Tough stuff for a Tuesday, I thought.
I began this in the small hours and had to go to bed with the NE corner unfinished. Even after the restorative kip I couldn’t complete without Googlenetting, 7,8 & 12 being the stubborn little tinkers in question for the reasons given below.
Still, all was fair in the end – just, imho – and doubtless one of you will come on to say that s/he found it all terribly simple. I don’t want to hear it.
Thanks anyway to Slormgorm for the challenge.
| Across | ||
| 1 | EVOLVED | Spun sacks weaver finally developed (7) |
| rEVOLVED (‘spun’), without R (last of ‘weaveR). | ||
| 5 | FLAMING | Fiery affair enthralling a male (7) |
| FLING (‘affair’) inludes A + M[ale]. | ||
| 9 | ADD-ON | Extra in commercial showing around Germany (3-2) |
| AD (‘commercial’) + ON (‘showing’) around D[eutschland]. | ||
| 10 | SECLUSION | Uncle is so active in retirement (9) |
| Anagram (‘active’) of UNCLE IS SO. | ||
| 11 | PLANELOAD | A crate-full of dope all ruined, article admitted (9) |
| Anagram (‘ruined’) of DOPE ALL includes the article AN, w semi-cryptic definition (‘crate’ = ‘plane’). | ||
| 12 | TANGO | Dance hit by Pan released at last (5) |
| TAN (‘hit’: ‘I’ll tan your hide’ as my mother would frequently say) + GOd (‘Pan’ being an example), without last letter. A question-mark might have helped here: both elements are a little oblique, I think. | ||
| 13 | EATER | Consumer worry that’s flipping concerning (5) |
| EAT (‘worry’) + reversal of RE (‘concerning’). | ||
| 15 | REDBREAST | Flapper in recumbent convalescence, Spooner said (9) |
| Spoonerism of ‘bed rest’ (‘recumbent convalescence’). | ||
| 18 | HARDINESS | Resilience shown by princess caught in animal tether (9) |
| Princess DI lives on in crosswords at least, here surrounded by HARNESS (‘animal tether’). | ||
| 19 | RAPID | Quick attack secures front for paras (5) |
| RAID (‘attack’) surrounds 1st letter of ‘Paras’. | ||
| 21 | LIFTS | Picks up presents German changed for large (5) |
| gIFTS (‘presents’), its G[erman] replaced by L[arge]. | ||
| 23 | BIOSAFETY | Another easy bit of anti-infection precautions (9) |
| Anagram (‘another’) of EASY BIT OF. | ||
| 25 | WOLVERINE | Animal owner with vile bats (9) |
| Anagram (‘bats’) of OWNER + VILE. | ||
| 26 | RHINO | Beastly type that could charge you money (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 27 | TANK TOP | Item of gear in the turret of a Panzer? (4,3) |
| Jocular, semi-cryptic def. | ||
| 28 | YAWNING | Canopy, after year, showing sign of fatigue? (7) |
| Y[ear] + AWNING. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | EXAMPLE | Case of ale, ultimately 10’s more than enough (7) |
| Last of ‘alE’ + X (’10’) + AMPLE (‘more than enough’). | ||
| 2 | OLD MASTER | Painting geriatric Pole’s given to the Queen (3,6) |
| OLD (‘geriatric’) + MAST (‘pole’) + ER (short for ‘er Maj.’). | ||
| 3 | VENUE | Place by road that’s lacking its roof (5) |
| aVENUE. | ||
| 4 | DISCOURSE | Insult syllabus in verbal communication (9) |
| DIS (to ‘insult’) + COURSE (‘syllabus’). | ||
| 5 | FACED | Female expert daughter confronted (5) |
| F[emale] + ACE (‘expert’) + D[aughter]. | ||
| 6 | ADULTERER | Rule trade out with one known to cheat (9) |
| Anagram (‘out’) of RULE TRADE. | ||
| 7 | IXION | One kiss and I love new free- wheeling king (5) |
| 1 + X (‘kiss’) + I + 0 (‘love’) + N[ew]. Ixion, despite my semi-classical, grammar-school education, was I confess a new Greek to me, so the cryptic ‘free-wheeling’ reference to his eternal fate was of no help. Gettable, obvs., but a tough clue. | ||
| 8 | GONE OUT | On The Town possibly is dated (4,3) |
| Double cryptic def. Again, not obvious. | ||
| 14 | RAINSWEPT | Suffering cats and dogs and other pets in war (9) |
| Anagram (‘other’) of PETS IN WAR, w cryptic def. | ||
| 16 | DISCOVERY | Finding cod’s very bad around lunchtime? (9) |
| Anagram (‘bad’) of CODS VERY around 1 (p.m., ‘lunchtime’). | ||
| 17 | APPLETINI | Cocktail and pale pint I ordered (9) |
| Anagram (‘ordered’) of PALE PINT I. | ||
| 18 | HALFWIT | Part of football match with appeal for idiot (7) |
| HALF (of a ‘footbal match’) + W[ith] + IT (sexual allure, ‘appeal’). | ||
| 20 | DAYLONG | Only gad about from dawn to dusk (7) |
| Anagram (‘about’) of ONLY GAD. | ||
| 22 | FELON | Look in bog for criminal from Texas (5) |
| LO in FEN. We used to have ‘felons’ too (G&S: ‘When a felon’s not engaged in his employment…’) but the felony/misdemeano(u)r distinction now remains only in the US. | ||
| 23 | BLIMP | Pompous type of bishop with affected walk? (5) |
| B[ishop] + LIMP. | ||
| 24 | ARROW | School head must leave, one near Bow? (5) |
| hARROW school, w cryptic def. | ||
*anagram
Yes, I found this much harder than the usual Slormgorm. I had no idea about the ‘free-wheeling king’, but the wordplay + crossers were helpful. In he’s gone to the ‘Words I’ve Learnt from Cryptics’ file, doubtless to be instantly forgotten. APPLETINI (sounds a pretty lethal mixture) was also new.
