One of those days when I felt battered and bruised getting through a crossword – Thanks Wanderer, for an excruciating workout! 🙂
FF: 8 DD: 10+
| Across | ||
| 1 | SHRUBBIEST | Refuse to cycle at end of the street with most woody plants (10) |
| [RUBBISH (refuse, with last two letters moving to the front ~ cycle)] E (end of thE) ST (street) | ||
| 6 | ADIT | Read iTunes “open access” passage (4) |
| hidden in “..reAD ITunes..” | ||
| 10 | ARIEL | Satellite antenna’s broadcast (5) |
| sounds like AERIAL (antenna, moon of uranus/ britain’s first satellite) | ||
| 11 | NINEPENCE | Little change from six pounds (9) |
| hidden in “.. sIX (nine in roman numerals) P (pence) ounds” | ||
| 12, 13 | SHOW ONES TEETH | Defensively threaten to do what’s needed at the dentist’s (4,4,5) |
| double def / cryptic clue | ||
| 15 | ELAPSES | Passes one side of Horseshoe Falls (7) |
| E (one side of horseshoE) LAPSES (falls) | ||
| 17 | SKILFUL | Gifted runner rounded one left at the start (7) |
| SKI (runner) [ FULL (rounded) with 1 L (one left) moving to the start ] | ||
| 19 | OESTRUS | Our Tess suffers in heat (7) |
| OUR TESS* .. didnt know this word | ||
| 21 | PIG IRON | Very good soldier, chap that’s found in bars (3,4) |
| PI (very good, pious) GI (soldier) RON (chap) | ||
| 22, 24 | LATIN AMERICAN | With raving maniac, I learnt a type of 7 (5,8) |
| MANIAC I LEARNT* | ||
| 27 | CONSTABLE | Scan firm’s PC (9) |
| CON (scan) STABLE (firm) | ||
| 28 | ALIBI | Arranged bail before the first proof of innocence? (5) |
| BAIL* followed by I (first of Innocence – proof probably superfluous to the parsing) | ||
| 29 | SLOW | Kind of 7 suggesting child-free smooch! (4) |
| SMOOch (child-free) parsed as S MOO = S LOW (thanks geoff!!) | ||
| 30 | WEATHER EYE | Say if Wanderer is a Sky watcher? (7,3) |
| sounds like WHETHER (if) I (wanderer, setter) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SHAG | Flyer showing second-hand silver (4) |
| S (second) H (hand) AG (silver) | ||
| 2 | RAILHEADS | Rash idea involved taking hold of live terminals (9) |
| RASH IDEA* containing L (live) – didnt know this word | ||
| 3, 16 | BELOW STRENGTH | GB’s net worth possibly cut by UK beginning to leave EU, with pound weakened (5,8) |
| GB’S NET WORTH* [containing E (Eu without U (beginning of Uk) L (pound) ] – very convoluted parsing if this is what it is | ||
| 4 | INNINGS | Money from gambling, say, but no wife for life (7) |
| wINNINGS (money from gambling, without W – wife) | ||
| 5 | SINUSES | Wrong milk leads to small cavities (7) |
| SIN (wrong) USE (milk) S (small) | ||
| 7 | DANCE | Fish without new reel? (5) |
| DACE (fish) around N (new) | ||
| 8 | TOE THE LINE | Conform as poet, having time for good bit of verse (3,3,4) |
| gOETHE (poet, with T – time replacing G – good) LINE (bit of verse) | ||
| 9, 25 | SPITTING IMAGE | Double session involving piano idol (8,5) |
| [SITTING (session) containing P (piano) ] IMAGE (idol) | ||
| 14 | RECOLLECTS | Remembers about prayers needing to be short (10) |
| RE (about) COLLECTS (short prayers) | ||
| 16 | See 3 | |
| 18 | FORMATIVE | Class show up, leading to developmental growth (9) |
| FORM (class) [ reverse of EVITA (show) ] | ||
| 20 | SHAMBLE | Shuffle awkwardly, so a mess when cut (7) |
| SHAMBLEs (mess, truncated) | ||
| 21 | PREHEAT | A right to-do with the oven, when the pear’s in a crumble (7) |
| THE PEAR* | ||
| 23 | TANGO | Leader in the 22 24 7? (5) |
| nato phonetic alphabet for T (leader in The) – 22 24 7 translates to LATIN AMERICAN DANCE of which TANGO is a type | ||
| 25 | See 9 | |
| 26 | JIVE | Regularly join topless female in 7 (4) |
| JI (JoIn, regularly) eVE (female, topless) | ||
*anagram
Thanks, Turbolegs, especially for NINEPENCE, which I just couldn’t see – a tough workout, as you say.
