Really enjoyed this. Tough for an FT Tuesday though with a jaw-slackening misprint.
Much excellence on offer today with very few giveaways and some great, economical surfaces, 15d and 19d standouts for me. Thakns to Jason. But that misprint at 9…
| Across | ||
| 1 | HUSSAR | Soldier, one in the main near a Queen (6) |
| HUSS (a sea-dwelling fish, therefore ‘one in the main’) + A + R[egina], ‘queen’. Not simple but I’d’ve got it a lot quicker if I hadn’t been so slow with 1d. Tsk. | ||
| 4 | STABLE | Long-lasting bread’s first slice, not crisp outside (6) |
| STALE (‘not crisp’) outside B (‘first slice’ of Bread). | ||
| 8 | DIGITAL | Like something aluminium related to popular technology (7) |
| DIG (‘like’) + IT (‘something’) + AL[uminium]. | ||
| 9 | STINKER | Small mischevious child is a horror (7) |
| S[mall] + TINKER (‘mischievous [sic] child’). I’m sorry but ‘mischevious’ is a woeful spelling mistake, one that I hate and can’t help correcting when I hear it aloud and unforgivable in print, to the extent that it held me up while I tried to work out how such an obvious howler was affecting the clue. A ‘horror’? Yup. A ‘stinker’? Certainly, but NOT a DD. Just wrong. Grump. | ||
| 11 | STARGAZERS | Name those paying attention to visionaries (10) |
| STAR (a ‘name’) + GAZERS (‘those paying attention’). | ||
| 12 | FIGS | Cool people don’t care for these fruit (4) |
| A double definition. The righteous ‘don’t give a fig’. | ||
| 13 | ASPIC | Jelly is so far still, perhaps (5) |
| AS (‘so far’, as in ‘[as] we speak’, though I’m struggling to find an exact like-for-like, help welcome), then PIC[ture], a cinematic ‘still [shot], perhaps’. | ||
| 14 | SUPPLANT | Down with manufacturing facility – it’s to topple (8) |
| SUP (to drink or to ‘down’) + PLANT (‘manufacturing facility’). | ||
| 16 | PROSPECT | The future professionals loudly kissed (8) |
| PRO[fessional]S + PECT, a homophone (‘loudly’) of ‘pecked’ = ‘kissed’. | ||
| 18 | ROOMY | Capacious jumper, gosh! (5) |
| [kanga]ROO (a ‘jumper’) + MY! (‘gosh!). | ||
| 20 | SPAM | Vespa moped delivers junk food (4) |
| Inclusion in ‘veSPA Moped’. | ||
| 21 | DINNERTIME | Transformed inn merited an occasion to scoff (10) |
| Anagram (‘transformed’) of INN MERITED. | ||
| 23 | PLUNDER | Place below rifle (7) |
| PL[ace] + UNDER (‘below’). | ||
| 24 | DEVIATE | I’ve turned into someone to take out stray (7) |
| a DATE (‘someone to take out’) includes the reversal (‘turned’) of I’VE. | ||
| 25 | SHRIMP | Pink and puny punk (6) |
| Triple definition, though Chambers doesn’t give ‘punk’ directly. | ||
| 26 | SERENE | Calm sneer upset English (6) |
| Anagram (‘upset’) of SNEER + E[nglish}. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | HOIST | Raise one to enter the army (5) |
| 1 in HOST. I have no idea why this perfectly standard clue was my last in. | ||
| 2 | STIRRUP | Kindle containing first for reader’s support (7) |
| STIR UP (to foment or to ‘kindle’) surrounds R (first letter of Reader). | ||
| 3 | AVALANCHE | Barrage of hot rock set up an old rebel (9) |
| LAVA (‘hot rock’) reversed (‘set up’) + AN + CHE (Guevara, ‘old rebel’). | ||
| 5 | TOTES | Completely familiar shopping bags (5) |
| Like, totes cinch double def if yr, like, totes homies wi’ de yoof speak an’ mall jive, blood. My son will kill me. | ||
| 6 | BANEFUL | Prohibit processed fuel – it’s poisonous (7) |
| BAN (‘prohibit’) + anagram (‘processed’) of FUEL. | ||
| 7 | EMERGENCY | To appear cold in New York could be a catastrophe (9) |
| EMERGE (‘to appear’) + C[old] in N[ew] Y[ork]. | ||
| 10 | NEWSSTAND | Stall in the street? You’ll get rag here (9) |
| Whole-clue cryptic. | ||
| 13 | ACROPOLIS | A gathering of Labour is high point for city (9) |
| A + CROP (‘gathering’) + O[f] + L[abour] + IS… = the 5-element parse. | ||
| 15 | PERSEVERE | Soldier on a grave (9) |
| Clue of the day, imho. PER (= ‘A’, as in “apples a pound ‘a’ [per] pound”) + SEVERE (‘grave’). Lovely dark surface. | ||
| 17 | SEMINAR | Doctor remains for conference (7) |
| Anagram (‘doctor’ as verb) of REMAINS. | ||
| 19 | OUTLINE | Trace absent ancestry (7) |
| OUT (‘absent’) + LINE (‘ancestry’). | ||
| 21 | DREAM | Ideal d-drill (5) |
| First ‘D’ in clue + REAM (‘to drill’, more or less). | ||
| 22 | MITRE | King dressed in kid’s hat (5) |
| R[ex], king, is surrounded by (‘dressed in’) MITE (‘kid’). | ||
*anagram
Nicely done. I totes like your 5d entry.
