A decent Tuesday test, with some convoluted parses to counter complacency.
Confess I struggled here & there, with no good reason in retrospect, but this was a satisfying one to finish. Thanks to the Sleuth.
| ACROSS | ||
| 9 | IN ANY CASE |
Where one might find travel items, whatever happens (2,3,4)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 10 | ALARM |
Fear internalised by international army (5)
|
| Hidden in ‘internationAL ARMy’. | ||
| 11 | BALDWIN |
Obvious triumph for a former PM (7)
|
| BALD (‘obvious’) + WIN. | ||
| 12 | ILL-WILL |
Shunning outsiders, silly prince in a familiar way creates hostility (3-4)
|
| Internal letters of ‘sILLy’ + our Prince WILLiam, familiarly. | ||
| 13 | RUN |
Destruction with island disappearing in series (3)
|
| RUiN (‘destruction’) without I[sland]. | ||
| 14 | IN GOOD HEART |
Cheerful daughter in a hot region for recreation (2,4,5)
|
| D[aughter] in anagram (‘for re-creation’) of A HOT REGION. | ||
| 17 | BREAK |
Stop on road, we hear, to get rest (5)
|
| Homophone of BRAKE (‘stop on road’). | ||
| 18 | OAR |
A stroke has this other acute risk in initial stages (3)
|
| 1st letters of ‘Other Acute Risk’. ‘Stroke’ is the athlete in the stern of a multi-crewed rowing boat. | ||
| 19 | USAGE |
Posh grandee’s first to enter enclosure? That’s the custom (5)
|
| U (Mitfordian ‘posh’) + 1st of ‘G{randee}’ in S[elf]-A[dressed] E[nvelope], old-fashioned ‘enclosure’ in letter. | ||
| 21 | SUFFRAGETTE |
Female featuring in FT great use for stirring female campaigner (11)
|
| F[emale] in anagram (‘for stirring’) of FT GREAT USE. | ||
| 23 | RAG |
Artist close to boycotting tabloid (3)
|
| RA + last of ‘boycottinG’. | ||
| 25 | LANTERN |
A property owner in the French region’s borders needs source of light (7)
|
| A + N[ational] T[rust] (‘property owner’) in LE (Fr. ‘the’) + ‘borders’ of ‘RegioN’. | ||
| 27 | BLOUSON |
See American wearing good French loose-fitting jacket (7)
|
| B.ON (Fr, ‘good’) surrounds LO US (‘see American’). | ||
| 28 | SWEAR |
Use bad language in opening to summer sport (5)
|
| 1st of ‘Summer’) + WEAR (to ‘sport’), as in the Wodehousian, ‘He was sporting quite a natty tie,’ doncha know. | ||
| 29 | SPLENDOUR |
Duke is put in role spun to show a magnificent look (9)
|
| D[uke] in anagram (‘spun’) of ROLE SPUN, ‘spun’ thus doing double duty, I think. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | TIMBER |
Foreign banker keeping money for building material? (6)
|
| River TI.BER (‘foreign banker’) surrounds ‘M[oney]’. | ||
| 2 | PARLANCE |
Normal look lacking gravity in a manner of speaking (8)
|
| PAR (‘normal’) + gLANCE (‘look’ without G[ravity]) | ||
| 3 | BY A WHISKER |
Why a biker’s treated marginally (2,1,7)
|
| Anagram (‘treated’) of WHY A BIKERS. | ||
| 4 | MAIN |
Principal place supplying water (4)
|
| Double definition, although I’m not quite sure where the boundary lies. ‘Main’ is of course the pipe ‘supplying water’, but that leaves ‘place’ doing nothing, so I’ve gone for e.g. The Spanish ‘Main’. | ||
| 5 | MERITOCRAT |
Term actor devised around Italy for an opponent of cronyism? (10)
|
| Anagram (‘devised’) of TERM ACTOR + I[taly]. | ||
| 6 | HAUL |
Quantity of fish in college dining room, it’s said (4)
|
| Homophone of ‘hall’ (‘college dining room’). | ||
| 7 | PATINA |
Role not right in Australian film (6)
|
| PArT (‘role’ without R[ight]) + IN + A. | ||
| 8 | OMELETTE |
Ordinary writer, US one, devouring dry dish (8)
|
| O[rdinary] + ME (the ‘writer’) + (Harper) LE.E (US writer), surrounding T[ee]T[otal] (‘dry’). | ||
| 15 | GROGGINESS |
A large number consuming eg gin in rough form might show this? (10)
|
| GRO.SS (144, ‘a large number’) around anagram (‘in rough form’) of EG GIN &lit. | ||
| 16 | HOUSEBOUND |
Husband with spring flower first stuck indoors? (10)
|
| H[usband] + river OUSE (a ‘flow-er’) + BOUND (to ‘spring’). | ||
| 17 | BASILISK |
Sybil’s partner is known initially as one with a fearsome look (8)
|
| BASIL (husband of Sybil in the sitcom ‘Fawlty Towers’) + IS + 1st of ‘Known’. | ||
| 20 | ABRASION |
Scrape in a bar so after an exchange (8)
|
| Anagram (‘after an exchange’) of IN A BAR SO. | ||
| 22 | FENDER |
Guard criminal missing old fellow (6)
|
| ofFENDER, a ‘criminal’ without O[ld] + F[ellow]. | ||
| 24 | GENTRY |
Good field for those with titles? (6)
|
| G[ood] + ENTRY (collective noun for the ‘field’, competitors in a sporting race). | ||
| 26 | EARL |
Peer cut short before due time (4)
|
| EARLy (‘before due time’), shortened. | ||
| 27 | BOLT |
Booklet taken out at intervals for a speed merchant? (4)
|
| Alternate letters of BoOkLeT. Usain Bolt, of course. |
3,5 and 17d were favourites in this challenge from Sleuth – 3d especially as it conjured the ‘hairy bikers’.
