Bit of a curate’s egg from Crux this a.m. …
… in that parts of it, My Lord, were indeed excellent – ECCENTRICS my favourite, novel and clever – but elsewhere, whiffs of not-quite-rightness. I’m hoping in particular that I’m wrong about 7 Down: suggestions very welcome.
| Across | ||
| 1 | HOT CAKES | Bestsellers with a necessarily short shelf life (3,5) |
| Whole clue cryptic definition. | ||
| 5 | SHUNTS | Car crashes as result of son’s illegal pursuits? (6) |
| S (‘son’) + HUNTS. H’mm. Depends whether you think hunts of all sorts are against the law, which, whatever your politics, they ain’t. | ||
| 9 | WAR DANCE | Military two-step, say, as performed by 3? (3,5) |
| Semi-cryptic, 3d being APACHE and a two-step being a sort of dance, military or no. | ||
| 10 | STIFLE | It could mean to choke itself, strangely (6) |
| Anagram (‘strangely’) of ITSELF. | ||
| 11 | HEATHENS | Infidels seen in heart of Lutheran capital . . . . (8) |
| HE (‘heart’ of lutHEran) then ATHENS. Nicely hidden. | ||
| 12 | PARISH | . . . . as churchgoers in another start hostilities (6) |
| Not convinced by this. The construction is clearly PARIS (another ‘capital’ following the preceding clue) then ‘H’ for the start of ‘Hostilities’. But I don’t like the ‘as’ at the beginning, I don’t like the ‘start hostilities’ wordplay and I don’t like hand-me-down clues in general. Otherwise fine, I s’pose. | ||
| 14 | GROUND PLAN | Crushed almost flat, it might represent 1, 15 down (6,4) |
| 1,15 being “How the land lies” of course. Here, it’s GROUND (‘crushed’) and PLAN, i.e. PLANe (as a noun, presumably), or almost. | ||
| 18 | ABSTRACTED | Loosely based around a piece of land miles away (10) |
| Nice def. Anagram (‘loosely’) of BASED around TRACT (‘a piece of land’). | ||
| 22 | DRIVEL | Foolish talk of club finally changing hands (6) |
| DRIVER (a kind of golf-club) with its last letter ‘changing hands’ (L for R). | ||
| 23 | CHEQUERS | Game seen at PM’s residence (8) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 24 | ITALIC | One’s inclined to be emphatic (6) |
| Whole clue definition. | ||
| 25 | OMNIVORE | Drunken Romeo stocks rejected wine – he’d take in anything! (8) |
| Anagram (‘drunken’) of ROMEO, to include VIN (‘wine’) reversed. | ||
| 26 | SHEIKH | Rock and roll heard from Muslim leader (6) |
| Homophone (or very nearly) of SHAKE. | ||
| 27 | GNASHERS | She fitted in a nervous Gran’s teeth (8) |
| SHE in anag (‘nervous’) of GRAN. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1, 15 | HOW THE LAND LIES | He allowed hints to reveal the current situation (3,3,4,4) |
| Anagram (‘to reveal’) of HE ALLOWED HINTS. | ||
| 2 | TARTAN | Modernist art animation with a distinctive check pattern (6) |
| Inclusion (‘with’, I guess) in modernisT ART ANimation. | ||
| 3 | APACHE | Dad’s in pain, being brave perhaps (6) |
| PA in ACHE. | ||
| 4 | ECCENTRICS | Odd characters also found among CIA brides (10) |
| C,A,R,D and S (‘cards’, unconventional chaps or indeed ‘odd characters’) constitute the odd-numbered letters of CiA bRiDeS. Took some effort, but I liked this bit of convention-tweaking. | ||
| 6 | HATBANDS | Workers about to be advised to make decorative ribbons (8) |
| HANDS (‘workers’) around TBA (‘to be advised’. Or ‘arranged’. Or ‘announced’. I’ve never really known, but TBA is splendidly subversive name for a folk band.) | ||
| 7 | NO-FRILLS | Basic, like Cromwell’s dress, not the king’s (2-6) |
| Either this is a rather woolly whole-clue definition or I’m missing something. I hope it’s the latter. | ||
| 8 | SEETHING | Understand an object could get you in a state (8) |
| SEE THING | ||
| 13 | SUPERHUMAN | It describes Kent’s alter ego (10) |
| Whole clue def. Clark Kent, of course. | ||
| 15 | See 1 down | |
| 16 | ASPIRATE | Pronounced with an H like Hook, for instance (8) |
| AS PIRATE, e.g. Captain Hook. | ||
| 17 | FREE KICK | Better than cheap thrill footballers may demand (4,4) |
| Almost double definition. | ||
| 19 | EQUIPS | Supplies the ultimate in rude jokes (6) |
| E (the ‘ultimate’ letter in rudE) + QUIPS. | ||
| 20 | BEGONE | Tell somebody to get lost! (6) |
| BEG ONE. | ||
| 21 | ASPENS | Some trees like enclosures (6) |
| AS (‘like’) PENS (‘enclosures’) | ||
*anagram
Thanks for explaining ECCENTRICS, very clever as you say.
I just took NO-FRILLS to be a double definition – one meaning basic and the other meaning describing Cromwell’s and Charles’s dress. The former went for plain collars and the latter for extravagant ruffs.
To PD
Yep, I get the idea – and that the hyphen kinda differentiates the figurative and literal meanings – but I just think they’re too close to be other than vaguely cryptic. P’raps I’m being over-picky.
I didn’t say it was a good double definition…
Thanks Crux and Grant
I used to find this setter quite straightforward and quick to finish but he has ratcheted up the degree of difficulty in recent offerings – this one made a little harder with the grid configuration in which one had to basically make four separate starts in each corner.
Overall, I thought that it was very good with some nice cryptic definitions and of course that clever ECCENTRICS. Took a while to see the second elliptical clue, PARISH, and quite liked the way that he made that work – am a bit of a fan of a clever ‘run-on’ clue and this one was and not readily apparent either. Although a bit woolly, I think that NO FRILLS kind of works in a semi-humorous way – certainly pictures of the pair show it as so.
Finished in the NE corner with those two clues and SHUNTS (which I didn’t know the crash definition) as the last one in.