A solid puzzle with some notably smooth surfaces.
I was rather slow at this one for some reason. (In fact one reason was that I had ‘narrative’ instead of ‘narration’ which slowed me down in the SE corner, where I also didn‘t see ‘do’ as the def for ‘shindig‘ until the death. My bad, as they say these days).
Thanks to Slormgorm for a nice Tuesday workout.
| Across | ||
| 1 | LAMENT | An air of sorrow? (6) |
| Cryptic definition; ‘air’ as in tune. | ||
| 4 | TARTAN | Singer making comeback with hit material (6) |
| RAT (informant, one who ’sings’), reversed, + TAN (to ‘hit’). | ||
| 8 | LAPDOGS | Obedient types of greyhounds, perhaps (7) |
| Greyhounds run in laps. | ||
| 9 | TURN-OFF | Aristo securing vessel that elicits dislike (4-3) |
| T.OFF (‘aristo’) around URN (‘vessel’). | ||
| 11 | MAGISTRATE | Game artist out to get justice (10) |
| Anagram (‘out’) of GAME ARTIST. | ||
| 12 | SORT | Kind of drunk, having necked last of beer (4) |
| SO.T (‘a ’drunk’) surrounds last of ‘beeR’. | ||
| 13 | ABATE | Drop off a graduate near centre of Ostend (5) |
| A + BA + middle of ‘osTEnd’. | ||
| 14 | KANGAROO | New anorak that German puts on over jumper (8) |
| Anagram (‘new’) of ANORAK surrounds G[erman] + O[ver] in cricket. | ||
| 16 | DISAGREE | Insult a short environmentalist in conflict (8) |
| DIS (to ‘insult’) + A + GREEn (‘environmentalist’, shortened). | ||
| 18 | RUSES | Misleading plans Republican puts into action (5) |
| R[epublican] + USES (‘puts into action’). | ||
| 20 | SHOO | Fire brief? Get away! (4) |
| SHOOt (‘fire’), shortened. | ||
| 21 | PRECARIOUS | A croupier manipulated wheels? Ultimately that’s risky! (10) |
| Anagram (‘manipulated’) of A CROUPIER + end of ‘wheelS’. | ||
| 23 | CAROUSE | Make merry in saloon, possibly by river (7) |
| CAR + OUSE (‘river’). | ||
| 24 | WILDISH | Mad with one’s husband being quite undomesticated (7) |
| WILD (‘mad’) + 1’S H[husband]. A little close, perhaps. | ||
| 25 | DESIRE | Passion of French teacher, English! (6) |
| DE (Fr. ‘of’) + SIR (’teacher’) + E[nglish]. | ||
| 26 | KNIGHT | Jockeys essentially associated with dark horse (6) |
| Middle (‘essentially’) of ‘jocKeys’ + NIGHT (‘dark’), the knight being the horsey in chess. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | LLAMA | Beast from hell: a manticore (5) |
| Inclusion in ‘heLL A MAnticore’. Good word, manticore. Terrible pets. | ||
| 2 | MADEIRA | Wine produced by nameless country (7) |
| MADE (‘produced’) + IRAn without N[ame]. | ||
| 3 | NIGHTWEAR | What one might dress kippers in? (9) |
| Cryptic fun. | ||
| 5 | ACUTE | Severe wound seen in hospital department (5) |
| CUT in A & E (‘Accident & Emergency’, ER to Americans). | ||
| 6 | TUNISIA | Fish around river mostly in the country (7) |
| TUNA around shortened river ISIs. | ||
| 7 | NEFARIOUS | Wicked of a nurse to go off without one (9) |
| Anagram (‘to go off’) of OF A NURSE surrounds 1. | ||
| 10 | HACKNEYED | Old and cheeky? That needs to change! (9) |
| Anagram (‘that needs to change’) of AND CHEEKY. | ||
| 13 | A HIGH HAND | An oppressive manner of a worker on drugs? (1,4,4) |
| Cryptic def. | ||
| 15 | NARRATION | People round a theologian for reading of story? (9) |
| N.ATION around A + R[ight] R[everend]. | ||
| 17 | AMOROUS | Bit of angling or sumo wrestling can be sexy (7) |
| Anagram (‘wrestling’) of A(ngling) & OR SUMO. | ||
| 19 | SHINDIG | Do wrong stealing horse by quarry (7) |
| S.IN (‘wrong’) around H[orse] + DIG (‘quarry’). | ||
| 21 | POSER | I could be a model? Tough question! (5) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 22 | UPSET | Winning group could create this (5) |
| UP (‘winning’) + SET (‘group’). | ||
*anagram
Thanks for the blog, Grant Baynham. I also failed to see the definition of 19dn – and it would never have occurred to me that one can abbreviate ‘horse’ to ‘h’!
