A mixed bag this morning. Many write-ins, many more seriously challenging.
A good puzzle which I finished, very slowly, in the S.E. corner where each new solution felt like a breakthrough and then wasn’t. Lots of sneaky cryptic definitions and ingenious constructions. Well worth the effort. Thanks, Leonidas.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | OVERCAST |
Sky is sometimes so crowded with actors? (8)
|
| Too many actors. ‘Over-cast’. | ||
| 5 | PARSEC |
Unit returning series of Venice’s Raphaels (6)
|
| Hidden, reversed, in ‘veniCES RAPhaels’. | ||
| 9 | WORSE OFF |
Poorer clue for “sower” (5,3)
|
| Reverse anagram: SOWER is jumbled (‘off’) to form WORSE. | ||
| 10 | STEREO |
Setter regularly on old equipment playing music (6)
|
| Alternate letters (‘regularly’) of ‘SeTtEr + RE (concerning, ‘on’) + O[ld]. | ||
| 12 | LEEKS |
Veggies in shelter originally knitted sweaters (5)
|
| LEE (‘shelter’) + 1st letters of ‘Knitted Sweaters’. | ||
| 13 | INEFFABLE |
Fine twisted tale not to be mentioned (9)
|
| Anagram (‘twisted’) of FINE + FABLE. | ||
| 14 | STABLE |
Studs may be glimpsed in this firm (6)
|
| Double definition: horses & adjective. | ||
| 16 | ALCOPOP |
Sting perhaps after a large drink (7)
|
| A + L[arge], then a covert ‘COP OP’ (police operation) might be described as a ‘sting’. | ||
| 19 | ULYSSES |
Challenging work piecing together July’s sessions (7)
|
| Hidden in ‘jULYS SESsions’ is Jame Joyce’s famously ‘difficult’ novel. | ||
| 21 | GOSSIP |
Super-spreader’s attempt to join small craft without husband (6)
|
| GO (an attempt, a ‘try’) + S[mall] + ShIP (‘craft’ without H[usband]) | ||
| 23 | STEEL DRUM |
Something that’s hit eldest struggling with booze (5,4)
|
| Anagram (‘struggling’) of ELDEST then RUM. | ||
| 25 | RHINO |
Animal in river ultimately displaced by duck (5)
|
| River RHINe, its last replaced by 0 (‘duck’). | ||
| 26 | IODINE |
Element of satellite noise linked to central shields (6)
|
| IO (‘satellite’) + DIN + middle letter of ‘shiElds’. | ||
| 27 | ROOFLESS |
Most of meat from Skippy maybe son gets on the street (8)
|
| ROO FLESh (kangaroo meat, shortened, Skippy being the famous TV kangaroo) + S[on]. My last in, after ‘homeless’ and ‘rootless’ proved bootless, ho ho. | ||
| 28 | GARISH |
Vulgar and fish-like? (6)
|
| Like a gar (in the style of the Uxbridge English Dictionary, for Radio 4 ISIHAC fans). | ||
| 29 | FLATTERY |
Praise greasy meal that includes beverage (8)
|
| F.RY (a greasy dish, esp. of offal) includes LATTE (‘beverage’). Sounds like a good meal deal. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | ORWELL |
Brown’s insiders rambling on telly exposed Blair? (6)
|
| Anagram (‘rambling’) of inside letters of ‘bROWn’ + interior letters (‘exposed’) of ‘tELLy’, to give (Eric) ‘Blair’, real name of author George Orwell. | ||
| 2 | EARNESTLY |
Attention: roost on edges of locality in a serious way (9)
|
| EAR (‘attention’, as in ‘Friends, Romans…’) + NEST (‘roost’) + 1st & last of ‘LocalitY’ | ||
| 3 | CHESS |
Musical Rudolf having caught on (5)
|
| C[aught] + (Rudolf) HESS. | ||
| 4 | SUFFICE |
Do pack jewellery when time is short (7)
|
| StUFF (‘pack’ without T[ime]) + ICE (diamonds, ‘jewellery’). That’ll do. | ||
| 6 | AUTOFOCUS |
It helps to get sharp 8s from two cars (9)
|
| AUTO (a car) + (Ford) FOCUS (another), 8s being ‘close-ups’. | ||
| 7 | SCRUB |
Clean area of arid land (5)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 8 | CLOSE-UPS |
Shots of sole cooked in vessels (5-3)
|
| Anagram (‘cooked’) of SOLE in C.UPS. | ||
| 11 | VEGA |
Ecofriendly consumer nearly becoming a star (4)
|
| VEGAn (‘ecofriendly consumer’) minus last. | ||
| 15 | BASELINES |
Court limits reporting of McCartney’s contributions (9)
|
| Homophone of ‘bass-lines’, Macca being the Beatles’ bass player.. | ||
| 17 | PRIVILEGE |
Clipped hedge conceals one on stage right (9)
|
| PRIV.Et (‘hedge’, shortened) hides 1 + LEG (‘stage’ of e.g. a sporting competition). | ||
| 18 | QUISLING |
Traitor in Paris who stands atop catapult (8)
|
| QUI (‘who’ in French) + SLING (‘catapult’). | ||
| 20 | SARK |
Island Special on boat for couples (4)
|
| S[pecial] + ARK (boat for animal ‘couples’) | ||
| 21 | GUMBOIL |
Paste starts to irritate little spot in mouth (7)
|
| GUMBO (‘paste’, either made with okra or, more generally in US, a fruit conserve, says Chambers) + 1st letters of ‘Irritate Little’. | ||
| 22 | WOLSEY |
Cardinal’s certainly base on reflection (6)
|
| Reversal of YES (‘certainly’) + LOW (vile, ‘base’). | ||
| 24 | ELDER |
The German at the foot of the Spanish tree (5)
|
| EL + DER (Sp. & Ger. ‘the’). | ||
| 25 | REFIT |
New interior finally for the naff Thai market (5)
|
| Last letters of last 5 words. |
Truly difficult to pinpoint a favourite in today’s enjoyable workout from Leonidas: ORWELL or the timely nod to 19a’s “filthy book”.