Needed Grant’s help for parsing 8 and 14.
Thanks to Sleuth and Grant.
Re 4D: here in Australia, if we have our water supply connected to the public supply, we call it “mains” water. As opposed to water from a tank. I have never heard it referred to in the singular. I have also done a web search on “mains water” and several British sites also have articles about “mains water” so I guess that the same expression is common over there.
Methinks that the definition is a little bit dodgy.
The expression at 14A is unknown to me but pretty obvious from the anagram once the first two words are derived. I did get 27A correct but didn’t manage to tie it in to a real person; I just assumed that it was someone who does a bolt (runs away). I’m not really into sport.
Thanks Grant for your efforts.
Although I didn’t find this as enjoyable as recent Sleuth puzzles, it was good fun. I always object to “double duty” and “to show” doesn’t work as an anagram indicator to me, so 29a was the dud of the bunch.
Grant, you gave the wrong French article in 25a – it is LE not LA.
To Peter @2:
There’s a Flanders & Swann lyric from ‘The Gas Man Cometh’
‘He ripped out all the skirting board to try & find the main…’ so it’s common parlance here.
Yes, more than enough to keep you thinking. Despite trying for some time trying to work out the parsing of LANTERN, I couldn’t work out where NT for ‘property owner’ came in – obvious now of course. I had PRINCIPAL as a sort of double def cum &lit.
GROGGINESS was very good and was my pick of the day.
Thanks to Sleuth and Grant
Nothing to quibble about in this and everything went in very smoothly, mostly at first sight, though PATINA needed a few moments’ thought. Thanks to Sleuth for a good, albeit fairly undemanding, puzzle.
I’d agree with ‘good but undemanding’
Thanks to Sleuth and Grant
Thanks to Sleuth and Grant. I needed help parsing USAGE and OMELETTE.
Thanks Sleuth and Grant.
19ac: I took SAE as being “stamped addressed envelope”, which is supported by Chambers 2014.
29ac: I agree that “spun” seems to be doing double duty in the clue.
4dn: With regard to earlier comments, it may well be “mains water”, but the pipe through which it comes is the “water main”. Again this is supported by Chambers 2014.
Not too challenging apart from parsing NT in LANTERN. I liked the simplicity and misdirection of SWEAR. Thanks to Sleuth and GB.
I rarely tackle an FT puzzle but I do enjoy Sleuth’s handiwork so I thought I’d give this a go, and very good it was too, albeit relatively undemanding. I see that Pelham Barton @9 has said exactly what I was intending to, and I’ll just add that GROGGINESS was my favourite.
Many thanks to Sleuth and to Grant.
I do enjoy a bit of Sleuthing and this was no exception. The 19a ‘enclosure’ always makes me smile and my favourite was GROGGINESS.
Thanks to Sleuth and to Grant whose review shed light on the full parsing of OMELETTE – I’d lumped together the writer and the American!
A very pleasant solve – not too taxing but enough to stretch the grey matter in places.
Diane@1 – we like your tie-in to the Hairy Bikers.
Thanks, Sleuth and Grant.
Thanks for the blog and all the comments which have covered most of my points.
Maybe MAIN refers to the the sea as a place supplying water.
Double use of SPUN is not really fair.
Thanks Sleuth and Grant
Pleasant solve, not too hard but still some interesting puzzling to get to some of the answers. Started off with the talked-about MAIN, which could almost be a straight definition ‘principal pipe in a system for conveying water, oil, etc.’
Enjoyed untangling a couple of the anagrams, especially at 14a and 5d and working out the charades for25a and 8d.
Finished on the right hand side with HOUSEBOUND, USAGE (which was a likely answer much earlier, but took ages to work out the SAE / envelope bit) and the clever OMELETTE as the last one in.
Re 29a SPLENDOUR, I took “to show” as the anagrind (although I didn’t think it a good one), so spun wasn’t doing double duty. Having said that, I have often seen on this site the statement that double duty is unfair and not permissible, but I’ve never seen an explanation as to why. (In CADs or &lits, isn’t every word doing double duty, or am I missing something?) I presume that if the clue had read “Duke is put into the role spun twice…” it would have been acceptable.
Thanks Sleuth for the fun and Grant for the excellent blog.
cellomaniac@16 I also concluded reluctantly that ” to show ” must indicate the anagram which is very weak.
SPUN is either part of the letters to mix up , or tells us to mix them up, it cannot be both.
We have D is put in ROLE SPUN …. but no real indication to mix the letters.
Or we have D is put in ROLE and the SPUN tells us to mix them up, giving D in an anagram of ROLE.