A good workout dished by CHALMIE this Friday. Thanks for the treat, CHALMIE!
FF: 9 DD : 8
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | MAGNUM OPUS | Bottle with boiling soup – great work! (6,4) |
| MAGNUM ( bottle ) [ SOUP ]* – my FOI | ||
| 7 | TAKE | Sometimes before that is appropriate (4) |
| cryptic def; referring to the boy band TAKE THAT | ||
| 9 | ABBA | A big brown alligator heads for group of 13 (4) |
| starting letters ( heads ) of “A Big Brown Alligator..” | ||
| 10 | DEPENDANTS | 500 bits of bling broken by European children, presumably (10) |
| [ D ( 500 ) PENDANTS ( bling ) ] containing E ( European ) | ||
| 11 | WRESTS | Violently grabs weak supports (6) |
| W ( weak ) RESTS ( supports ) – my LOI | ||
| 12 | EPIDEMIC | Huge story about fish starting measles outbreak (8) |
| EPIC ( huge story) around [ IDE (fish ) M ( Measles, starting letter ) ] | ||
| 13 | WATERLOO | Had gutless rival in court battle (8) |
| [ ATE ( had ) RL ( RivaL, gutless, without inner characters ) ] in WOO ( court ) | ||
| 15 | See 6 | |
| 17 | LULU | Oddly loud double 25 winner (4) |
| LU ( LoUd, oddly) , doubled – british winner in eurovision 1969 | ||
| 19 | A NEW LEAF | Flea’s suggestion one might turn over (1,3,4) |
| reverse clue; [ LEAF ]* = FLEA | ||
| 22 | DECADENT | Books on period being immoral (8) |
| DECADE ( period ) NT ( books ) | ||
| 23 | MY WORD | Sleepy maiden’s back, not having succeeded being gracious (2,4) |
| reverse of [ DROWsY ( sleepy ) M ( maiden ) , without ‘S’ – success ] | ||
| 25 | EUROVISION | Song contest makes Rio envious (10) |
| [ RIO ENVIOUS ]* | ||
| 26 | VIEW | Compete with opinion (4) |
| VIE ( compete ) W ( with ) | ||
| 27 | ELLS | Calls with missing book lengths (4) |
| bELLS ( calls, without B – book ) | ||
| 28 | LEGALISING | Allowing latitude for one signal I disrupted (10) |
| L ( Latitude ) EG ( for one ) [ SIGNAL I ]* | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | ALBERTA | Lab rat harassed around English province (7) |
| [ LAB RAT ]* around E ( English ) | ||
| 3 | NEARS | New organ with shiny top is arriving soon (5) |
| N ( new ) EAR ( organ ) S ( Shiny, first letter ) | ||
| 4 | MODESTLY | A little bit more, half imaginatively styled (8) |
| MOre (half of ) [ STYLED ]* | ||
| 5 | PUPPET ON A STRING | 25 winner somehow entrapping Potus (6,2,1,6) |
| [ ENTRAPPING POTUS ]* – britain’s winning entry to eurovision in 1967, cracked the anagram and then had to look it up on google to confirm | ||
| 6, 15 | SANDIE SHAW | Being responsible for 5 in hospital finishes May (6,4) |
| SAN ( hospital ) DIES ( finishes ) HAW ( May ) – singer of the song in 5d | ||
| 7 | TRAVERSAL | Test says to replace current crossing (9) |
| TRiAL ( test, with I – current being replaced by AVERS – says ) | ||
| 8 | KATRINA | Soul Train destroyed by devastating hurricane (7) |
| KA ( soul ) [ TRAIN ]* | ||
| 14 | EDUCATORS | Dons motley actor used (9) |
| [ ACTOR USED ]* | ||
| 16 | TERMINAL | Finishing room at home in bluish-green (8) |
| [ RM ( room ) IN ( at home ) ] in TEAL ( bluish – green ) | ||
| 18 | UNEQUAL | Not the same as having some immune quality (7) |
| hidden in “..immUNE QUALity” | ||
| 20 | AGREE ON | Come to mutually satisfactory solution with American politician receiving nothing (5,2) |
| [ A ( american ) GREEN ( politician ) ] containing O ( nothing ) | ||
| 21 | SERIAL | Nasty sort of killer hides up around Mile End (6) |
| reverse of LAIRS ( hides ) around E ( milE, ending letter ) | ||
| 24 | WAVES | Signals a couple of bits of velvet used to be clothes (5) |
| VElvet ( couple of bits of ) in WAS ( used to be ) | ||
Greatly enjoyed this musical offering from Chalmie. Fortunately, EUROVISION was one of my first few in so the code was cracked quite quickly. With the theme in mind, I especially liked 8d/24d.
Thanks for the Friday fun, Chalmie and Turbolegs for the much-needed blog.
Thanks, TL.
It’s very difficult to come up with a clue/pair of clues for “X and the Y” which isn’t incredibly clunky, as I discovered after having put 8/24 in the grid as one of the other British winners. So I decided to ignore the group in the clues and see who was awake enough to spot them, so well done Diane.
SANDIE SHAW (used to sing in bare feet as I remember) and PUPPET ON A STRING were great and I liked the EUROVISION references I could identify. I didn’t know that KATRINA and the WAVES had also won, so that was one I missed and I’m sure there are others.
No Bucks Fizz but you can’t have it all.
A big thanks to Chalmie for the wallow in nostalgia (and for dropping in) and to Turbolegs.
Chalmie @2,
Thanks for the insight – I guess that’s why there was no “Boom-bang-a-bang”!
yes indeed .. the iconic barefoot Sandie Shaw! a lot more trouble parsing TRAVERSAL..
thanks Chalmie n Turbolegs
No Bucks Fizz – but there was a MAGNUM to begin with!
Perhaps just as well that Chalmie didn’t try to link 8 and 24 – that would have flummoxed us as we hadn’t heard of the group. We did get all the other connections, though.
A few answers took us a while to parse even though they were obviously correct – such as MY WORD, LEGALISED and MODESTLY.
Favourites were EPIDEMIC and WATERLOO.
Thanks, Chalmie and Turbolegs.
SANDIE SHAW prevented me from finishing this very satisfying crossword. I enjoyed the reverse clue of “flea” being A NEW LEAF; this is the 3rd one of these I came across this week. One was “salt” being “last resort” and the other was “polo” being “swimming pool.” Great fun. Thanks to both.
Nearly impossible for this Yank who doesn’t follow the Eurovision results. I did manage to get 25a, 9a, and 17a, but got completely lost on 5d and 8d/15a, which made the rest of the puzzle very difficult. (Plus, we usually spell 10a “dependent”, which made 7d difficult, as well.)
Still, thanks to Chalmie for the challenge and Turbolegs for the clear explanations.
Why does weak = w in 11ac?
Please could somebody explain why May = haw?
Thanks.
Thanks Chalmie and Turbolegs
A good challenge and a theme that brought slight trepidation when I first recognised what it was going to be. Fortunately am old enough to remember all of the artists / songs involved here – although didn’t extrapolate out to see KATRINA & the WAVES.
Some tricky parsing to negotiate along the way – TAKE, where I didn’t go with that band (couldn’t find them as a winner or contestant either) but more with the expression after successfully dealing with someone. Didn’t end up seeing the EG part of LEGALISING either.
Finished down the bottom with SERIAL, WAVES and MY WORD (with its tricky parsing) as the last one in.
Grumpy@9/10 – had the same eyebrow raise with W=weak but both ‘may and ‘haw’ are common names for Crataegus monogyna, apparently.