Independent 9,665 by Eccles

by

Eccles now standing in the Wednesday slot, good stuff with one or two needing teasing out.

There appears to be a bit of a minor wedding theme, a bit of politics, football and some rudeness more associated here with the Hoskins recently.

Cheers Eccles.

completed grid

Across

1 Best at everything, including standing (6)
ESTATE
Hidden – included in – bEST AT Everything

5 Essentially, Colin ‘Sex Appeal’ Firth encapsulates virtue (8)
MORALITY
The middle – essentially of coLin & IT – sex appeal inside the MORAY firth

9 Eccles sent back former Israeli leader to get symbols of Judaism (8)
MENORAHS
ME (eccles) & a sent back SHARON (former Israeli leader)

10 Extravagant, like John? (6)
LAVISH
LAV – toilet, john – ISH

11 Long-lasting prettiness requires surgery (10)
PERSISTENT
PRETTINESS* after surgery. Does Eccles do plastic surgery as a part time hobby and advertising here?

12 Periodically misadvised servant (4)
MAID
Every third letter of MisAdvIseD

13 It destroys evidence Republican got rid of boxes with Communist revolutionary (8)
SHREDDER
R(epublican) boxed by SHEDDED – got rid of & RED (commie) reversed [Thanks Hovis]

16 Destroyed leaves? Definitely not – see over for the finer points (6)
DETAIL
DEFOLIATED – destroyed leaves, less “defo” – definitely colloq leaving LIATED then reversed – over

17 Rub guano into shoulders (6)
ANOINT
Hidden – shouldered by guANO INTo

19 Trump starts to harass emigrants, sending them the greatest distance possible (8)
FARTHEST
FART (trump colloq) & starts of H(arass) E(migrants) S(ending) T(hem), not an &LIT though but rather good surface

21 Kind face (4)
TYPE
Double def

22 Moneymen certain to be involved in disgraceful arrest (10)
TREASURERS
SURE – certain in a disgraceful ARREST*. More wishul thinking

25 Perhaps Michael Gove is a fraud (3,3)
CON MAN
Well at the very least Gove is a CON(servative) MAN. Any other reading is entirely is the mind of the solver and the rest of the country.

26 Eager to embrace new plans, primarily, for pre-match gathering (3,5)
HEN PARTY
N(ew) P(lans) inside HEARTY

27 Tattoos and bronze originally done well with pens (8)
INKSTAND
INKS – tattoos & TAN – bronze colour & D(one) originally

28 Criminal mob with sly character (6)
SYMBOL
A criminal  [MOB SLY]*

Down

2 Picture would be offensive if former pupil was present (5)
SCENE
If you add the O(ld) B(oy) you get OBSCENE

3 They make up everything – most are fake (5)
ATOMS
Hmm a fake [MOST A(re)]* A=Are – measure of area

4 Passed wind, asleep and sedated at last (7)
ELAPSED
You need to wind ASLEEP* & the last of (sedate)D

5 In France, my sister overheard person trying to relax (7)
MASSEUR
Where’s K’sD?  MA SOEUR sounds like masseur

6 Told off leader – About time! (7)
RELATED
T(ime) in LEADER* off

7 A tie with a perfect result: 0-0 draw? (4,5)
LOVE MATCH
Love all would be 0-0, cryptic cum double def(s)

8 Swears to check whether that is special (9)
TESTIFIES
TEST – check & IF (whether) & I.E. & S(pecial)

14 Polish cult founder conceals yen to take holiday following hitch (9)
HONEYMOON
HONE – to polish & Y(en) & MOON (founder of the Moonies)

15 I simpered dreadfully in thin outer layer (9)
EPIDERMIS
A dreadful [I SIMPERED]* Not much of a surface reading tho’

18 Bottom fan, or breast? An initially intriguing answer (7)
TITANIA
TIT – breast & AN & intially I(ntriguing) A(nswer)

19 That woman ran outside, wounded (7)
FLESHED
SHE inside FLED

20 Is bitter about topless hosts (7)
RESENTS
Topless (p)RESENTS – hosts

23 Half of football team is dismissed in Spain, for example (5)
REALM
Half of REAL M(adrid)

24 Make speech naked for one-to-one? (5)
RATIO
A naked (o)RATIO(n)

16 comments on “Independent 9,665 by Eccles”

  1. I do love Eccles writing style. Finished, but was unable to parse DETAIL. Looking at rhe reasoning, I’m not surprised. Well done flashling for parsing that one. Liked the slightly(?) risqué clues for ANOINT, FARTHEST, ELAPSED and TITANIA. Spent too long on RESENTS thinking the initial RE came from ‘about’ in the clue. Eccles has a talent for writing good surfaces with well disguised definitions.

