Eccles appears in his regular midweek spot.
Another enjoyable puzzle as we have come to expect from Eccles, with some lovely surfaces and only one word we had to check online (6ac).
H (last letter or ‘close’ of hellish) OLD (ancient) FORTH (river)
A reversal (‘about’) of A-FLAt (note) missing the last letter or ‘short’. Apparently ALFA is the spelling of ‘Alpha’, the phonetic alphabet word for ‘a’, in most European languages.
ANd I MATED (‘also I reproduced’) missing or ‘shedding’ the first ‘D’ (Dutch)
R (right) fATHER (dad) missing or ‘losing’ F (France)
An anagram (‘lost’) of VERY in W (Western) N (Norway)
An anagram (”around’) of A CAT SLID
GR (Greek) OTTO (German)
sTRAINING (tiring) missing the first letter or ‘starting late’
aFFLUENT (rich) with E (European) replacing the ‘A’ (American)
TEE (‘supporter’) round or ‘restraining’ COX (rowing instructor) all reversed or ‘repulsed’
An anagram (‘rowdy’) of TAME TAME (repeated)
AG (silver) in MERE (pool)
An anagram (‘badly’) of HITS ME
PUTIn (despot) missing the last letter or ‘mostly’ EVIL (wicked) all ‘suffering reversal’
STAGe (platform) missing the last letter or ‘cut short’
DESPiTE (‘even with’) with ERA (long time) replacing the ‘i’ (first letter or ‘leader’ in industry)
HONE (polish) Y (last letter or ‘bottom’ of tray)
L (first or ‘initial’ letter of light) AMBiENT (surrounding) with the ‘i’ (island) missing or ‘disappearing’
F U T (odd letters of ‘FoUrTh’) TON (century) ‘sharing’ the ‘t’ (first letter or ‘bit’ of tittle-tattle)
RED (ruddy) RAFT (large number)
A homophone (‘picked up’) of HURRY (rush) KANE (Harry Kane, ‘record-breaking British goalscorer’)
pARTISAN (unfair) missing or ‘losing’ the first letter or ‘top’
EEL (‘swimmer’) in FRANCE (European country)
FLESH (humankind) in RIOT (crowd disturbance)
OP (work) + an anagram (‘around’) of MEANDER
Hidden (‘protected by’) and reversed (‘turns’) in desiGN IMMELmann
S (son) ILLER (more sick) T (temperature) all reversed or ‘raised’
O (ring) CAR (coach) IN A (Austria)
MO (instant) VIE (contest)
ROGUE (scoundrel) with the ‘g’ (first letter or ‘beginning’ of get) moved back or ‘depressed’
Faves: ANIMATED, EXOCET, LIVE IT UP and ROGUE.
Thanks Eccles and B&J.
Sorry ROUGE.
Lovely fun as ever from this setter with ticks all over my page.
It doesn’t really matter but, strictly speaking, shouldn’t 8a tell you that it’s the first D to be removed?
Many thanks to Eccles and to B&J.
I read 21a as (TAME)* + (TAME)* rather than (TAME TAME)*.
I too struggled with ALFA but it had to be that. At 15A not sure that straining = tiring, it seems the opposite if you’re able to put extra effort into a task. But much enjoyed as always so thanks Eccles and B&J.
ALFA was, ironically, my last one in, too. HONEY was neat, though I wondered for a while whether Buffy could be a sweetheart.
Thanks all.
The point about ALFA is that it’s the official spelling of the code word in the NATO phonetic alphabet, not just that some languages spell it that way.
Likewise there’s the unusual spelling of Juliett (with two Ts) for J.
Well up to our setter’s usual standard with the expected couple that I needed to check – ALFA & ACID SALT this time. I was also grateful to our bloggers for verifying the ‘humankind’ synonym.
Favoured clues here were WYVERN, EFFLUENT, LIVE IT UP & HONEY.
Many thanks to Eccles and to B&J for another excellent review.
This was fun, but I found the NE corner notably harder than the rest due to the “sudden” use of some looser definitions ([S]TRAINING for tiring, [P]ARTISAN for mechanic, FREELANCE for untied) together with the trickier ACID SALT and ALFA (both of which had to be correct from the checkers though).
The other entry which presented a difficulty was the nho LAMBENT, which took a while to tease it out. So that was my TiLT.
Faves were DESPERATE, FUTON and REDRAFT.
Thanks both
Thanks to Eccles (always enjoy an Eccles) and to Bertandjoyce (always enjoy your blogs).
Late (5 days) getting to this one but had to check out the parsing of ALFA (so clever) and on reading the blog to offer that ROUGE is a ‘roué’ (scoundrel) with ‘g’ ‘depressed’ inside it but it makes no sense and your take is obviously better but (cap in hand, eyes downcast, genuflecting while reversing (not easy)) the depression might be ‘moved down’ in a down clue?