A new setter to me this morning.
Welcome to Flimsy. And I have to say that, with all due respect to our setter’s nom-de-guerre, this is not the most robust set of clues I’ve had to blog in this slot…
| Across | ||
| 1 | ACCURATE | A churchman holding cape that’s authentic (8) |
| C[ape] in A CURATE. | ||
| 5 | SEESAW | Notices a wife go from one extreme to the other (6) |
| SEES A W[ife}. | ||
| 9 | CONJUROR | Against one in court one uses charm, perhaps (8) |
| CON (‘against’) + JUROR (‘one in court’). | ||
| 10 | APPEAR | Turn up a very quiet organ (6) |
| A + PP + EAR (‘organ’). | ||
| 12 | PAUSE | Check what bears have picked up? (5) |
| Homophone (‘picked up’) of PAWS (‘what bears have’). | ||
| 13 | BUTTERFLY | Stroke goat then run away (9) |
| ‘Butterfly’ (a swimming ‘stroke’) composed of BUTTER (that which butts, perhaps a ‘goat’) + FLY (‘run away’). | ||
| 14 | STARVE | Look to eat very little? (6) |
| STARE (‘look’) surrounds or ‘eats’ V[ery], with part- or perhaps whole-clue definition. | ||
| 16 | MISSION | Girl – one on errand (7) |
| MISS + 1 + ON. | ||
| 19 | PHRASES | Chapters including Queen’s remarks (7) |
| PHASES (passages or perhaps ‘chapters’ of, say, a life) including R[egina]. | ||
| 21 | RIDGES | Make up dries outside – good for wrinkles (6) |
| Anagram (‘make up’) of DRIES outside G[ood]. | ||
| 23 | REPORTERS | Foolishly type errors missing year they work at the Financial Times (9) |
| Anagram (‘foolishly’) of TYPE ERRORS without its Y[ear]. | ||
| 25 | PATCH | Priest at church for a period of time (5) |
| P[riest] + AT + CH to give a (usually) bad ‘patch’ or period of time. | ||
| 26 | TERROR | Naughty child ultimately at fault (6) |
| T (= ‘ultimate’ letter of AT) + ERROR. | ||
| 27 | COLLECTS | Gathers bed’s to be turned round in room? On the contrary (8) |
| As per instruction, CELL (a ‘room’) is in fact ‘turned round’ in COTS (‘beds’). | ||
| 28 | DESIRE | Want father to follow diet regularly (6) |
| SIRE (‘father’) follows ‘regular’, i.e. alternate, letters of DiEt. | ||
| 29 | REPTILES | Salesmen pinching hat? Treacherous people! (8) |
| REPS (‘salesmen’) surround or ‘pinch’ TILE, a word for a hat only ever heard in the second line of the chorus to Where Did You Get That Hat? | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | ACCEPT | Bill grabs mushroom to swallow (6) |
| CEP (a ‘mushroom’) included in ACT (a ‘bill’ which has been passed by Parliament). | ||
| 2 | CONDUCTOR | One knows the score (9) |
| Cryptic definition. | ||
| 3 | ROUTE | End of root in rake’s way (5) |
| T (end of ‘rooT’) in ROUE (a ‘rake’). | ||
| 4 | TROUBLE | Busy time with money (7) |
| T[ime] + ROUBLE (‘money’). Chambers gives ‘trouble’, at definition no. 8, as verb meaning ‘to busy or engage overmuch’. H’mm. | ||
| 6 | EXPRESSED | Pointed out former newspaper editor? (9) |
| EX PRESS ED. | ||
| 7 | SHELF | Novel left on female’s mantelpiece (5) |
| SHE (the 1887 ‘novel’ by H. Rider Haggard) + L[eft] + F[emale]. | ||
| 8 | WORRYING | Nothing in wry grin strangely reveals getting in a fluster (8) |
| 0 (‘nothing’) in anagram (‘strangely’) of WRY GRIN. | ||
| 11 | STEM | Check in hotels temporarily (4) |
| Inclusion in ‘hostelS TEMporarily’. | ||
| 15 | RESERVOIR | Eels initially found in rivers – or other source of water? (9) |
| E[els] in anagram (‘other’) of RIVERS OR. Not sure the questionmark’s necessary… | ||
| 17 | IDENTICAL | Uniform worn in citadel (9) |
| Anagram (‘worn’) of IN CITADEL. | ||
| 18 | OPERATED | Perhaps Aida and Ted will get engaged (8) |
| OPERA (‘perhaps Aida’) + TED. | ||
| 20 | STEW | Food moderate conservative’s thrown up (4) |
| WETS (soft-line Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher) reversed (‘thrown up’ in this down clue). | ||
| 21 | RESTORE | Concerned with husband’s repair (7) |
| RE (‘concerned with’) + STORE (to ‘husband’). | ||
| 22 | THESIS | Actor, half-cut, is creating argument (6) |
| THESpian (an ‘actor’, reduced by half) + IS. | ||
| 24 | PORTS | Where sailors are found, drink is shortly (5) |
| PORT (‘drink’) + S (‘is’, reduced). | ||
| 25 | PILOT | One in story – Biggles, perhaps (5) |
| 1 in PLOT (‘story’). For younger solvers, Biggles was James Bigglesworth, the WW1 pilot hero of the novels by Captain W.E. Johns. | ||
*anagram
Thanks Flimsy and Grant
Nice to have two setters debut in the same week, and not a bad effort, I thought.
I think the question mark after ‘source of water’ is justified, as, while the supply of a lot of drinking water comeds from reservoirs, the reservoir itself is really just a holding basin for water that has its source up river, for instance.
This was the setter just dipping his toe in the water. Next time I’ll warrant a rather more challenging challenge!
@Simon S
Flimsy? Debut? Shome mishtake, shurely?
baerchen @3
Must be my mistake – I certaoinly didn’t recall the name when I saw it, and I’ve been doing the FT on and off for a few years. Incipient senility, ohne Zweifel.
Flimsy is new to me only as a Tuesday setter: I see he has form here and elsewhere and luck to him. I just couldn’t get engaged with this one.
To Simon@1: I think that in 15d a reservoir is a perfectly valid ‘source of water’ and also that the ‘other’ as anagrind is cleverly misleading. The question-mark thus feels like an unnecessary bet-hedger and one of several clues today that I found a bit woolly.
I certainly hope to meet Flimsy again with his sleeves rolled up.
This was okay, I suppose, though the grid-fill is perhaps not the most elegant with so many regular -s plurals, plus the third person singular verb form at 27a.
Thanks to Flimsy and Grant Baynham.
Thanks Flimsy and Grant
Think that what you see here is what you get from this setter from the previous puzzles that I’ve done of his. I don’t find him hard but he does drag up some interesting and less-used definitions to keep the interest up.
Did do a double take with RESERVOIR, but it was quite clear that it was the correct entry. Didn’t parse STARVE properly – thinking that it was a weakish cd at the time rather than the easy charade that it was.
Finished in the SW corner with OPERATED and PHRASES (which took some time to get my head around) as the last couple in.