A solid mid-week shift from Sayan.
One could argue that a few of the clues are somewhat self-referential, but actually I’m too tired. Brilliant charity gig last night and I need to go and get my head down. Thanks to Sayang and all you droppers-in.
| Across | ||
| 1, 6 | AUTOMATIC PILOT | George rewriting Act I to omit Paul (9,5) |
| Anagram (‘rewritng’) of ACT I TO OMIT PAUL. Nice clue if you haven’t seen it before, which (fortunately for me) I have, several times. | ||
| 9 | OVERDUE | Behind schedule on subscription? Not quite (7) |
| OVER for ‘on’ (as in, say, ‘a discussion on blame’) + shortened (‘not quite’) DUES (‘subscription’), | ||
| 10 | TRAITOR | Rat! Riot! Rat! Riot! (7) |
| Fun to parse. It’s an anagram (‘riot’) of RAT RIOT, whichever way round you like, I think. | ||
| 11 | ELATE | Cheer the Spanish goddess of mischief (5) |
| EL (‘the’ in Spanish) and ATE (Greek goddess of mischief). | ||
| 12 | REBELLION | British rugby player behind guerrilla insurgence (9) |
| LION (British international Rugby player) after REBEL (‘guerilla’). More than a hint of duplication here, I felt. | ||
| 14 | SAY | State power (3) |
| Double definition. To have ‘say’ in a matter is to have power therein. | ||
| 15 | IN AGREEMENT | United me with Argentine doctor (2,9) |
| Anagram (‘doctor’) of ME + ARGENTINE | ||
| 17 | STUN GRENADE | Fired a red sten gun? No, another weapon (4,7) |
| Anagram (‘fired’) of A RED STEN GUN. | ||
| 19 | ROC | Reptile decapitated by monster bird (3) |
|
CROC (a ‘reptile’) withoiut its initial ‘C’ (thus, ‘decapitated’). |
||
| 20 | INELASTIC | The Sentinel, a stickler for holding rigid (9) |
| Inclusion in ‘sentinEL A STICkler’. | ||
| 22 | EDICT | Order from editor, principally involving cadet training (5) |
| ED then first letters (‘principally’) of last three words. | ||
| 24 | INEXACT | Popular former legislative enactment is muddled (7) |
| IN (‘popular’) + EX (‘former’) + ACT (‘legislative enactment’: more duplication, I fear). | ||
| 26 | ATTABOY | A non-drinking lad receiving a word of encouragement (7) |
| A + TT (teetotal, ‘non-drinking’) + A (once more) + BOY (‘lad’). | ||
| 27 | NOSEY | Inquisitive – negative turning positive (5) |
| NO + YES, reversed. | ||
| 28 | MAYFLOWER | Hawthorn may blossom on transatlantic ship (9) |
| Double definition plus another not-so-cryptic one: ‘hawthorn’ and ‘transatlantic ship’ are both ‘mayflowers’; and ‘may’ (as it appears in the clue) + ‘flower’ for ‘blossom’. H’mm. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1, 14 | ABOVE SUSPICION | “Caesar’s Wife” must be a television series (5,9) |
| Double def: ‘Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion’ is an idiom meaning that those in public life should, as it were, have spotlessly clean hands and ‘Above Suspicion’ was a Lynda La Plante-scripted T.V. series from 2009 to 2012. | ||
| 2 | THERAPY | Cars not used in search party rummaging for cure (7) |
| Anagram (‘rummaging’) of SEARCH PARTY minus CARS. | ||
| 3 | MADDENING | Demanding treatment for vexatious (9) |
| Anagram (‘treatment’) of DEMANDING. | ||
| 4 | THE GREATEST | Boxer’s handle for 1977 film (3,8) |
| Muhammed Ali, of course, ‘handle’ being ‘name’. The film – it’s not that bad – told the tale of Ali’s struggle with and against celebrity. But I still think the clue is duplicitous, if that’s a synonym for duplicatory (and if there is such a word). | ||
| 5 | COT | Finish without a bed (3) |
| COAT (a painted ‘finish’) without its ‘A’. | ||
| 6 | PEARL | Organ in place of a jewel (5) |
| EAR (an ‘organ’) in PL, for ‘place’. | ||
| 7 | LATRINE | Let rain wash the public toilet (7) |
|
Anagram (‘wash’) of LET RAIN. |
||
| 8 | THRENETIC | Chain letters Sal omitted rewritten as mournful (9) |
| Another anagram-with-omissions [same as 2 down] and with an indicator – ‘rewritten’ – that we’ve seen before [see 1a] of, here we go, CHAIN LETTERS, minus SAL. ‘Threnody’ I knew but ‘threnodic’ was a new one on me. Not my favourite clue. | ||
| 13 | BUREAUCRACY | Red tape to install air- conditioning in office by Currys odd (11) |
|
Insert (‘install’) AC (for ‘air-conditioning’) in BUREAU next to the ‘odd’, i.e., not even letters of CuRrY. |
||
| 14 | See 1 | |
| 16 | ELEMENTAL | Basic English to the French intellectual (9) |
| E for English, LE for the French ‘the’, then MENTAL (as in ‘mental excercise’) for ‘intellectual’. | ||
| 18 | USELESS | Vain Monica in the States (7) |
| Monica SELES, the famous tennis-player, contained in ‘US’. | ||
| 19 | RAINBOW | Gunner home with weapon shaped thus (7) |
| RA (Royal Artillery, suffix for such as Gunner ‘Spike’ Milligan, RA) + IN (‘home’) + BOW (‘weapon’) + cryptic def of the shape of, e.g., a longbow. I think. | ||
| 21 | ATAXY | Inability to co-ordinate movements within USA tax year (5) |
| Inclusion in ‘usA TAX Year’. | ||
| 23 | TRYER | He is keen to cram rye into empty transporter (5) |
| RYE inserted into TR, being the emptied ‘shell’ of TransporteR | ||
| 25 | TOM | Cruise with Noddy the fool (3) |
| Tom Cruise is, of course, the height-challenged actor. A tom-noddy is an old name for a simpleton (or, more pleasingly, a puffin). | ||
*anagram
Thanks GB and Sayang, our former Uncle Yap.
Quite straightforward. 10ac was quite good. Haven’t heard of tom-noddy before. Crosswords are so educational!
Thanks Sayang and Grant
(Good to see you enjoy your night out !!!)
Similarly, I had the same feeling of repetition with a number of clue devices as well as internal structures of the clues highlighted in the blog above.
There were a number of clues that I didn’t parse – OVERDUE, MADDENING (just didn’t see the anagram) and BUREAUCRACY – maybe it was due to my attention focused on doing an old August Bank Holiday alphabetical puzzle that I’d found from the Guardian !!
Had not heard of the ‘tom-noddy’ term before. Smiled when I came across NOSEY (am sure that I must have come across this clue before but it felt like the first time) and liked unravelling the parsing of TRAITOR.
10A definitely did give me a smile once I saw it. Not once having seen 1/6, I thought it a nice clue indeed.
Do you suppose 18’s surface and solution comprise a nasty cryptic clue & answer?
Thanks to SAYANG and Mr. Baynham.