loonapick is on holiday but he intended to blog today’s FT anyway. Unfortunately, when he came to do so, he found that the hotel’s Wi-Fi would not allow him internet access so you will have to make do with my clue analysis instead.
I should really be doing something else so minimal embellishments to the parsings. If anything isn’t clear just ask.
Across
1 Local addresses encrypted in old document (4,3,7)
DEAD SEA SCROLLS – an anagram (encrypted) of LOCAL ADDRESSES
10 Right country for Catholic (5)
ROMAN – R (right) OMAN (country)
11 Lawyer indeed permitted to be with men (9)
SOLICITOR – SO (indeed) LICIT (permitted) OR (men)
12 Island in unimportant American state (7)
MINORCA – MINOR (unimportant) CA (American state)
13 Chinese gong not initially practical (5,2)
HANDS ON – HAN (Chinese) DSO (gong) N[ot] (not initially)
14 Writer initially unnerved in old British colony (5)
AUDEN – U[nnerved] (initially unnerved) in ADEN (old British colony)
16 Gentle energy put through seed line (9)
PEACEABLE – E (energy) in (put through) PEA (seed) CABLE (line)
19 Orders at intervals to take necessary back up (9)
RESURGENT – [o]R[d]E[r]S (orders at intervals) URGENT (necessary)
20 Devotee overthrows an emperor (5)
RASTA – A TSAR (an emperor) reversed (overthrows)
22 Light taking half-year to fix (3,4)
ARC LAMP – [ye]AR (half-year) CLAMP (fix)
25 Feature in West shows robot (7)
MACHINE – CHIN (feature) in MAE (West)
27 Success with gate – thus getting out? (3,6)
HIT WICKET – HIT (success) WICKET (gate) – a cricket reference
28 Leader to advise duke about campaign medal (5)
AWARD – A[dvise] (leader to advise) D (duke) around (about) WAR (campaign)
29 Fresh meat abundant in peace camp (8,6)
GREENHAM COMMON – GREEN (fresh) HAM (meat) COMMON (abundant)
Down
2 Fateful day for Brussels bureaucrats? They’re monsters! (9)
EUMENIDES – EU MEN (Brussels bureaucrats) IDES (fateful day)
3 Princess departs from South African capital (5)
DINAR – RANI (princess) D (departs) reversed (from South) – the currency of several African countries
4 Yankee eaten by horrible sea snake – that is very simple (4,2,3)
EASY AS PIE – Y (Yankie) in (eaten by) an anagram (horrible) of SEA ASP (snake) IE (that is)
5 Slim girl say vacated large pub (5)
SYLPH – S[a]Y (say vacated) L (large) PH (pub)
6 Artist with fantastically true storyteller (9)
RACONTEUR – RA (artist) CON (with) plus an anagram (fantastically) of TRUE
7 Flower for all to see in large bunch? (5)
LOTUS – U (for all to see) in LOTS (large bunch)
8 Virtuous man on field that’s foreign (7)
STRANGE – ST (virtuous man) RANGE (field)
9 Church area straddling border in war zone (6)
CRIMEA – CE (church) A (area) around (straddling) RIM (border)
15 Managed to get raise with share account (9)
NARRATION – RAN (managed) reversed (to get raise) RATION (share)
17 Unmanned / gun (9)
AUTOMATIC – double def.
18 Dreadful batons aid sole punishment (9)
BASTINADO – an anagram (dreadful) of BATONS AID with an extended def.
19 Go hard round bends – this driver might! (4,3)
ROAD HOG – an anagram (bends) of GO HARD O (round) with another extended def.
21 Woman hiding information makes plan (6)
AGENDA – ADA (woman) around (hiding) GEN (information)
23 Copper to restrain attractive girl (5)
CUTIE – CU (copper) TIE (restrain)
24 Genuine broadcasting contract (5)
PUKKA – sounds like (broadcasting) ‘pucker’ (contract)
26 Daily Mail’s leader to delight? (5)
CHARM – CHAR (daily) M[ail] (Mail’s leader)
I was really pleased to finish this without any aids. Lots of tricky clues made it very enjoyable.
HANDS ON was my last one in and took me ages but I was determined to finish.
1a was a beautiful anagram and I was glad to be able to pluck EUMENIDES (Furies) from my aging memory.
I guessed DINAR but was stuck for awhile thinking DI was the “princess”. The penny finally dropped.
PEACABLE was quite tricky but I latched onto ‘cable’ for line early on, thinking ‘able’ was a likely ending.
I’ve seen BASTINADO several times in cryptics, so this was a write-in.
Thanks to Neo for an excellent workout and to Gaufrid for stepping in again.
I liked bits of this but thought some of the definitions were very sloppy dbes: bureaucrats = men, gong = DSO, seed = pea, campaign = war among others.
Thanks to Neo and Gaufrid. Here in the US I managed to dredge up GREENHAM COMMON but I struggled with DINAR (I did not parse it), PUKKA (a term new to me), and HIT WICKET (my first try was Hot Ticket). Still, I much enjoyed this puzzle.
Simon, ‘men’ for ‘bureaucrats’ alone would have been a little off, if not entriely unintelligible, but ‘Brussels bureaucrats’ (plus qualifying QM) for EU MEN is ‘sloppy’? Have to disagree there.
Re DBE, I think the general defining the specific is okay, whilst t’other way round is asking for it.
Thanks both.
f… @ 4
I can see your view, but why are bureaucrats only men? How many gongs do you have to go through tofind DSO? How many seeds to you have to go through to find pea (which is a seed of a legume)? A campaign is usually part of a war, not the war itself.
hedgehoggy would have had a field day.
Would she indeed.
Thank you for introducing us to EUWOMENIDES, but the QM allows for either, especially for anyone being that pedantic.
Compilers can only work with the tools they are given. Some of these are dictionaries. Says Collins, ‘peas are round green seeds which grow in long thin cases and are eaten as a vegetable’. Note, peas ARE seeds: that’s not DBE, that’s synonymy, so recompute accordingly. So with WAR indicated by ‘campaign’: again a synonym. Does a war always have to be fought with bullets? What about your little campaign today? And regarding gongs, sorry to put you to some effort, but think of some. The general defining the particular is, by convention, fine. As if you didn’t know.
Sorry if all this standard crossword knowledge baffles or even piques you, but you’ll need to complain to a much higher authority than good old Fanshawe to get it changed.
All my love, F.
Thanks Neo and Gaufrid (again)
Entertaining crossword that I couldn’t finish with my coffee and had to come back to it later.
An interesting debate with regard to the loose definitions – the only consequences for my solve was that I had to deduce the word and apply the word play afterwards – with an ‘ah’, that’s what the ‘seed’ was, the particular ‘gong’ was, etc. Just a different angle to the solve …
Was good to learn about the women’s peace camp at GREENHAM COMMON (never stops, this continual acquiring of knowledge that is probably commonplace to others through doing these puzzles).
Eventually finished in the SW corner with that 29a, HIT WICKET (clever misdirection, even after guessing HIT early enough) and PUKKA (which needed all of the crossers).
Enjoyable and houghtful crossword. Thanks for the clues and solutions here. Took me a while but got there in the end.
Thoughtful not “houghtful” 🙂