Unlike Grant, there were few gimmes for me but lots of clever parsing to tease out, particularly in the SE corner with, for instance, FLATTERY where I could see ‘fatty’, ‘tea’, ‘rye’ and ‘ale’ long before the final pennydrop moment. SUFFICE was another clever one.
LOI, 15D, was also one of my first as I simply couldn’t decide whether to go with tennis or music. As it’s the Australian Open, that’s what I picked.
Thanks to Leonidas and Grant.
Apart from that drafted SE quadrant, everything went swimmingly. Have seen various meanings for “gumbo” but none of them fitted a ‘paste’ definition, so cheated with a word fit there. Annoyed that I didn’t get GOSSIP until after that – may have gotten GUMBOIL if I had. Cheated yet again to get WOLSEY and then finished off with ROOFLESS.
Did you mean dratted, Hovis? I certainly thought so.
That it was dratted, I mean!
I seem to have largely followed Diane’s thought processes in solving this enjoyable puzzle – a big ‘Doh!’ for FLATTERY, when I finally saw it. I’d add SARK and WOLSEY to her favourites.
Like Grant and Hovis, I entered ROOFLESS last.
A tiny difference: in 7dn, I read ‘area of arid land’ as the second definition.
Many thanks to Leonidas for the fun and Grant for a great blog.
Diane @3. I certainly did mean to type that. Possibly that dratted autocorrect (I typed that to check and it did indeed want to change it to drafted). Normally notice these anomalies just after posting which seems to be a common annoyance.
Indeed, Hovis, and an occurrence that frequently causes a wry comment to fall flat on its face.
Eileen @5,
I read SCRUB that way too in its second guise.
For me the best of today’s puzzles. I was stymied by the SE corner too as I’d initially put in “hippo” for 25a, which sort of works, though it did seem odd to delete a letter (the O from the PO ‘river’) and replace it with the same letter from ‘duck’. Anyway, once that was sorted out, things did eventually fall into place.
Thanks for explaining ALCOPOP. I was stuck on ‘Sting’ as a member of the band “Police”, so a COP OP(erative) – well, sort of. Lots to like with my favourite being the ‘boat for couples’ at 20d and ‘Cardinal’ WOLSEY.
Thanks to Leonidas and Grant
FWIW, I’ve lived in the US all my life (75 years) and eaten in all 50 states, and I’ve never heard the word GUMBO refer to anything but a stew made with okra (and generally a roux for a paste). Has anyone else ever heard of a gumbo as fruit conserve? If not, I’m going to have to object to Chambers’s second definition on this one.
Wikipedia also gives a definition I’d never heard of: a gumbo of slow-cooked greens, called gumbo z’herbes. This one at least seems plausible to me.
I think I found the SE quadrant an even tougher challenge than most of those posting today. Thanks to Grant for the answers and explanations and to Leonidas for the challenge. 23a was my favorite.
Number 14 from Leonidas, if anyone else is interested. Filled in the LHS fairly quickly, but the RHS took a fair bit longer. ROOFLESS was my 2nd last, and WOLSEY my last. Also failed to parse the COPOP part of 16a. My 3rd, and most enjoyable, puzzle of the day. Well, my 4th if you count Wordle, which I just started doing 3 days ago.
ACD
Thanks to Leonidas and Grant. Very enjoyable – and the first time I finished a Leonidas puzzle, though I did not parse ALCOPOP or GUMBOIL. With the latter I agree with EdK@USA that in the U.S. I have never some across the term used to describe a paste. Like others I was slow to piece out the SE corner.
Thanks to everyone for their comments and to Grant for the blog. For GUMBOIL, my submitted version had ‘soup’ for the GUMBO component, but in fairness there appears to be a number of other options that could fit the bill. I tried cooking one in lockdown for my birthday as it’s great party food…
Thanks Leonidas and Grant
Also found this quite difficult, taking twice my average time to finish it over four sittings and similarly ended up in that tough SE corner. Pleased to get it finished with only the second part of ALCOPOP unparsed coming to the blog – don’t think that would ever have worked that out. Had initially written in GUMSTIX, which is a brand of paste in the US (GUMS (in mouth) + T.I. (initially ‘to irritate’) + X (‘little spot’, as on a map) – it obviously didn’t work with the crossers and caused delays in getting them. Finally saw the clever ROOFLESS and FLATTERY before finishing the puzzle with Cardinal WOLSEY.
Good tough challenge and glad that we have Australia Day holiday to catch up after it.