I found this tricky at first, but figuring out the numerous reference to “city” in the clues got me going. As inventive and entertaining as always – thank you Paul.
All the cities are in the USA.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BOSTON | City physicist finally splitting subatomic particle (6) |
| physicisT (final letter of) inside (splitting) BOSON (subatomic particle) | ||
| 4 | MEMPHIS | City speed is beyond me (7) |
| MPH (speed) IS following (beyond) ME | ||
| 9 | FILIGREED | One with great desire going after detailed stuff, delicately formed (9) |
| I (one) with GREED (great desire) following (going after) FILL (stuff) missing last letter (detailed) | ||
| 10 | MISER | Bloke spending nought, ultimately? (5) |
| MIStER (bloke) missing (spending) noughT (ultimately, last letter) | ||
| 11 | ADMIN | A racket inspiring head of mafia organisation (5) |
| A DIN (racket) contains (inspiring, breathing in) Mafia (head, first letter of) | ||
| 12 | VASECTOMY | Surgery ends in the clinic with extensive bandaging — gosh! (9) |
| ending letters of thE cliniC inside (with…bandaging) VAST (extensive) then O MY (Oh my, gosh) | ||
| 13 | OUTDOOR | Open-air better, on the other hand (7) |
| OUTDO (better) OR (on the other hand) | ||
| 15 | NEWARK | Strange chest for city (6) |
| NEW (strange) ARK (chest) | ||
| 17 | AUSTIN | City a dollar? (6) |
| A US TIN (an American money, a dollar) | ||
| 19 | ARTEMIS | Lady hunter aims, their odds not looking good? (7) |
| anagram (not looking good) of AIMS and odd letters of ThEiR – goddess of hunting | ||
| 22 | ALDEBARAN | Ball player from 1966 about to block star (9) |
| ALAN (Alan Ball, footballer in 1966 England team) contains (about) DEBAR (to block) | ||
| 24 | RHOMB | Doctor behind huge beast dropping in lozenge (5) |
| MB (doctor) following (behind) RHinO (huge beast) missing IN | ||
| 26 | BOISE | First on back row missing capital city (5) |
| Back (first letter of) then nOISE (row) missing first letter (the capital) | ||
| 27 | ANCHORAGE | Silver in an assignment for city (9) |
| AG (silver) in AN CHORE (assignment) | ||
| 28 | AUGUSTA | Great, a city (7) |
| AUGUST (great) A | ||
| 29 | EL PASO | City in Laos, a pleasure to recall (2,4) |
| found inside laOS A PLEasure reversed (to recall) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BUFFALO | City auditor’s cushion on the ground? (7) |
| BUFFA LO sounds like (for the auditor) “buffer” (cushion) “low” (on the ground) | ||
| 2 | SALEM | City festivals coming up (5) |
| MELAS (festivals) reversed (coming up) | ||
| 3 | ORGAN LOFT | Part of church lost for a long time (5,4) |
| anagram (lost) of FAR A LONG and T (time) | ||
| 4 | MADISON | Nice house around back of cardboard city (7) |
| MAISON (house, as written in Nice) contains (around) cardboarD (back of) | ||
| 5 | MIMIC | Take off soprano part on opening of Carmen (5) |
| MIMI (part for soprano) on Carmen (opening letter of) | ||
| 6 | HISTOGRAM | Chart right, so wrong in the morning (9) |
| anagram (wring) of RIGHT SO then AM (in the morning) | ||
| 7 | STRAYS | Guys about right as drifters? (6) |
| STAYS (guys) containing (about) R (right) | ||
| 8 | DENVER | City singer (6) |
| double definition – singer John Denver | ||
| 14 | TRUNDLING | Initially, terrible judgement about state moving slowly (9) |
| Terrible (initially, first letter of) then RULING (judgement) containing (about) ND (North Dakota, state) | ||
| 16 | WATERFOWL | Formerly outstanding openers going in , two wickets later out for ducks? (9) |
| first letters (openers) of Formerly Outstanding inside (going in) anagram (out) of W W (wicket, twice) and LATER | ||
| 18 | NIRVANA | Irish victory accepted by relative leader in Anthony Eden (7) |
| IR (Irish) V (victory) inside (accepted by) NAN (grandmother, a relative) then Anthony (leading letter of) | ||
| 19 | ARNICA | Daisy wants me out of the country, ban finally secured (6) |
| AmeRICA (country) missing ME containing (with…secured) baN (finally, last letter) – a member of the daisy family | ||
| 20 | SUBZERO | Last letter required to fill old puzzle, flipping bitter! (7) |
| Z (the last letter of the alphabet) inside (required to fill) O (old) REBUS (puzzle) all reversed (flipping) – bitterly cold | ||
| 21 | GAMBIA | Brief tactic to overcome a state (6) |
| GAMBIt (tactic, briefly) before (on top of, in a down answer) A | ||
| 23 | BREWS | Pronounced blemish develops (5) |
| sounds like (pronounced) “bruise” (blemish) | ||
| 25 | OMAHA | City centres in Hoboken, Bamako and Peshawar (5) |
| centre letters of hobOken baMAko ans pesHAwar | ||
*anagram
As usual a most enjoyable puzzle from Paul. I particularly liked 10ac – a touch of genius I thought. Nice one. Having said that, nowhere can I find any evidence that Arnica is a variety of Daisy…..
