Redshank’s challenge today felt like a slugfest ! Had to work hard to solve several clues, and progress was painstakingly slow at regular intervals. Thanks Redshank for a high-intensity workout !!
FF: 8 DD : 9
| Across | ||
| 1 | WRETCHEDNESS | Crew sends the snakes in pitiful condition (12) |
| CREW SENDS THE* | ||
| 8 | TEAROOM | Café leaves anchor back (7) |
| TEA (leaves) ROOM (anchor = MOOR, reversed) | ||
| 9 | HANGMAN | He delivers final sentence in word game (7) |
| double def | ||
| 11 | CON BRIO | Instruction written above bar with defective biro (3,4) |
| CON (with) followed by BIRO* | ||
| 12 | SCEPTIC | He has doubts about stopping tank (7) |
| C (about) in SEPTIC (tank) | ||
| 13 | CUT UP | Distraught trade union enters competition (3,2) |
| TU (trade union) in CUP (competition) | ||
| 14 | EMPENNAGE | English conjuror hides Quaker in rear of plane (9) |
| E (english) [ MAGE (conjuror) hides PENN (quaker, william) ] – i needed help to fully parse this. william penn founded pennsylvania. | ||
| 16 | RELUCTANT | Disinclined to rave about clue solved on time (9) |
| RANT (rave) about [ CLUE* + T (time) ] | ||
| 19 | PEPYS | Old journalist’s yen to spike unfinished drink (5) |
| Y (yen) in PEPSi (drink , unfinished) , samuel pepys, famous for a diary he maintained in the late 1600’s | ||
| 21 | ASTOUND | Stagger around street, coming in for resistance (7) |
| ArOUND [ with ST (street) replacing R (resistance) ] | ||
| 23 | ON A ROLL | Where you may find ham doing well (2,1,4) |
| cryptic clue | ||
| 24 | ELEVATE | Give lift to team, almost recruiting a team leader (7) |
| ELEVEn (team, almost, from cricket) containing [ A T (Team, first letter) ] | ||
| 25 | EXTREME | Following leaderless servicemen is dangerous (7) |
| nEXT (following, leaderless) REME ( servicemen, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) | ||
| 26 | STREPTOMYCIN | Antibiotic protects my pants while batting (12) |
| PROTECTS MY* (pants = anagrind) + IN (batting, cricket) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | WHATNOT | Stand capacity in town ground (7) |
| HAT (capacity, as in “working in the capacity of “) in TOWN* | ||
| 2 | EGO TRIP | Selfish pursuit such as old radical wearing crown (3,4) |
| EG (such as, example) O (old) [ R (radical) wearing TIP (crown) ] | ||
| 3 | COMMON ERA | These days a non-royal takes precedence (6,3) |
| COMMONER (non-royal) A | ||
| 4 | ETHOS | Those last to reach top show spirit (5) |
| THOSE with E – last letter, moving to the front (top in a down clue) | ||
| 5 | NANKEEN | With which granny bandaged injured knee? (7) |
| NAN (granny) around KNEE* | ||
| 6 | SUMATRA | Section in Koran describing dull island (7) |
| SURA (section in koran) around MAT (dull, u.s. spelling) | ||
| 7 | STOCK CAR RACE | In which a crack Escort gets wrecked? (5-3,4) |
| &lit? A CRACK ESCORT* | ||
| 10 | NICKEL SILVER | It made cutlery in Northern Ireland and Greece at first (6,6) |
| NICKEL (northern ireland = NI, chemical symbol) [ A (and) G (greece) – chemical symbol for silver ] | ||
| 15 | PETROLEUM | Reme and Pluto managed to supply it (9) |
| REME PLUTO* | ||
| 17 | LITHEST | None more graceful than this cultivated thistle (7) |
| THISTLE* | ||
| 18 | COURAGE | Bottle about as old as we are . . . . . (7) |
| C (about) {OUR AGE} (as old as we are) | ||
| 19 | PLASTIC | . . . . still contains only remaining cards (7) |
| PIC (still, as in still photograph) containing LAST (only remaining) | ||
| 20 | PHONE IN | Mobile home show with audience participation (5-2) |
| PHONE (mobile) IN (home) | ||
| 22 | DWELT | Lived and died with regular sips of Merlot (5) |
| D (died) W (with) ELT (regular letters of mErLoT) | ||
*anagram
Thank you for the blog Turbolegs – I found this heavy going in places too. Did like a fair few, though.
