | ISLAY | Is place source of good Scotch? (5) |
| IS + LAY (‘place’) with a whole clue question whose answer is very definitely ‘Yes’. And mine’s a Laphraoig. | ||
| 4 | ABETTER | An accomplice of a higher quality (7) |
|
‘A better’ for the last 3 words. |
||
| 6 | NYASALAND | Sayang, losing good ground before country was Malawi (9) |
|
My favourirte today, for sneaky misdirection. ‘Sayang’ is of course our setter, but that’s (cleverly) irrelevant: he’s just made himself into an anagram (minus that G for ‘good’) – ‘ground’ is the anagrind – so we get NYASA followed by LAND (for ‘country’: I’d thought it was ‘ground’, but that’s already bagged by the anag.) to give just the last two words as definition. Very nice. |
||
| 7 | IVANA | The terrible article on Donald’s wife (5) |
| IVAN (The Terrrible) then A (article) to give us Donald (The Dreadful: sorry, he just is) Trump’s wife as the answer. | ||
| 8 | NEMATODE | Demon ate wriggly worm (8) |
| Anagram (‘wriggly’) of DEMON ATE | ||
| 11 | CROW | Boast about slanging match (4) |
| ‘C’ (‘circa’, for ‘about’) then ROW for ‘slanging match.’ | ||
| 15 | PRIVILEGE | Right status symbol (9) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 17 | ITERATIVE | Attire I’ve tailored time and time again (9) |
| Anagram (‘tailored’) of 1st 3 words. So would ‘reiteratve’ mean ‘time and time and time again?’ | ||
| 18 | SHORTAGE | Need for identification in coastal area (8) |
| TAG (‘identification’) in SHORE. | ||
| 20 | ELAN | Flair for Spanish and English articles (4) |
| Combination of Spanish EL and English AN, grammatical ‘articles’ both. | ||
| 21 | BEELINE | Worker to queue on the most direct route (7) |
| BEE (‘worker’) on LINE (‘queue’). | ||
| 22 | DEFTLY | First to dazzle us in city in an artful manner (6) |
| I’ve been gigging at Ely Folk Festival all this weekend, hence late blog, sorry, so the ‘city’ was a gimme but ‘FT’ – for Financial Times – shamefully gave me pause. Blimey, both my obsessions in one clue. I’ll know in future. So: ‘D’ for ‘dazzle’, followed by FT (‘us’) in ELY. |
||
| 24 | PASSE | Old-fashioned clown in gym (5) |
| ASS in PE. | ||
| 25 | SCALE | System of measurement of plaque (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
*anagram
This was good fun.
Having done all of Sayang’s crosswords since 2013, I thought today’s was the best so far.
I enjoyed all of the ‘whole-clue’ offerings in the puzzle.
“Good grid well clued” sums it up well. Thanks Sayang and Grant.
I agree, mike04, by far the best puzzle Sayang gave us since he first appeared in the FT.
For which thanks to the setter.
1,5ac was a very nice find.
A full-blood &lit (or as you call it, Grant, a ‘whole-clue charade’).
I didn’t know that Donald Trump once had a wife called Ivana – you always learn something.
For the second day in a row we had Michael Jackson’s THRILLER (after yesterday’s Rufus).
I thought 14ac was perhaps a bit weak, ‘cop’ and ‘copper’ are not unrelated, I think.
That said, I completely overlooked the sneaky ‘a’ (= per).
Purists – I am not one of them (despite what some people seem to think) – may say that the use of the past tense in 1d (‘did’) is not great.
However, the surface needs it, ‘does’ would be slightly unsatisfying.
My only objection in this otherwise enjoyable crossword is the use of ‘is’ in 13ac.
It is completely out of place.
One could write “Witch’s spell’s a yawn” but that looks ugly.
Many thanks, Grant.
ps, are you playing in a band or doing solo gigs?
Thanks Grant and Sayang.
Pretty classy stuff from Sayang.
I particularly liked the surface in the clue for NAPALM.
GANT for yawn was new to me too but clearly clued so no issues there.
At 9ac, Rufus had Novel – Album for THRILLER in his Guardian puzzle of the previous day. Sayang has used Hitchcock movie – song.
PRIVILEGE and COPPER were my last two in, both took a while to work out.
Good fun.
Thanks Sayang and Grant
Found this the hardest and most enjoyable puzzle by this setter as well (including all of his ones since, given that this is a backlog solve). A good variety of devices, including the whole clue definitions such as in 1a and not so many of the clues that can appear ‘try hard’ from him either.
THRILLER (which I had a complete blank on for way too long and needed all of the crossers to get – with an ensuing head-slap) and COPPER (with it’s tricky word play of ‘a’ = per) were the last couple in.