Tees fills the Thursday slot this week.
As we expect of Tees, a very well crafted puzzle with good surfaces.
We hadn’t come across the entry at 21ac before, but we’re not involved in stock market activity and, having looked up the definition, are not really surprised that such activity goes on.
‘Saw parts’ as a definition for 18ac was inventive, and had us fooled for a few minutes.
S (first letter or ‘leader’ of satanist) in or ‘breaking’ APE (mirror)
An anagram (‘different’) of LOCATIONS round C (clubs)
TO ADO (trouble) round or ‘sucking in’ RN (Royal Navy – ‘British sailors’)
ROOTLE (search vigorously) T (time)
ORANGe (shade) without the last letter or ‘endlessly’
LACK (need) in B B + ALL (the whole)
AMBER (resin) + an anagram (‘at sea’) of RIGS
H (hotel) in NICE (pleasant)
Hidden in SocieTE ETHnologique
PARA (soldier) + LAD (youngster) reversed or ‘returning’ round or ’embracing’ IS
GREEN (inexperienced) + a homophone (‘mentioned’) of MALE (fellow) – we’d not come across this word before and needed a dictionary check to confirm
GAG (joke) round U (uniform in the phonetic alphabet) L (left)
ASTRID (Scandinavian woman) E (last letter in queue)
An anagram (‘possibly’) of SERPENT
An anagram (‘to develop’) of ROWERS HOPE
SIN (something wrong) round or ‘swallowing’ H (hot)
AS (like) + RON (man) ‘strapped’ in TAUT (tight) – we’re never too happy about using ‘man’ (or ‘woman’) as wordplay for a random male (or female) name, but it doesn’t happen that often, so we probably shouldn’t complain
We were puzzled by the parsing of this one – it had to be: S (first letter of squire) + AIRY (visionary) reversed or ‘sent heavenward’ – we didn’t think that ‘airy’ could be a synonym for ‘visionary’ – it is not in Chambers…. but it is in our old dead tree version of Collins, with examples quoted of ‘airy promises’ or ‘airy plans’
CROWd (mob) without the ‘d’ (500 in Roman numerals) BAR (pub)
S (succeeded) after R (right) in NO MAN (‘Donne’s island’ – as in his poem ‘No man is an island’)
Cryptic definition – the ‘point’ being the DAGGER that could be concealed in a CLOAK
An anagram (‘formed’) of CANAILLE + S (first letter of shaky)
Double definition
Cryptic definition – actors on the big screen will be LARGER THAN LIFE
BEEF (grouse, as in complain) EATER (diner)
NENE (goose) reversed or ‘soaring’ round or ‘circling’ LIGHT (to come down)
PLACE (location) B O (first and last letters or ‘outskirts’ of Bilbao)
R (last letter or water) ELAPSE (slip away)
Cryptic definition – a GRAPH is plotted
C (cold) EEL (fish) reversed or ‘served up’ + H (hot)
Another enjoyable crossword from Tees – many thanks to him and B&J – I hadn’t heard of 21a either
I really liked NORMANS-I was hoping for RUDGE as raven keeper but BEEFEATER was also fine
Thanks all
Didn’t parse enlighten as didn’t know the nene goose. I now know it’s the official bird of the state of Hawaii. I do love finding out a new random fact!
Some lovely surfaces and definitions. GRAPH, NORMANS and TEETH really stood out as excellent.
Thanks Tees and B&J.
Another one who didn’t know GREENMAIL and I hadn’t met the goose in 17dn, either – only knew it as the Northamptonshire river.
I’m with copmus re NORMANS – I also had ticks for ICONOCLAST, CROWBAR and BEEFEATER.
I enjoyed this – many thanks, Tees and B&J.
Personally, I prefer that Neo chappie 🙂
GREENMAIL also new to me. Solving 17d, I thought “surely ‘nene’ can’t be a goose” but was surprised to find out it was. Fortunately, I checked AIRY in my Collins first – I would never take it to mean “visionary” – but I can’t argue the fact.
Great fun!
Not too hard to fill the grid but more difficult to parse. I entered both ASTRONAUT and ENLIGHTEN without taking the trouble to parse either, saving myself time with the latter as I’d never heard of the ‘goose’. GREENMAIL was new to me too and a good term for describing an iffy ‘stock market activity’. Best bits were the ‘Donne’s island’ wordplay and the misleading ‘Saw things’ def.
Thanks to Tees and to B&J (and to copmus @2 for teaching me that Barnaby Rudge had a pet raven)
RUDGE now on list.
Partrudge?? (Kiwi says-) I’ll leave it to the setter-BEGRUDGE?
Enuff- interesting book though
NORMANS was my favourite too. Unlike our PM I think there is a big difference between airy promises and visionary ones. Thanks to Tees’ and BandJ
I found this on the tough side but I did complete it without aids. I knew GREENMAIL was a term, but I didn’t know what it meant. I wasn’t helped by entering BIGGER THAN LIFE for 9dn.
Many I couldn’t parse, and I thought 13ac might be B for black and B for Ball and you needed the whole words.
We had to check 21ac in Chambers but otherwise this was pretty strightforward. 1ac was a write-in as Tees’ alter ego used the identical clue elsewhere on Tuesday, and we had a feeling of dejá-vu about a couple of other clues as well.
No matter, it was all good stuff.
Thanks, Tees and B&J.
Oh sh*t. Re APSE that isn’t supposed to be able to happen, as each paper’s clues have a separate database in the computeaser to stop such cross-pollination. Sorry.
Thanks for the entertainment Tees.
I was another who learned of GREENMAIL yesterday afternoon but I have run into “nene” as a goose in a crossword somewhere somewhen.
I was also a bit put out by “airy” meaning visionary but thought of someone having a blue sky type moment of dreaming.
Thanks for the blog B&J.