Yippee! Eccles fills the mid-week spot again today.
As expected, all good fun – what more can we say?
DEFENcE (legal team) with the ‘c’ (caught) ‘leaving’ + an anagram (‘when mingling’) of TREATS
An anagram (‘about’) of AMBLES and TEA
BOD (person) in A and E (hospital department)
ASLEEp (dozing) without the last letter (‘nearly’) round or ‘wrapping’ Y (last letter or ‘back’ in corduroy) – a new word for us.
An anagram (‘Harry’) of PAUSED after MO (short while)
D (duke) bEACON (signal fire) missing the first letter or ‘beginning to be put out’
A reversal (‘from behind’) of APES (primates) + RAT (rodent) E (last letter of enclosure)
Hidden (‘showing a bit of’) and reversed (‘after review’) in vulgAR BET REVoked – ‘showing a bit of’ seems to be doing double duty here, but it works with the definition
AGE (mature) + C (Conservative) in NY (New York)
ORCA (killer) + an anagram (‘battered’) of AND I
ANG LEe (Taiwanese film director) with R (right) ‘overwriting’ the last ‘e’ (final letter or ‘part’ of Carrie)
O (nothing) ATE (worried) S (first letter of Scott)
BAL (50% of herbal) + TEA round or ‘including’ I (iodine) C (carbon) and S (sulphur)
An anagram (‘jumping around’) of CLEAN-CUT BOYS
Fancifully, if a DAB (fish) were to have a HAND, it would have ‘fish fingers’……. at least that is what Bert wrote. When checking the blog, Joyce decided that it was just DAB (fish) and HAND (fingers here).
FUll STY (pigpen at capacity) missing the two ‘l’s (lives)
An anagram (‘to be fitting’) of MOURN quEEN (without ‘Qu’ – question) and B (born)
SET-To (fight) missing the last letter or ‘short’
A reversal (‘upstanding’) of LOR (my) + LOVER (mate)
A homophone (‘reportedly’) of TIERS (rows)
PLAIN (obvious) after or ‘supporting’ (in a down clue) C/O (care of) M (millions)
A homophone (‘over the phone’) of PEDAL (part of a bike)
CITY (Boston, perhaps) after an anagram (‘changed’) of ROTA
An anagram (‘out’) of AGAIN RENT
BREAD (funds) BINd (truss) without the last letter or ‘briefly’
VD (venereal disease – ‘syphilis for example’) round or ‘spread by’ O O (‘repeated love’) + O O (over and over)
A reversal (‘returning’) of EGAD (zounds!) RAY (Man Ray, the photographer)
Alternate even letters (‘oddly not’) of aDmItS aCtOr
LIST (record) round or ‘featuring’ Z (unknown)
F (female) LAY (amateur)
After a bit of a mauling in the Other Place earlier, it was a relief to complete this one without the same struggle – which is not to say it wasn’t challenging. I think I was just more on the wavelength and B&J’s opening Yippee! sums it up perfectly. ASYLEE is new to me too and what an ugly word but, sadly, one we may get to hear more of in the future.
I suspect DEFENESTRATE was a very early grid entry and what a fun word it is to play with. A word that put Prague on the map in the same way that Diet did for Worms. Other favourites include BASE METAL for the lovely surface, DEACON for the deletion, ORCADIAN for the surface and because it’s a lovely word, BOUNCY CASTLE for the lovely anagram spot, BREAD BIN for the misdirection – though it said ‘food bank’ in a way to me which seems sadly appropriate, VOODOO for its cheekiness and fun despite the unfortunate subject and YARDAGE with the glorious construction – Egad is a wonderful old world and it was good to see such an unusual way of indicating RAY. For what it’s worth, I’d like to think Eccles had Bert’s parsing in mind when he wrote DAB HAND and that might explain the QM at the end.
Not a word of complaint. Thanks Eccles and B&J
I can do no better than echo B&J, to whom many thanks.
Yippee! Eccles fills the mid-week spot again today. As expected, all good fun – what more can we say?
Many thanks too to Eccles for a perfect puzzle.
I found this trickier than the first two posters, but echo the praise. YARDAGE is brilliant.
Another brilliant puzzle from Eccles, loaded with super clues – but what apparent prescience in 1ac DEFENESTRATION, with reference in both its senses to the sorry saga of Sir Gavin – I really did laugh out loud!
Huge thanks to Eccles for making my day and to B&J for a great blog.
Eccles seems trickier of late, not sure if it’s me or the puzzles. Whenever I have defenestrated anything, I have always taken care to open the window first, but maybe I’ve been doing it wrong.
Thanks both
Thanks Eccles and BnJ
Curiously, Chambers has DEFENESTRATION but not the verb it derives from.
Exactly what Eileen said including the thanks to both the setter and the bloggers
Like James @5 I am finding Eccles tricker, but it’s probably me. At 11A I had an unparsed “avyzed” (oh yes it is!) which fits “helped” but otherwise unparsed, so DNF. Excellent as always, so thanks Eccles and B&J.
ASYLEE clean bowled me like a Warne delivery, I was looking in word searchers when I should have been studying the clue which clearly leads to the answer
which is in Chambers. I liked DEFENESTRATE -apart from those two clues it was reasonably straightforward -and the usual excellence from Eccles
Thanks both. My only unknowns were the Man Ray part of YARDAGE but he did die while I was in primary school, and DEFENESTRATE which gave me some pleasure that there is such a specific word, with I assume the tantalising option of having the window open or closed
I thought I had copyright on ‘DAB HAND’ – it’s one of my old jokes (along with ‘vegetarians – people who are nice to meat…’). So that was a write-in; the rest was an enjoyable tussle. Thanks to Eccles and to BertandJoyce.
Eileen@4: Sir Gavin?
Alphalpha @11 – see here for Sir Gavin:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63563263?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA
He allegedly told a senior civil servant to ‘slit your throat’ and ‘jump out of the window’ .
DEFENESTRATION:
1: a throwing of a person or thing out of a window
assassination by defenestration
2: a usually swift dismissal or expulsion (as from a political party or office)
the defenestration of political leaders
Very enjoyable if tricky in places – such as the NW corner where we took ages to get DAB HAND. A new word for us too in ASYLEE which we had to check in Chambers (where it’s noted as ‘chiefly US’).
Thanks, Eccles and B&J.
ASYLEE is an abomination! – even worse than my anathema, ‘attendee’ et al: at least ‘attend’ is a verb. I have never seen or heard this word and was amazed to find it in Chambers, albeit, as Allan says, ‘chiefly US’.
Eileen@14 I second the condemnation of ASYLEE. I remember when I was in Germany the debate about the equally horrible Asylant as a pejorative short form of Asylbewerber.
Eileen@12: Thanks so much – I just can’t keep up! “:|”
“:|”
😐
Alphalpha @16 – it is difficult, isn’t it?
I meant to add this 😉
A day late to this but so glad I made the effort. Just beaten by ASYLEE which I would have got in a month of Sundays. VOODOO was the laugh out one but so many others were great clues. Absolutely top notch.
Thanks all.
Late to this as well but I want to echo all the praise for Eccles, one of the best setters around. Thanks B&J.