A familar Friday face. Thanks to Bradman for dishing out a good straightforward workout.
FF: 8 DD: 8
| Across | ||
| 1 | PEBBLE | B&B kept by former footballer – one by the sea? (6) |
| BB in PELE (former footballer) | ||
| 4 | COMPUTER | One arriving outside place to deliver piece of electronic equipment (8) |
| COMER (one arriving) outside PUT (place) | ||
| 9 | OPORTO | Portuguese location in which there’s nothing left – nothing! (6) |
| O (nothing) PORT (left) O (nothing) | ||
| 10 | AIREDALE | Gassy beer maybe for dog? (8) |
| AIRED (~gassy) ALE (beer) | ||
| 12 | EIDERDOWN | I wondered about what to discard on hot summer nights (9) |
| I WONDERED* | ||
| 13 | GAUZE | Look to preserve university fabric (5) |
| GAZE (look) containing U (university) | ||
| 14 | BESIDE THE POINT | Where digit in decimal number may go? It’s immaterial (6,3,5) |
| cryptic def | ||
| 17 | TRAP DOOR SPIDER | Arachnid that could make parrots drop and die (4-4,6) |
| PARROTS DROP DIE* (trapdoor shouldn’t be hyphenated?) | ||
| 21 | APPLE | Fruit drink containing pip I disposed of (5) |
| ALE (drink) containing PiP (without I) | ||
| 22 | FUNDAMENT | Enjoyment lady has with holy books – sitting on this? (9) |
| FUN (enjoyment) DAME (lady) NT (holy books, new testament) | ||
| 24 | GRIMACED | Pulled a face, seeing club surrounded by grating (8) |
| MACE (club) in GRID (grating) | ||
| 25 | RADIAL | Moving away from centre, being leftist not Conservative (6) |
| RADIcAL (leftist, without C for Conservative) | ||
| 26 | REDNECKS | Poor Americans showing evidence of getting hot behind the collar? (8) |
| cryptic def; read as RED NECKS (evidence of getting hot behind the collar) | ||
| 27 | STAGER | Old actor to move unsteadily, losing heart (6) |
| STAgGER (move unsteadily, without its central character) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | PROVERBS | Favouring certain words in an old book (8) |
| PRO (favoring) VERBS (~certain words) | ||
| 2 | BLONDES | Women preferred by men allegedly led snob astray (7) |
| LED SNOB* (marilyn monroe movie, gentlemen prefer blondes, based on book by anita loos with the same name) | ||
| 3 | LITER | American unit destroying half of what’s written (5) |
| LITERature (whats written, half of) | ||
| 5 | ORIENTEERING | Ignore tree in ground in outdoor sport (12) |
| IGNORE TREE IN* | ||
| 6 | PEER GROUP | Those of the same class – upper class? (4,5) |
| cryptic def; PEER referring here to aristocracy | ||
| 7 | TO A TURN | How cooking should be done, as shown by kid holding a vessel (2,1,4) |
| [ A in TOT (kid)] URN (vessel) | ||
| 8 | REEVES | Old magistrates pause briefly when first woman enters (6) |
| RESt (pause, briefly) containing EVE (first woman) | ||
| 11 | CONTROL FREAK | Talk or confer? That may be unusual for this decisive person (7,5) |
| TALK OR CONFER*; nice surface | ||
| 15 | DEPRECATE | Censure one ultimately carpeted for misbehaving (9) |
| E (onE, ultimately) CARPETED* | ||
| 16 | PRATTLER | Pair restricting noise? One is blethering (8) |
| PR (pair) containing RATTLE (noise) | ||
| 18 | REPLIED | Came back with explanation as to why customer was cheated? (7) |
| cryptic def; read as REP LIED (why customer was cheated) | ||
| 19 | DEEPING | Noise with water rising in Warwick? (7) |
| EEP (water = PEE, reversed) in DING (noise); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwick_Deeping / Thanks to Geoff for helping with this. | ||
| 20 | BANGER | Bishop to get cross, an explosive type? (6) |
| B (bishop) ANGER (cross) – i am a bit uncomfortable about CROSS = ANGER, shouldnt it be ANGRY? | ||
| 23 | ABAFT | Sailor needs a lot of sheets of pink paper for his behind! (5) |
| AB (sailor) A FT (sheets of pink paper) | ||
*anagram
Pleasant puzzle to do in front of the TV until I came to 19d, my last in which I couldn’t get, incorrectly guessing ‘Dee’ for the ‘water’. Another quite interesting sounding ‘forgotten’ author. Missed the parsing of REP+LIED as well.
‘Blethering’ isn’t really a word in common use and so PRATTLER was my pick. Also good to see EIDERDOWN, another word (and the item itself) used less often these days, as opposed to ‘doona’ or ‘duvet’, making an appearance.
Thanks to Bradman and Turbolegs.
“King” would have been preferable to B&B for a decent clue.
Thanks Bradman and Turbolegs
A few observations on a fairly straightforward puzzle from The Don:
10: Gassy = AIRED? Hmmm, a bit tenuous, AERATED seems more like gassy to me.
15: I had always understood DEPRECATE to mean something along the lines of ‘Have a low opinion of’, which Chambers Dictionary seems to support. However, their thesaurus extends that to the meaning DM intends, so I guess it’s OK.
19: I’m similar to WordPlodder @ 1. I parsed it as ‘PING’ (noise) with ‘DEE’ (river, hence water) ‘rising’ (appearing above it in a Down clue. Both parsings work for me.
20: I saw the definition of the second part as “to get cross”, as in “That angers me / That gets me cross”.
I also like copmus’ in-joke. Don’t think you’d get away with using it for Freddie or Albert, though.
Thanks Bradman and Turbolegs
Enjoyable puzzle with a couple of new terms in FUNDAMENT, TO A TURN and the author DEEPING (which I also parsed as Wordplodder and Simon).
Liked the cryptic part of BESIDE THE POINT.
Finished with the clever LITER and the unknown DEEPING.
ABAFT was new to me. My first thought was AVAST as in the sailors phrase and music hall joke “avast behind”. Thanks to Bradman and TL.
‘Anger’ can be a verb, ‘I can anger him’ = ‘I can get him cross”, so ‘to get cross’ is fair