Sunday afternoon and Everyman in the pub after reading the Observer.
Some nice clues I felt, but not too much to scare this solver at least.
Thanks Everyman
Across
1 Break shower control (8)
RESTRAIN
REST & RAIN
5 Delay brought about by cut in pace (6)
GALLOP
LAG reversed & LOP (cut)
9 Quiet revolutionary in scrap (5)
SHRED
SH (quiet!) & RED (commie)
10 Absolutely out of action? Correct (9)
DOWNRIGHT
DOWN (out of action) & RIGHT
12 Playing part, is dunce lacking experience? (11)
UNPRACTISED
[PART IS DUNCE]* played
13 Frighten bovine animal (3)
COW
Double def
14 Great stuff about spies, unknown outwardly (13)
SUPERFICIALLY
SUPER (great) & CIA (spies) in FILL (to stuff) & Y (unknown in Maths)
17 Thieving identified after match? (5-8)
LIGHT-FINGERED
LIGHT (a match) & FINGERED (indentifed). Liked this one too.
21 For support, sacrificing pawn (3)
PRO
P(awn) missing from PRO(p)
22 Tall plant unfamiliar to me was weed (11)
MEADOWSWEET
[TO ME WAS WEED]* unfamiliarly. Not a plant I knew by name, but hey I’m a philistine about such things 🙂
23 Do I hear weirdly commercial band? (9)
RADIOHEAD
[DO I HEAR]* wierdly & AD(vert)
24 Sphere’s true mass (5)
REALM
REAL & M(ass)
25 Place with comfort and delight (6)
PLEASE
PL(ace) & EASE
26 Warm run with one aim in race (8)
FRIENDLY
R(un) & 1 & END (aim) in FLY (to race)
Down
1 Salvage engineers head for scene, prompt (6)
RESCUE
Royal Engineers & S(cene) & CUE (a prompt)
2 Markings persist in varied form (7)
STRIPES
PERSIST* varied
3 Seaside town favoured for special treatment (3,6)
RED CARPET
REDCAR (town) & PET (favoured)
4 Cooked dinner, teatime not exactly known (13)
INDETERMINATE
[DINNER TEATIME]* cooked. Very nice clue.
6 Bitter answer, cold and clear (5)
ACRID
A(nswer) & C(old) & RID (to clear)
7 Reasonable soldier accepted by resident (7)
LOGICAL
G.I. in LOCAL (a resident)
8 Tips from artist on height and width among rewards in courses (8)
PATHWAYS
tips of A(rtis)T & H(eight) & W(idth) in PAYS (rewards)
11 How rapid news developed about good detergent (7,6)
WASHING POWDER
G(ood) in [HOW RAPID NEWS]* developed
15 Set aside reins, ever prepared (2,7)
IN RESERVE
[REINS EVER]* prepared
16 Nonsense in court about stage before strike (8)
CLAPTRAP
LAP (stage) IN C(out)T & RAP (strike, hit)
18 One from Tyneside taking part in binge or dieting? (7)
GEORDIE
Hidden answer
19 Stop challenging traditionalist (7)
DIEHARD
DIE (stop) & HARD
20 Squat saint, rough, ignoring bishop (6)
STUMPY
S(ain)T & B(ishop) removed from (b)UMPY
22 Spirits low on empty days (5)
MOODS
MOO (low like cattle) & empty D(ay)S
Thank you Everyman and flashling.
An enjoyable puzzle with some really good surfaces. I liked RESTRAIN, UNPRACTISED, LIGHT-FINGERED, DIEHARD and DOWNRIGHT in particular – last in was REALM.
I couldn’t get the plant without looking it up either but everything else solved easily enough.
Nothing particularly memorable as a clue but I liked Radiohead and Geordie. Moods is the only one I wasn’t too conforable with.
I thought this was rather hard for this slot, but perhaps I was just having a bad day. I still enjoyed it, as usual with an Everyman. Favourites included RADIOHEAD and LIGHT-FINGERED.
MEADOWSWEET was familiar as a few months ago I was in the exact situation described in the clue. We are renting a house while ours is being renovated and we found an unknown plant in the garden here which turned out to be meadowsweet. The flowers were quite pretty and smelt quite nice but the leaves smelt of TCP. It was quite large and floppy and overwhelmed other plants in the bed, so we pulled it up once it finished flowering.
Thanks, Everyman and flashling.
An enjoyable as ever, pretty straightforward offering. 23ac was quite nicely done I thought.
Thanks for the blog flashling. The plant was new to me as was the town Redcar. All in all it was a fair and enjoyable solve.
Wow! That was easy. That’s the fastest I’ve ever finished an Everyman crossie. All done in under an hour.
When I first looked at this I thought it was going to be difficult, but as I got into it, it all solved itself. I even got meadowsweet . Must have heard of it somewhere. My favourite was moods.
Most enjoyable. Thanks Flashling. I had never heard of the town, Redcar.
I found this one easier than most but not as easy that it could be finished in an hour like some! ..
Few too many anagrams in the clues perhaps, I never feel quite as clever solving the anagrams. But at least they get you well on the way. Thought 3d was clever even tho I had never heard of the town either. like 26 ac also, in fact the non anagram clues were all quite good
Failed to parse Redcar although I’ve heard of the place, albeit I associate it more with horse racing than the seaside.
Everything else quite predictable, and somewhat less textured than a month or so ago. Took me over an hour too, Vanessa.