A fairly easy one this morning…
… not that that’s a bad thing when you have a blog to write before you get to work.
Once I got the four long answers, which were the best clued in general, most of the other answers were a write-in.
Thanks, Gurney.
| Across | ||
| 1 | TEST CASE | Match box leads to legal action? (4,4) |
| TEST (match) + CASE | ||
| 5 | ASPIRE | Have ambitions to depict a church feature? (6) |
| A SPIRE | ||
| 10 | MOLDOVA | At front member, long-standing, eggs on Republic (7) |
| M(ember) + OLD (“long-standing”) + OVA (“eggs”) | ||
| 11 | ARABIST | Scholar’s skill passes over unfortunate bias (7) |
| ART (“skill”) “passes over” *(bias) | ||
| 12 | LEASE | Contract to give satisfaction? Not at first (5) |
| (p)LEASE | ||
| 13 | TRAGEDIAN | Actor, tense, became very angry with Scotsman? (9) |
| T(ense) + RAGED + IAN | ||
| 14 | HADRIANS WALL | Rash lad upset with in-law’s old- fashioned obstruction? (8,4) |
| *(rash lad in law) | ||
| 18 | HOUSE-TRAINED | Going outside? (5-7) |
| A house-trained pet wouldn’t “go” inside. | ||
| 21 | PALESTINE | Penalties for misbehaving in biblical location? (9) |
| *(penalties) | ||
| 23 | CHASE | Run after tea ultimately his exercise (5) |
| CHA (“tea”) + (hi)S (exercis)E | ||
| 24 | TONTINE | Annuity scheme – sound money taken in (7) |
| TIN (“money”) in TONE | ||
| 25 | ELITIST | Snob perhaps is impressed by fancy title (7) |
| IS “impressed by” *(title) | ||
| 26 | WARDEN | Park official in conflict with animal home (6) |
| WAR + DEN | ||
| 27 | STURGEON | Doctor eating first helping of tuna fish (8) |
| SURGEON “eating” T(una) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | TEMPLE | Part of head building, religious (6) |
| Double definition | ||
| 2 | SULTAN | Some result – a new ruler! (6) |
| Hidden in “reSULT A New” | ||
| 3 | COOPERATE | Be willing to assist barrel maker, worried (9) |
| COOPER (“barrel maker”) + ATE (“worried”) | ||
| 4 | SCATTERBRAINED | Throw water into crash site? Silly (14) |
| SCATTER (“throw”) + (RAIN “into” BED (“crash site”)) | ||
| 6 | STARE | Look fixedly at celebrity, rude in end (5) |
| STAR + (rud)E | ||
| 7 | INIMICAL | At home this person’s in charge leading to endless talk, hostile (8) |
| IN + I’M IC (“in charge”) + (t)AL(k) | ||
| 8 | ENTANGLE | Create difficulties for early invader, not half potent initially (8) |
| (pot)ENT + ANGLE (“early invader”) | ||
| 9 | KALAHARI DESERT | Exotic area, this with lake, extremely rivered? Quite the opposite (8,6) |
| *(area this lake RD) where the RD is the extremes of R(ivere)D | ||
| 15 | SKETCHIER | Less elaborate small boat? That is right (9) |
| S(mall) + KETCH + i.e + R(ight) | ||
| 16 | CHEPSTOW | Suspect the cops wanted initially found in Welsh town (8) |
| *(the cops) + W(anted) | ||
| 17 | DUBLINER | Name on ship for capital guy? (8) |
| DUB + LINER | ||
| 19 | CANINE | Biter is able to take top off wine (6) |
| CAN + (w)INE | ||
| 20 | SEXTON | Church employee, male, say, not going morth (6) |
| SEX (“male, say”) + <=NOT | ||
| 22 | SHINE | Quiet pioneer disregarding odds to perform well (5) |
| SH (“quiet”) + (p)I(o)N(e)E(r) | ||
*anagram
Yes, a fairly benign Thursday offering though there were some tricky ones and a few uncommon words that needed a bit of thought. I liked HOUSE-TRAINED and SCATTERBRAINED – I suppose it’s appeared before, but ‘crash site’ brought a smile.
Thanks to loonapick and Gurney.
Thanks Gurney and loonapick
Found this a bit tougher than the two of you – the fact that HOUSETRAINED (humorous, but no gimme cd if one hadn’t seen it before), KALAHARI DESERT (quite a complex word play and the having to twig that it was &lit) and HADRIANS WALL (another non-trivial word play and cleverly disguised definition) were my last three in may account why that was so !
Writing in unparsed LONDONER at 17d and PENSION at 24a certainly didn’t help matters.
A good mix of simpler clues and the quite devious made this a very entertaining solve for me.