Mudd is today's setter.
I started this puzzle immediately after waking up this morning, and it took a while to get my brain cells working. My first pass only had three anagrams solved, but as I woke up, the rest of the puzzle fell into place, with DISPENSE being my LOI, because I couldn't see PENS for pounds for a while, so dithered between "dispense" and "disperse" until the penny dropped.
Thanks, Mudd.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | LADDER |
Ascending series, someone increasing number by fifty? (6)
|
|
ADDER ("someone increasing number") by L (fifty, in Roman numerals) |
||
| 4 | SHALLOTS |
Vegetables: tots eating every one (8)
|
|
SHOTS ("tots") eating ALL ("every one") |
||
| 9 | FILLIP |
Medicine, assuming in decline, for pick- me-up (6)
|
|
<=(PILL ("medicine") + IF ("assuming"), in decline) |
||
| 10 | BROWNEST |
Top place for high-fliers, most like coffee (8)
|
|
BROW ("top") + NEST ("place for high-fliers") |
||
| 12 | WAVE |
Reportedly abandon gesture (4)
|
|
Homophone/pun/aural worplay [reportedly] of WAIVE ("abandon") |
||
| 13 | WINE CELLAR |
Where dusty old bottles kept, new, I recall, drunk (4,6)
|
|
*(new i recall) [anag:drunk] |
||
| 15 | NORWAY SPRUCE |
Never cut by feller in the end, immaculate tree (6,6)
|
|
NO WAY ("never") cut by (felle)R [in the end] + SPRUCE ("immaculate") |
||
| 18 | MIXED DOUBLES |
Variety of large drinks served in court battle (5,7)
|
|
MIXED ("variety of") + DOUBLES ("large drinks") |
||
| 21 | STAND-ALONE |
Independent individual behind payment finally invested in footwear (5-5)
|
|
ONE ("individual") behind (paymen)T [finally] invested in SANDAL ("footwear") |
||
| 22 | SPIN |
Political movement bites back (4)
|
|
<=NIPS ("bites", back) |
||
| 24 | AIRBORNE |
Flying robin with ear that’s damaged (8)
|
|
*(robin ear) [anag:that's damaged] |
||
| 25 | CHILLI |
Spice raw, by the sound of it? (6)
|
|
Homophone/pun/aural wordplay [by the sound of it] of CHILLY ("raw") |
||
| 26 | DISPENSE |
Pounds invested in failing side, put out (8)
|
|
PENS ("pounds", as in dog pounds) invested in *(side) [anag:failing] |
||
| 27 | CHOPIN |
Axe elected scorer (6)
|
|
CHOP ("axe") + IN ("elected") The "scorer" in the clue refers to one who creates musical scores. |
||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | LEFT-WING |
Not eaten, bit of chicken red (4-4)
|
|
LEFT ("not eaten") + WING ("bit of chicken") |
||
| 2 | DELIVERY |
Ultimately, daddy hated turning up for childbirth (8)
|
|
<=([ultimately] (dadd)Y + REVILED ("hated"), turning up) |
||
| 3 | EVIL |
Wicked, wicked character needs no introduction (4)
|
|
(d)EVIL ("wicked character") needs no introduction |
||
| 5 | HORSE-TRADING |
Pitiful trash ignored in secret negotiations (5-7)
|
|
*(trash ignored) [anag:pitiful] |
||
| 6 | LAWRENCIUM |
Rare element warm, nuclei tickled (10)
|
|
*(warm nuclei) [anag:tickled] |
||
| 7 | OVERLY |
Gorgeous topless dresses right too (6)
|
|
[topless] (l)OVELY ("gorgeous") dresses R (right) |
||
| 8 | SATIRE |
Comedy show settled on anger (6)
|
|
SAT ("settled") on IRE ("anger") |
||
| 11 | MISSPELLINGS |
Girl admitting magic words gone wrong? (12)
|
|
MISS ("girl") admitting SPELLING ("magic") |
||
| 14 | PALINDROME |
One is in top spot (10)
|
|
"top spot" is a PALINDROME |
||
| 16 | FLIP=FLOP |
Shoe’s failure to turn over? (4-4)
|
|
FLIP ("to turn over") + FLOP ("failure") |
||
| 17 | ASUNCION |
South American capital warmer in effect, though temperature’s dropped (8)
|
|
SUN ("warmer") in AC(t)ION ("effect", though T (temperature) is dropped) Asuncion is the capital of Paraguauy. |
||
| 19 | ISLAND |
Key is with locks in first of luggage (6)
|
|
IS + AND ("with") locks in [first of] L(uggage) |
||
| 20 | MADRAS |
Old Indian city, crazy and wild for the most part (6)
|
|
MAD ("crazy") + RAS(h) ("wild", for the most part) |
||
| 23 | SHAH |
Old religious leader entering parish, a hermit (4)
|
|
Hidden in [entering] "pariSH A Hermit" |
Fun puzzle by Mudd. Question though, in 9A “in decline” means going down yet we want the letters going up so it doesn’t seem to work. Am I missing something? Thanks!