Thanks to Redshank for the challenge.
Thanks, Turbolegs.
Yes, a bit of a challenge – I thought 10dn was fiendish!
I enjoyed teasing out EMPENNAGE, a word I’d never heard of, but I did know William Penn and guessed it had something to do with wings [Latin penna = feather, wing] and then was interested to find in Chambers that it also means the feathering of an arrow. So that’s two things learned in one day – but I can’t see myself using either of the meanings in conversation any time soon.
My favourite clue was STREPTOMYCIN, which made me laugh, and, among many great surfaces, I particularly liked NANKEEN and COURAGE.
Many thanks to Redshank for a very enjoyable workout.
Yes, I guessed 10d without having any idea of the parsing – very clever and I would never have worked it out. I also didn’t know WHATNOT or EMPENNAGE, though both were gettable from the wordplay. Liked the ‘crack Escort…’ clue (‘Escort’ (the car) also came up in another puzzle somewhere recently), the surface of STREPTOMYCIN and PEPYS.
Thanks Turbolegs and Redshank
Thanks TL. I thought it was delightful. I didn’t find it “a slugfest”, on the contrary I thought that all the clues revealed themselves steadily from the wordplay. I didn’t have to rely on “seeing” the answer, the gird was friendly (not always the case with the FT), and all was fine for me – save for the parsing of 10 down when not for the first time the Periodic Table caught me out. I’ve only done 3 puzzles this week (I’m a real part-timer at this) but as they have been Julius, Nestor, and Redshank, it could hardly be better. Let’s see what the weekend has in store!
Wonderful puzzle but a somewhat strange experience for me.
I found the left hand side almost a write-in but then came the remaining part.
Full of the trickery as one might expect from Redshank.
Like others, I had to check EMPENNAGE (14ac) which was gettable from the wordplay after having most of the crossers.
And 10d, yes, a great find.
I just wonder whether PETROLEUM (15d) has something to do with Pluto and/or Reme.
Otherwise the definition would be extremely loose, in my opinion.
That said, I liked all this very much.
Thanks Turbolegs (and Redshank, of course).
Thanks Redshank and Turbolegs.
That was a very enjoyable puzzle, which I thought was on Redshank’s easier side (NB In the light of the current brouhaha I’m not saying that it was an easy puzzle!).
Sil @ 5: PLUTO was the way the invading allies got fuel to France after the Normandy imvasion. It stands for PipeLine Under The Ocean.
hth
PS to me @ 6: and presumably it was operated by REME. That would have been logical.
Simon S @6
Gosh, yes – I’d forgotten that. It makes that an excellent clue, which has to join my favourites.
Thanks Turbolegs and Redshank!
Enjoyable as always, but had gaping holes in SE corner not knowing Pepys, “call in” being the American equivalent stuck in my head and was besotted with “static” for still… all my faults 🙁
Hello all, my first post on the site. Newbie. American. Have mercy on me!
Stumped on: 19a, 25a, 4d, 10d, 19d
Parsed incorrectly but guessed from crosses and def: 21a, 24a, 1d, 2d, 5d, 6d
Favorite clue: 18d. Was there any significance to the ellipses in 18d and 19d? 1a was a pretty gnarly anagram.
I can see I’m going to have to brush up on my Periodic Table, that’s fooled me before. I hope the REME aren’t going to be digging holes in all my future efforts.
Thanks Redshank and Turbolegs
My last backlog puzzle from the 2016 gap … and what a hard, but crackingly good one that it was !!! It took longer than usual and called on a higher than number of ‘cheats’ (word finders, etc.) to nut all of the answers out.
There was so much depth in many of the clues – no better exemplified by PETROLEUM (where I was sure that the REME and PLUTO anagram fodder would somehow be incorporated into the overall clue as well, and thanks to Simon@6 and 7 – they were indeed).
The most pleasing part in retrospect was being able to fathom the logic behind NICKEL SILVER – just had to ratify that is what was used to make cutlery.
A couple of new terms – STREPTOMYCIN and EMPENNAGE, along with some unusual twists in definitions (hat – capacity, still – pic, con – with). Failed to properly parse COMMON ERA.
Finished in the NW corner with WHATNOT (really tricky) , that COMMON ERA and CON BRIO as the last few in.