Every week Phi gives good value for money and this was no exception. As always there are plenty of excellent clues (6ac in particular) and everything was very enjoyable. I found this on the straightforward side for Phi, who is occasionally rather tricky, but even so that statement on the tab SETTERS where I suggest that Phi usually takes about 25 minutes seems to be a thing of the past I’m afraid.
Definitions underlined, in maroon. Anagram indicators in italics.
I’m tempted to say that Phi has given us one of his occasional plain crosswords without a Nina, but when I think so this tends to be proved wrong.
| Across | ||
| 1 | MANDRILL | Habits of the male baboon (8) |
| ‘Habits of the male’ could fancifully be expressed as ‘man drill’ | ||
| 6 | DUST | Quantity of dirt suddenly swirling? (4) |
| Hidden reversed in dirT SUDdenly, &lit. | ||
| 9 | STUPOR | Endless commotion about high, drugged state (6) |
| st(up)or{m} | ||
| 10 | ABDOMEN | Poor prognosis one brought forward for stomach (7) |
| ‘bad omen’ with the b moved to the front — I’m never very clear what ‘moved forward’ means: does it mean ‘moved towards the left, so that you see it earlier’, or ‘moved to the right’ — one thinks (at any rate I do) of moving to the right as the natural way forward — so I’m not sure if it’s the a moved to the left or the b moved to the right in ‘bad omen’ | ||
| 11 | ARTHOUSE | Annoying type keeping you in highbrow cinema? (8) |
| ar(thou)se | ||
| 12 | NAPIER | New Zealand coastal city, one investing in new wharf (6) |
| n (a) pier — my knowledge of New Zealand cities is, unlike that of the NZ-dwelling Phi, confined largely to cricket test venues like Auckland and Wellington, so this was solved towards the end. I had heard of it (now that I research it I see that it is also a test ground), but it hadn’t come to mind. | ||
| 13/16 | A GOOD DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD | Shakespearean take on the virtue seen amongst criminals? (1,4,4,2,1,7,5) |
| Not quite sure, I think this is a CD — Portia says this in The Merchant of Venice | ||
| 19 | SCARAB | Beetle: repelled tailless one infesting watering-holes (6) |
| (bar(ac{e})s)rev. | ||
| 20 | UPRISING | United saying positive things, dismissing a rebellion (8) |
| U pr{a}ising | ||
| 22 | THEOREM | Article with more convoluted hypothesis (7) |
| the (more)* — I’m not sure that theorem = hypothesis, although no doubt in some dictionary somewhere they are given as synonyms: a theorem can be proved (or at any rate one attempts to prove it, as people did for years with Fermat’s Last Theorem until it was eventually proved); a hypothesis is simply a guess based on best knowledge — or something like that | ||
| 23 | SLOGAN | Call to arms: “Hard work leads to added notoriety” (6) |
| slog a{dded} n{otoriety} | ||
| 24 | THUS | Politician avoiding defeats in such a way (4) |
| thu{MP}s | ||
| 25 | NOSE CONE | Part of rocket, one shaped to receive most of support (4,4) |
| no(secon{d})e, the noe being (one)* | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | ALTER EGO | Get a role adapted for second personality (5,3) |
| (Get a role)* | ||
| 3 | DEPTH | Intensity of French substance I ignored (5) |
| de [= of, in French] p{I}th | ||
| 4 | IN ROUND NUMBERS | More or less popular time on course with analgesics (2,5,7) |
| in [= popular] round [= time on course (golf)] numbers [= numb-ers] | ||
| 5 | LEAVE BE | Don’t change holiday bookings even at the outset (5,2) |
| leave [= holiday] b{ookings} e{ven} | ||
| 6 | DUMB PIANO | Silent instrument? Bam! I pound madly (4,5) |
| (Bam! I pound)* — however nice this is with its &littish aspects, the artificiality of the word ‘Bam’ screams anagram | ||
| 7 | SUNSET | End of day fixed: around noon in America (6) |
| s(U(N)S)et | ||
| 8 | IDENTITY CRISIS | Psychological trauma: I’d misjudged its sincerity (8,6) |
| I’d (its sincerity)* | ||
| 14 | OWNERLESS | Old points about regulations abandoned by university and no longer claimed (9) |
| o WNE(r(U)les)S — the common criticism of this type of thing — clueing ‘points’ as points of the compass in some order, is mollified, indeed fully answered, by the fact that it’s the four cardinal points with none repeated, and not some random collection of cardinal points | ||
| 15 | PLANTAIN | Insect tucking into prairie fruit (8) |
| pl(ant)ain | ||
| 17 | HOUSMAN | Doctor discharging English poet (7) |
| hous{E}man — A.E. Housman, famed for his A Shropshire Lad | ||
| 18 | SCOTCH | Put an end to booze (6) |
| 2 defs | ||
| 21 | STOIC | One in bed’s sitting up, tolerating discomfort (5) |
| (c(1)ot’s)rev. | ||
*anagram
10a. I take ‘brought forward’ to mean move to the front of the word i.e. leftwards. ‘One’ often means the letter a – so that was the one one to be moved.
Portia gets some great lines. Should be a goal for every aspiring actress.
Thanks John and Phi
All pretty straightforward, and no nina or theme that we can see. Thanks, Phi and John.
We can’t see a theme or nina either but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. We usually miss them especially when we are blogging.
We found it trickier this evening and used the check button quite a few times during the solve.
Thanks Phi and John.