Jay@1
I paused at that clue too, but then decided that in decline could also mean going backwards?
Ah, good point—thanks!
Very enjoyable with lots of smiles. OVERLY was my favourite. Only two unknowns — NORWAY SPRUCE & LAWRENCIUM.
Made hard work of this, which I attribute to painkillers after breaking my ankle, rather than cognitive decline. But very solvable, especially if you know your Latin American capitals. Liked mixed doubles, palindrome, many others. Thanks to both setter and blogger.
I enjoyed this – a nice meaty challenge which at one point I thought was going to defeat me but then it opened up and went along smoothly, and made me feel pretty smart. Thanks Mudd and loonapick.
A good few misdirects – I had “legal something” instead of “mixed doubles” for a while – anagram of “large” around something else and the court bit sent me completely the wrong way. Fifteen-love to the setter though I brought it back to deuce later on.
Lawrencium is a bit more than “rare” – it is very short-lived and only created in specialised colliders, though it has long enough lived isotopes for people to do some basic chemistry on it, unlike many of the transuranics.
Thanks Mudd and loonapick.
JoFT, are most of them ‘named’? That was my go-to — take out the ‘-ium’ and precede it with a name made of the rest.
[gif@8: Either named for people – often a way of honouring 20th century physicists and chemists who did not get the benefit of the first tranche of discoveries and naming – or places including labs, towns and countries where the elements are discovered. But then, the same is true for a lot of other elements with the Swedish village of Ytterby having the distinction of having 4 elements named after it. My favourite is gallium, named by le Cocq for Gaul but also using the fact that “gallus” is Latin for cockerel, as in his name. Sneaky!]
I enjoyed this one although I came up short on a few that were a bit too subtle for me, but there was lots to enjoy – Norway Spruce, Mixed Doubles, Horse Trading – too many to list.
Thanks to Mudd and Loonapick
“Most coffee is brownest”?? That doesn’t make sense, grammatically or otherwise. Enjoyed the rest.
Thanks Mudd and loonapick
10ac: I see no problem with “like coffee” as a definition for the adjective brown, and it seems perfectly reasonable to form a superlative BROWNEST which can be defined as “most like coffee”.
I was determined to get there and I did, with Palindrome my LOI. I made steady progress until the Southwest corner as Island didn’t appear for longer than it should.
My only grumble was with Brownest, which I think works, but still didn’t seem very satisfactory
Thank you to all.
An enjoyable and mostly straightforward solve. Favourite was PALINDROME. We have a couple of quibbles, though. 9ac would work better as a down clue and, for 23dn, nowhere – in Collins, Chambers or online – can we finf SHAH defined as a religious leader; the definition in Collins is ‘a ruler of certain Middle Eastern countries, esp (formerly) Iran [c16 from Persian:king]’.
Thanks, Mudd and loonapick.
I did wonder about SHAH as well.
Strange how some people have found it hard going to start with and then fairly straightforward. I was one of them. I even nodded off at one stage (I’ve reached an age when I feel quite happy doing that) and woke up with brain cells sharpened and ready to polish off the unfinished clues in (for me) record time.
23dn: The definition for SHAH did not bother me when I was solving this. The nearest I can get to a satisfactory justification I can find is as follows. ODE 2010 p 30, gives us Aga Khan as “the title of the spiritual leader of the Nizari sect of Ismaili Muslims.” It gives us the name of the fourth Aga Khan as Karim al-Hassan Shah. A web search led me to a BBC news page saying that he died in early 2025. That might just about work as allowing SHAH as the name of an old religious leader. However, I do not find this convincing: my understanding of the way Muslim names work is that he would be referred to as Karim rather than as Shah when only a single name was used. I think this is a mistake by the setter.
Yeah, wasn’t the supposed point of the 1979-80 revolution in Iran that the Shah was insufficiently religious? (Okay, also that he was supposedly an American puppet, which is why Iran-US relations have been chilly (even at their warmest) ever since.)
Shah is just Persian for king (from which we get check mate in chess) so the only religious tradition in which the Shah might be a religious leader is Zoroastrianism where the possibly mythical ancient kings are venerated and the Messiah like figure still awaited is also a Shah. It’s still a bit of a stretch, though.
I also found this difficult at first. I did not enjoy it as much as others, but that could have just been my mood.
DELIVERY is a wonderful observation, MISSPELLINGS, MIXED DOUBLES also got ticks.
Why is HORSE TRADING secret? And thanks for the parsing of STAND ALONE.
Thank you Mudd and loonapick