Tanks PeeDee. Like you, once the cities revealed themselves the rest followed readily enough. I made my LOI, ARTEMIS, hard for myself by taking the odd letters of ‘aims’ and ‘their’ and not being able to account for the i and s. I’m not sure about ADMIN = ORGANISATION, an organisation needs admin but it isn’t quite the same thing. I did have to resort to Google to find out about Alan Ball but it is a timely reference. I wonder if we will be celebrating the names of the 2018 team in another 52 years, I suspect not.
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee. Enjoyable. For once a US solver had a slight advantage (e.g., Madison, Wisconsin was the site of my first job) so on several occasions I got the solution and worked backwards to parse it (e.g., with AUSTIN and BUFFALO). I too did not initially link ARNICA and daisy and HISTOGRAM was new to me.
I also had to use google to solve ALDEBARAN, 22a, Biggles A@2, having never heard of Alan Ball – but with a surname like that, he must have been destined to play football or cricket!
I found it intriguing to slot in all those cities and test my knowledge of US geography in the context of this puzzle. 4a MEMPHIS was my favourite city and VASECTOMY my favourite of the non-themed clues.
Jaydee@1, I solved 19d ARNICA from the wordplay, and didn’t bother checking, just assumed it was a daisy. The pics on google look like daisies but the text says they are a variety of sunflower.
[ACD@4, we crossed, but I thought of you, DaveMc, Valentine and MrPenny and was hoping you and any other US solvers all got to enjoy this one.]
Thanks PeeDee. 4A and D soon gave the theme of US cities more than half – like BOISE – being state capitals. I was fluent in them, once so this was nice going. Got MELAS and the soccer star despite ignorance, from the crossers
Thanks both.
Nice puzzle as usual from Paul. I guessed SALEM from crossers but had to Google to check that ‘melas’ fitted the wordplay.
Re ARNICA: it is a member of the Asteraceae or Compositae family, which is commonly known as the daisy or sunflower family after two of its best-known members.
19D. Arnica is a genus of perennial, herbaceous plants in the Asteraceae family, which is commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family. From Wikipedia.
Well you learn something everyday. Thanks all who put me right about Daisies.
Best Paul puzzle for a while-glad it made the Prize spot
Re 9a :Has “detailed” ever meant “take the tail off” in the English language?
I thought 23d was boils so could not get 26a
Thank you Paul and PeeDee.
Great fun, just right for the Prize. My neighbour is called ALAN BALL, and he came up in a crossword recently, so I was on my guard. I wanted DAKOTA to fit at 21d to keep the US theme going, but of course there are two, North and South.
Appreciate the contributions re ARNICA. I feel bad for not thanking Paul and PeeDee earlier.
Brian @11
Has “detailed” ever meant “take the tail off” in the English language?
Yes, and it still does! (It can also be hyphenated as in de-tail) Just a bit rare. Occurs less than 0.01 times per million words according to the OED. 🙂
I liked this once I sussed that CITIES referred to the American variety. I had visions of having to find cities of the world but getting OMAHA and EL PASO set me straight. I even knew BOISE having travelled in Turkey with a lady who hailed from there
– many years ago. I also knew the footballer, amazingly enough, so I got ALDERBARAN quite quickly.
Nice puzzle.
Thanks Paul.
Many thanks Paul and peedee.
Super puzzle about right level difficulty for me.
