I enjoyed this. A bit more meat than the standard Sunday lunch offering. Thank you Kairos.
| Across | ||
| 1 | TOPER | Drunk with hat getting very quietly half cut (5) |
| TOPpER (hat) with its PP (very quietly) halved | ||
| 4 | FOCACCIA | American spies suppress account by field officer finding food (8) |
| CIA (American spies) CONTAINS (SUPPRESS) ACC (account) following (by) FO (field officer) | ||
| 9 | OPTICAL ILLUSION | What a landlady uses by implication involves one litre in a deception (7,8) |
| OPTIC (what a landlady uses to dispense spirits) then ALLUSION (implication) including (involves) I (one) L (litre) | ||
| 10 | ISOBEL | Old boy supplants artist in heart of country girl (6) |
| OB replaces RA (artist) in centre (heart) of ISraEL (country) – my daughter’s name | ||
| 11 | ATYPICAL | Unusual play with Act 1 rewritten (8) |
| anagram (rewritten) of PLAY with ACT I | ||
| 13 | EARLY DAY MOTIONS | Parliamentary procedures that maybe passed before breakfast! (5,3,7) |
| parliamentary toilet humour! | ||
| 15 | STINGING NETTLES | Plants that can make you smart? (8,7) |
| cryptic definition | ||
| 18 | OINTMENT | Salve for state burial the Queen discarded (8) |
| O (Ohio, state) and INTerMENT (burial) missing ER (Elizabeth Regina, the Queen) | ||
| 20 | PRIVET | Dick has to check over rector’s hedge (6) |
| PI (private investigator, Dick) with VET (to check) containing (over) R (rector) | ||
| 22 | ALTERNATIVE VOTE | Son comes in to reform illegal veto in electoral system (11,4) |
| NATIVE (son) inside (comes in) ALTER (to reform) then anagram (illegal) of VETO | ||
| 23 | REDPOLLS | Good-natured pollster embraces birds (8) |
| found inside (embraced by) good-natuRED POLLSter | ||
| 24 | TESTS | Examines balls after dropping second base (5) |
| TESTeS (balls) missing the second E (base, of the natural logarithm) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | TWO-DIMENSIONAL | Downtime Alison arranged in flat (3-11) |
| anagram (arranged) of DOWNTIME ALISON | ||
| 2 | POTPOURRI | Medley in grass serve Rafael inspired originally (9) |
| POT (grass) POUR (serve) then initial letters (originally) of Rafael Inspired | ||
| 3 | ROCKERY | Musician with yen to make garden feature (7) |
| ROCKER (musician) with Y (yen) | ||
| 4 | FILE | Report of small glass bottle in papers (4) |
| sounds like (report of) “phial” (small glass bottle) | ||
| 5 | CALL TO MIND | Remember what a baby sitter does (4,2,4) |
| a baby sitter calls in to mind the child | ||
| 6 | CRUMPET | Head is an attractive woman (7) |
| double definition – two slang expressions | ||
| 7 | ILIAC | Trojan arrested in Brasilia Cathedral (5) |
| found inside (arrested in) brasILIA Cathedral – a native of Troy | ||
| 8 | ENGLISH SETTERS | Hounds your tormentors after lesson (7,7) |
| SETTERS (your tormentors) following ENGLISH (one of the lessons at school) | ||
| 12 | CANNONBALL | Heard cleric cry loudly in quick service (10) |
| CANNON BALL sounds like (heard) “canon bawl” (cleric, cry loudly) | ||
| 14 | OBLIVIOUS | Unaware of patent involving light metal (9) |
| OBVIOUS (patent) including LI (Li, Lithium a light metal) | ||
| 16 | GUMDROP | Doctor’s operation after face-lift for Candy? (7) |
| DR (doctor) has OP (operation) following (after) MUG (face) reversed (lift) | ||
| 17 | TORMENT | Spooner’s call for additional wine creates distress (7) |
| a Spoonerism of “more tent” – tent is a red wine | ||
| 19 | NITRE | Chemical on egg – quite the reverse (5) |
| NIT (egg) RE (regarding, on) – the reverse of “on egg” | ||
| 21 | AILS | Troubles racialist oddly ignored (4) |
| rAcIaLiSt ignoring odd letters | ||
definitions are underlined
I write these posts to help people get started with cryptic crosswords. If there is something here you do not understand ask a question; there are probably others wondering the same thing.
Yes, took me a while to get this out, though it didn’t help that I was locked in to a synonym for ‘apartment’ in 1d. I can’t remember seeing NATIVE for ‘son’ before, so looking for an ‘S’ also held me up and I didn’t know the ‘Parliamentary procedures’ amusingly referred to in 13a.
A very minor parsing correction in 4a (sorry!) – there’s an extra C, so I think ‘account’ must be ACC, rather than the more usual AC.
CANNONBALL was the best of some good clues for me today.
Thank you to Kairos and to PeeDee.
Struggled in places, mainly due to ignorance of several terms. Didn’t know 13a. Guessed EARLY quite early and MOTIONS a little later. Put in DAY as LOI as most likely middle. Also didn’t know O for Ohio in 18a but an easy enough clue to solve.
Cheated with a word fit to get CANNONBALL, which I didn’t know could refer to a fast serve in tennis. Finally, had to check CRUMPET was slang for ‘head’, which was in my Chambers.
‘Setters’ = ‘tormentors’? Well, they certainly can be. Thanks to Kairos and PeeDee.
Took a while but well worth the effort.
Like Hovis, I had to check the first definition of ‘head’ and I also needed to confirm the Trojan.
Top three for me were TOPER, EARLY DAY MOTIONS and ENGLISH SETTERS.
Many thanks to Kairos for the fun and to PeeDee for the blog.
Thanks kairos, a lot of fun. Of course I laughed at TESTS, and I thought the long clues were clever, though I am not sure how to thank you for the breakfast imagery. I especially enjoyed the cd STINGING NETTLES. I also liked NITRE, for the wordplay. I may have only come across Isabel, but I’m not about to argue with peedee on this one. Thanks as always peedee.
We got through this without any holdups apart from checking the ‘head’ meaning of CRUMPET, although one of us now vaguely remembers having encountered it before, and that O is an abbreviation for Ohio as well as the more usual (to us) OH. Plenty to like, such as ISOBEL, TWO-DIMENSIONAL and OPTICAL ILLUSION, though we took some time to see the parsing of the latter. 13ac evoked a groan as much as a laugh.
Thanks, Kairos and PeeDee.