I’d question theologian = RR. RR is the title given to bishops. Since theology is an academic discipline, the academic title DD (Doctor of Divinity) is far more accurate as a synonym for theologian.
I didn’t get 26ac, as I did not think ‘knight’ was synonymous with ‘horse’.
Otherwise this was all good fun…
…though I do fear that Slormgorm may have offended the entire dog racing community by likening greyhounds to lapdogs!
I was tricked by the ‘Do’ definition at 19d as well and probably would have missed it without the crossers. I liked MADEIRA and the reminder of ‘Have Some Madeira M’Dear’. A similar (well, sort of) alcoholic drink, which is also the title of a song, appears elsewhere today, but Flanders & Swann win hands down for me.
I liked the idea of ‘greyhounds’ as LAP DOGS and that all purpose word for ‘up to no good’, NEFARIOUS
Thanks to Slormgorm and Grant
Thanks for a great blog, Grant. I had a momentary pause at 19 down, too but laughed when the penny dropped.
Lots of smiles, in fact – MADEIRA, LAPDOGS, KANGAROO, CAROUSE [lovely word], HACKNEYED – and great surfaces throughout
Grumpy @1 – I remember on the Guardian thread, a long time ago that commenters would justify h for horse by the roundabout route of horse = heroin = h, which always annoyed a frequent commentator, a racing enthusiast, who maintained that h is a perfectly legitimate abbreviation for horse – see here: http://www.horse411.com/horse-racing-abbreviations/ . I do agree with you re DD, though I didn’t think about it at the time of solving.
Many thanks, Harry, for the fun
To Wordplodder@2:
We perform ‘Madeira’ at every gig, always back-announcing it as ‘Perhaps the best comic song ever written, containing as it does no less than three examples of triple asylleptic zeugma. I could see you counting them as they went past. Well done’.
10d is my favourite today, took me a delightful while to realise it was an anagram
i wasted a bit of time trying to add N to madeira to find a country, but twigged soon enough. At least 19d caused me no problems, though it’s the same kind of thing – slormgorm is good at using simple words like do or produced in unexpected ways
many thanks slormgorm and grant
Another well-written crossword from Slormgorm [there’s not much difference between him and Hoskins nowadays], also one that I found pretty easy.
But all good and very enjoyable.
By the way, at 3d I entered NIGHTGEAR – since this clue doesn’t rely on a construction, I think it is valid too.
Many thanks to Grant & Slormgorm.
KANGAROO got me started on this crossword filled with great clues. Loved 8a with its double meaning of LAP, 25a for its compactness, and 19d for nearly baffling me. Thanks Slormgorm and Grant.
Thanks both, particularly Grant for the parsing of MADEIRA, DISAGREE and ACUTE (It’s an ER to me)
Thank you all! I agree with Grant that wild and wildish is ‘a little close’.
I think severe as definition of ACUTE is not satisfactory from the medical point of view, because many severe conditions are not acute; perhaps abrupt instead of severe might have been better.
But overall, I found the puzzle great fun.
To Lucio@9:
Re ACUTE. You’re perfectly correct from a medical point of view of course but, despite the surface, I don’t think this is a medical definition.
In common parlance, for better or worse, ‘severe’, ‘acute’ and (more annoyingly) ‘chronic’ are now pretty much synonymous. Language, eh?
Thanks Slormgorm and Grant
Enjoyable puzzle that I was able to complete all bar two over a longish coffee up on a rainy Noosa afternoon. Had to have what turned out to be a shortish second look to finish off ACUTE and TARTAN up in the NE corner.
Liked the same as a lot of others here – a penny drop with ‘Do’ and the amusing take on ‘greyhounds’. Not sure how many would be agreeing with the surface of 17d. 🙂
To Bruce@11.
Re 17d surface: it takes all sorts. “Whatever toasts your ciabatta” as they say here in cosmopolitan Buxton.
Cole Porter’s “‘S Wonderful” was banned from air in certain U.S. states for using the sexually explicit word ‘amorous’. How times do change.
Bit late to this – very enjoyable but I’m still struggling to decrypt 3d. Could someone explain what will, no doubt, be the bleedin’ obvious for me? Thanks.
To Kev C:
To ‘kip’ is to ‘sleep’, so…
Oh, ha ha, of course. Thanks Grant. I was fixated on the Craster speciality!