Enjoyable mini-theme ; as someone mentioned many but not all the cities are state capitals. I’m sure it’s been done before but maybe there is an opportunity to make a puzzle where city names are linked to other clues containing the State abbreviation, possibly as a ‘missing letter ‘ basis. E.g. Madison would be paired with a clue containing WI (Wisconsin) and so on. Just a thought !
If the non-themed clues The simple but good 10A MISER was my favourite – semi&lit
Thanks Paul and PeeDee. I always struggle with this type of Puzzle where one word, in this case, ‘City’ is the definition for any number of clues. Nevertheless I got there in the end, which I guess is a tribute to Paul’s wordplay. Favourites were BREWS and WATERFOWL.
I’m going to sound a dissenting voice as I thought this was an uninspiring puzzle. The theme was apparent from the start and not a particularly interesting one to me. I think all the cities were “guess the answer and then parse” so more of GK challenge than a cryptic puzzle. I appreciate others will feel differently, especially US solvers for whom it must be nice to get a US themed puzzle that doesn’t feature Donald.
Looking back it was a dnf as we got beaten by GAMBIA and BOISE.
Thanks to Paul and PeeDee.
Yes, for once this was a theme I was on solid ground with.
It should be noted that there are two notable AUGUSTAs (the capital of Maine and the city in Georgia where the Masters golf tournament is played), and two notable SALEMs (the capital of Oregon and the city in Massachusetts that brought the world the term “witch hunt.”) Other than those two, all the rest of these are decently large cities. (The smallest non-state capital in the puzzle is Newark, which is still over 200k people and is in the midst of the nation’s most populous metropolitan region.) So I’d say the puzzle is fair for non-Americans.
ANCHORAGE is the northernmost city in North America with population over 100,000, by the way (nearly 300,000, in fact, and over 400k if you include the suburbs).
I found this tough for a Paul, slow to get started, got some momentum when I twigged the US connection but ground to a halt again and a DNF with several missing. Four in the SW (despite getting Alan Ball), I also didn’t know FILIGREED and failed to get SUBZERO (all one word?)
Some nice clues as ever but my overall experience was closer to WhiteKing’s with this particular theme. You can’t please all of the people all of the time..!
Thanks PeeDee and Paul.
A dnf for me as I had (the unparsed) baile (old Irish for settlement or city) at 26a, and had to look up stars to find one with debar in it and then check the 1966 team to verify Alan. Lots of Pauline cleveness here. I liked outdoor and rhomb and Memphis for their neatness.
Yes, thanks to Paul and PeeDee.
To continue MrPenney’s theme, the smallest city in this puzzle that is a state capital is Augusta, Maine, at 18,494 (thanks, Google). Much smaller than Newark NJ,(which is just across the Hudson from New York City) but still larger that the smallest state capital, Montpelier, Vermont, at 7,535.
Indeed a most enjoyable affair. I’m amazed, or am I seriously, that Paul resisted the NEWARK temptation?
Perhaps even The Guardian has standards!
featherstonehaugh – I never noticed that before! I used to live near to TADCASTER in Yorkshire which might interest Paul too.
featherstonehaugh and PeeDee @23 and 24, help I don’t have a clue what you are referring too!!
S Panza – anagrams of “rude” words, in the style of an immature schoolboy, as favoured by Paul in some of his puzzles (and by some of his solvers)
It too me a little while to get going on this but I was greatly helped by the theme.
New for me was MELA = Hindu festival for 2d, and the footballer Alan Ball in 22a (found him thanks to google)
My favourite was 12a VASECTOMY.
Thanks Paul and PeeDee.
Thank you PeeDee. Doh, now I feel like a complete Newark, call myself a crossword enthusiast!!
Got stuck in the SW corner, but was helped out by a friend using an atlas to give me BOISE and AUGUSTA. Was still stuck on ALDEBERAN (aggravated by misreading “Ball player” as “Ballplayer”), despite writing out all the surnames from the 66 squad. It was while considering the possibility of “star” as def, and the fact that many names of stars are Arabic so begin ‘al-‘ (the) that I finally twigged Alan. Aldebaran means ‘the Follower’, “presumably because it rises near and soon after the Pleiades” (Wikipedia).
Thanks Paul and Peedee
I could not parse Aldebaran and desperately went for Buxton for 17 across.
“Lost for a long time” [ORGAN LOFT]
That is just simply magnificent clueing.
Nothing more to say – that clue (3d) made my day.