Always struggle a bit with Jason crosswords and this was no exception. Guessed that HUSS must be a fish but didn’t know it. Can’t help with 13d as I couldn’t quite match ‘as’ with ‘so far’.
I agree that PERSEVERE was the pick of the bunch.
It was a DNF for me since I could only think of SIMILAR (‘like something’) for 8a. A nice clue even though
I failed to get it.
Thanks to Jason and GB.
I agree, harder than the usual Tuesday FT.
Shows how observant I am, I missed the spelling mistake in 9a, even though it’s usually one of my bugbears too.
Had to enter 1a from the def, didn’t know all those meanings of ‘shrimp’ and the yoof speak of 5d went way over my head. Incidentally, there’s a very amusing entry for ‘totes’ at urbandictionary.com. Almost, but not quite, as good as your effort.
I was fooled for ages by the ‘Soldier’ in 15d. Doesn’t seem I was alone.
Thanks to Jason and Grant
13A. I have copied this from the OED and hope it helps.
AS
33. With prepositions as has the general sense of as far as, so far as, and thus restricts or specially defines the reference of the preposition; e.g. as against, as between. As anent, as concerning, as for, as to, as touching, have all the sense of ‘as it regards, so far as it concerns, with respect or reference to’.
Thanks trenodia but it doesn’t really help me. I can believe ‘as’ to mean ‘so far as’ but not ‘so far’ as in 13a (not 13d as I accidentally typed @1).
Hovis. I can agree with you that ‘so far’ and ‘as’ do not seem to work separately. ‘Insofar’ at a push might. Of course it usually is combined as ‘insofar as’ but one website gives ‘as’ a synonym for it and it is now treated as a stand-alone word.
Thanks Jason and Grant
Had to stretch the coffee for much longer today to get this one out !! And another who didn’t spot the spelling mistake … oops. Nor could I convince myself ‘totes’ about as = is so far at 13a.
Some nice stuff in here today … good clues and some excellent surfaces. SPAM was my first in with HOIST not all that far behind it. Finished in the SE corner with your PERSEVERE (which I also liked) and SUPPLANT the last couple in.
(I’ve started doing the occasional puzzle from the Australian dailies and afraid to say that apart from 1 or 2 setters, they feel very amateurish after being spoiled on the crosswords that are presented here. The only exception is in our ‘Australian’ newspaper (owned by Murdoch) which publishes the Times crossword with a several months lag!)
Thanks to Jason and Grant B. I had never come across the slang version of TOTES, the tinker-child n STINKER, or huss as fish but I did PERSEVERE (yes, a clever misleading clue) and got to the end.
Thanks Jason & Grant.
I had slightly different definitions for two clues:
In 20 across SPAM has a double definition – JUNK & FOOD.
In 5 down the first definition of TOTES is COMPLETELY, with ‘familiar’ indicating yoof speak in the same way that, for example, ‘loudly’ indicates a homophone in 16 across.
To Psmith@8:
Disagree about ‘Junk’ & ‘Food’ for SPAM: the electronic junk that is called ‘spam’ was, I think, specifically named after the American junk food itself, perhaps on the model of the similarly-named-and-inspired metallic ribbons dropped to confuse enemy radar.
And yes, the definition for TOTES is ‘completely’ and if you read my jocular entry carefully you’ll see that it completely complies… ‘totes homies wi[th]’ = ‘completely good friends with’ (or ‘quite at home with’) the vernacular in question. Sorry I didn’t make it more specific: just a bit of fun. Gosh, you have to be careful around here.
Thanks. My computer dictionary entry for spam endorses your recollection:
ORIGIN 1930s: apparently from sp(iced h)am. The Internet sense appears to derive from a sketch by the British ‘Monty Python’ comedy group, set in a cafe in which every item on the menu includes spam.