I can’t remember when we last had ‘Flapper’ for a bird, so I spent a long time on 15a imagining someone doing the Charleston in the 1920’s before I twigged.
I liked the ‘On The Town possibly’ bit of the double def for 8d, the Cockney slant to 24d and my favourite, the ‘Suffering cats and dogs’.
Thanks to Grant and Slormgorm
Mixed bag for me . I like (R)EVOLVED \but I’ve seen better spooners.
Not Harry’s best puzzle, too many “that’ll dos” (thats actually copyright by a poster named Simon!
Fun nonetheless.
Thanks for the blog, Grant and Harry for an enjoyable puzzle.
I was held up in the top right corner too. I did know the free-wheeling king but couldn’t quite work out TANGO for a while and GONE OUT didn’t seem quite right grammatically for either definition. [GONE OUT, to me, primarily means ‘flabbergasted’- is that dialect?]
I had SHARK initially for 26 but the cocktail fortunately put paid to that, because I thought it wasn’t very good.
As one who’s not keen on Spoonerisms, because they’re so often not meaningful phrases, I did rather like bed rest for recumbent convalescence. I didn’t realise we didn’t have FELONs any more but Collins gives ‘formerly’ and Chambers ‘obsolete’.
I’m with copmus on this one. Terrible Spoonerism I thought. REDBREAST as a Spoonerism for BREAD REST but BEDREST (BED RREST) is a step too far for me.
Thanks to Slormgorm and Grant. I too took a while figuring out GONE OUT and TANGO, but my LOI was RAINSWEPT which I much enjoyed when I caught on.
Thanks Harry and GB
Not as good as some of his, I thought, and the Spoonerism certainly didn’t work. Others were a tad too stretchy too, in my view.
Thanks for the acknowledgment, copmus!
Thanks, GB. Usually I’m the same as you, but today I whistled quite quickly through. And then it took me six hours to work out REDBREAST, which gave me immediately 8dn GONE OUT, which I still find overly obscure. They were my LOIN. But thanks, Slormgorm, you gave me a good day.
Had no problems with this. A very enjoyable solve as always. Lovely clueing. Something special in every clue.
Many thanks slormgorm and grant
Thanks to Grant and Slormgorm
Some lovely defs here: CRATE-FULL, ON THE TOWN and DATED, SUFFERING CATS AND DOGS; but none of these excuse that awful spoonerism.
I dont like spoonerisms at all. They seem to me almost always to be solvable only in retrospect, as it were. I did spot that this one was imperfect but I’ve seen worse, usually involving e.g. Scots/English differences in pronunciation (I’m not Scottish but my partner is and pronounces e.g. ‘don’ and ‘dawn’ identically but, say, ‘pawn’ and ‘porn’ quite differently from each other).
So I don’t usually comment on spoonerisms. I’d just ban the blighters.
Thanks Slormgorm and Grant
Didn’t find this too hard although it was done over a number of shortish sittings throughout the day. Messed up the spoonerism … having BRED REST (which in retrospect makes no sense – obviously looking for it after getting the answer). Knew the poor king at 7d but always get him mixed up with Prometheus whose liver gets continually picked out – that Zeus was a mean ‘sonova …
Finished in the SE corner with APPLETINI (that I hadn’t heard of before) and BIOSAFETY (which was a tricky anagram).