In 28ac, I think I = ‘the first’, as in regnal numbers, eg Elizabeth I – we had it the other day in Qaos’ Guardian puzzle.
Favourites today: LATIN AMERICAN and BELOW STRENGTH [yes, rather tortuous parsing but what a wonderful surface!].
Many thanks, Wanderer – I really enjoyed it.
Great puzzle. many thanks for parsing of NINEPENCE-only beef is 29a-it had to be either SLOW or SNOG .So I was waiting for tbis blog. Still not convinced.You can have a slow dance (possibly with a snog included) but,…..
Otherwise I loved it.Thanks turbo and wanderer.
At the risk of stating the obvious there’s a mini-theme around ‘dances’. FYI, the SHAG is a dance in NC where I live and it always causes great amusement when friends and relatives visit from the UK and see signs for free shagging lessons!
I am still trying to get better at cryptic… usually I find 5 or 6 in a puzzle, here I could only get one. Great puzzle but this is head
Thanks Wanderer, Turbolegs
Super puzzle. Not as hard as the intro suggested, but made harder for a while by putting BARE ONES TEETH, and ESTROUS (which is ok on t’internet, though Chambers has estrus). ADIT was first in, but I think ‘open’ is a bit bare as an indicator. Never would have seen where NINEPENCE was coming from, despite Gazza having done it a couple of weeks ago in NTSPP, with NINETY hidden in Essex coach. Favourites were WEATHER-EYE and CONSTABLE. For SLOW, I got as far as SMOO, and left it at that. See it on Strictly next year.
I think this is the first crossword I had to leave (with just 3 answers) and then come back to. I managed to complete at the second attempt apart from SLOW. Took a while to see why NINEPENCE was correct but a nice feeling when the penny dropped, if you’ll pardon the pun. Used a few aids in the solve, such as an anagram solver for OESTRUS which I hadn’t met before. Held up by entering BARE ONES TEETH for 12,13 – which I think is a more common phrase. Too much of a slog to enjoy but it’s crosswords like this that help me improve so no complaints. Thanks to S&B.
James@5. We crossed. Glad I wasn’t the only one with that answer for 12,13.
Well blogged, Turbolegs! I’ve just one query – in 27 does scan mean con? Shouldn’t it be scam?
Anyway I bit off the end of my pen in frustration with this crossword and it has put me in a foul mood.
Also, in 21dn, I don’t understand why preheating an oven is “A right to-do with the oven”. Please could you explain? Thanks.
Grumpy @8&9
From Chambers under ‘con’: “3. To study carefully, scan, pore over”.
Before cooking something in an oven you should preheat it to the required temperature so it’s ‘the right thing to do’.
Thanks to Wanderer and Turbolegs. Too tough for me and much harder than the Rosa Klebb prize. I added to my difficulty like others above by starting with bare, not show one’s teeth and misspelling OESTRUS-estrous (a term I did know). I did get most of the dance items but was mystified by SLOW.
Just like some others it took me more than one sitting to finish this puzzle, this (in my opinion) wonderful puzzle.
The gateway clue (7d, DANCE) was one of my very first in, although I’d never heard of a fish called dace. The last one in was NINEPENCE (11ac) and the only one I couldn’t parse. Apparently, I wasn’t alone today and looking back at this clue, it’s one of those tricks that Wanderer did before. I had to check h=’hand’ : not sure whether I’ve seen that before (I don’t do horses). As Eileen said, in 28ac Wanderer uses I=’the first’ (and does it better than Qaos who left out ‘the’).
I agree with James about the hidden indicator in 6ac (‘open’) and also think that ‘topless female’ for VE is not fully fair. One needs two steps here and it could be a whole load of other things. I only saw it because I knew the answer had to be JIVE (looking for a dance). The theme of this puzzle was not as omnipresent as it first looked but was surely helpful to get started.
Thanks Turbolegs, it was very difficult, yes, perhaps the hardest crossword from this excellent setter so far.
But for me it felt like a soothing steam bath despite the minor niggles.
This is how I like them!
Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs
Did this one on the day but only got around to checking it off tonight. Found it reasonably challenging and required a couple of intense sessions to get it out. I may have had GRIT ONE’S TEETH at 12a initially and that caused me similar grief as James and Hovis.
Had initially written in SNOG as well at 23a as my last one in – but after not being able to properly parse it, I eventually was able to see the tricky lift and separate device to derive SLOW.
Lots of clever devices used throughout which made one work quite hard to generate each of the answers.