  3. I am here, flashling. Would I ever abandon you in your moment of need? Although you didn’t really need me: MASSEUR, as you have indicated, is a pretty good homophone for MA SOEUR (or ma sœur if you want to be technically correct and make the o and e into a ligature …)

    Jennifer on form this morning. Some lovely surface readings, a shedful of wit thrown in, and plenty to smile about. My kind of puzzle.

    Thanks to S&B.

  4. One of those puzzles you feel sorry to finish. Highly enjoyable. I did parse DETAIL, clue-of-the-day imho, and was slightly grumped to see Flashy got it as well to whom Jolly Well Blogged and hearty thanks to Eccles.

  5. A lovely puzzle which we finished with only one pause – to find a synonym for ‘extravagant’ in the thesaurus. Couldn’t parse MORALITY or DETAIL, though, and couldn’t quite make out the parsing of ATOMS. We weren’t too sure, either, about ‘hone’ for ‘polish’ but we see that ‘polish’ is listed under ‘hone’ in our thesaurus.

    So much good stuff we can’t single out a CoD, but we had a good chuckle over the Trump and Gove clues.

    Thanks, Eccles and flashling

  6. Most enjoyable thanks Eccles. It’s good to see someone helping Harry share the heavy lifting of the fart gags.
    Nice blog, flashling

  7. Did this with its esteemed blogger at the weekend and that means there were drinks involved. Because of that I’m not sure my recollections are 100% accurate, but I recall there being plenty of laughs, a bit of headscratching, and overall a very enjoyable experience as you’d expect from our Jennifer. Honours go to the fun factor so thanks to her wots sets ’em for the puzzle and to The Flash for the usual nice blog.

  8. Ahh yes the 4 pints of Adman’s Tally Ho silly strong beer I had, could explain why I couldn’t remember for a while how DETAIL worked when writing this up earlier. The scribbles on the (rather beer stained) paper didn’t really help.

    The clue wot Hoskins wrote for me that day:
    He gets half cut, tucking into beer mostly (4)
    .
    .
    .
    .
    H(e) inside PIL(s)

  10. Lovely stuff from Eccles. Lots of well-written clues and elegant surfaces. MASSEUR was a cracking clue. Many thanks all round.

    Incidentally, Mark Goodliffe – who obviously/understandably doesn’t stop to take in the scenery when he solves – banged this one out in 4 and half minutes as part of a triple header on his vlog today:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZXf9PbGeL8&sns=em

    I can only hope he tries this tomorrow too! 😉

  11. Had my work cut out with some of these – you’re definitely making them a bit tougher these days, Andy!
    In the end I was left with 16a & 3d unparsed – and have to be honest and say that even having read the review I’m not very convinced by 3d.

    Tops for me were 5&27a with a mention for 18d despite my fear that you’re getting drawn into the dark world inhabited by Harry…..

    Many thanks to Eccles and to flashling for the blog.

  12. Thanks Ecclesiastical for another cracking puzzle. A few I didn’t parse before coming here. I liked TITANIA and INKSTAND, with loads of other great clues.

    Many thanks Flashling for an excellent and entertaining review. But please do take it easy now that you are older.

  14. Very entertaining – hard to pick a favourite clue.

    Thanks flashling (and Hoskins) for parsing DETAIL, it had us fooled.

    Thanks Eccles – more please.

  15. Cheers for the blog and all the comments, and also thanks to Gila for the link. I think that’s quicker than I could solve it! I’ve watched quite a few of those vlogs, I do find them interesting.

    The mini-theme, btw, was mere coincidence.

  16. Not much to add now – just popping into thank Eccles and Flashling, and to say that I much enjoyed this.

    I nearly failed to parse ATOMS, but remembered the required are at pretty much the last minute before giving up. I needed the blog to explain the DETAIL though.

    Too many chuckles for me to go back and try to remember where they occurred.

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