A rare Friday appearance from ARTEXLEN, thanks to whom for a good workout. One of those puzzles where the parsing took as much time as the solving did for many clues, if not longer.
FF: 8 DD: 8
| Across | ||
| 1 | BLACKPOOL TOWER | Dirty power tool to repair coastal structure (9,5) |
| BLACK (dirty) [POWER TOOL]* | ||
| 10 | AFTER | Beam cut at near edge to make post (5) |
| rAFTER (beam, cut in the front i.e. without first letter) | ||
| 11 | OPEN-ARMED | Welcoming duck coop provided with protection (4-5) |
| O (duck) PEN (coop) ARMED (provided with protection) | ||
| 12 | PRESSIE | Offering journalists front and back of issue (7) |
| PRESS (journalists) IE (first and last letters of IssuE) | ||
| 13 | SCANNER | Checkout assistant, perhaps, primarily serves one packing containers (7) |
| S (Serves, primarily) CANNER (one packing containers) | ||
| 14 | SMITH | Male boring this ground is manual worker (5) |
| M (male) in THIS* | ||
| 16 | CAPILLARY | Vessel everyone backed to cut piracy at sea (9) |
| LLA (everyone = ALL, reversed) in PIRACY* | ||
| 19 | SIGNALLED | Beckoned single lad nervously (9) |
| SINGLE LAD* | ||
| 20 | DROOL | Slaver keeping Australian native in confines of domicil (5) |
| ROO (australian native, kangaroo) in DL (confines of DomiciL) | ||
| 22 | UPRIGHT | Honest post (7) |
| double def | ||
| 25 | GO UNDER | Attempt articles in two languages and fail (2,5) |
| GO (attempt) UN DER (articles in french, german) | ||
| 27 | PAPERWARE | Stationery’s worthless stuff, returned note with report of damage (9) |
| PAP (worthless stuff) ER (note = RE, reversed) WARE (sounds like WEAR, damage) | ||
| 28 | BANAL | Prohibit aluminium for flat (5) |
| BAN (prohibit) AL (aluminum) | ||
| 29 | DANISH PASTRIES | Rogue insider has to admit pinching expired items from bakery (6,8) |
| INSIDER HAS* containing PAST (expired) | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | LETTERING | Characters linger around to keep dry before end of deluge (9) |
| LINGER* around [ E (end of delugE) TT (dry, teetotaller) ] | ||
| 3 | CORPS | Squadron is body that’s not totally complete (5) |
| CORPSe (body, not complete) | ||
| 4 | PROVENCAL | Shown around lake of French region (9) |
| PROVEN (shown) CA (around) L (lake) | ||
| 5 | OMENS | Signs small fish is coming to the surface (5) |
| S (small) NEMO (fish) , reversed | ||
| 6 | TRAVAILED | Toiled lifting painting, a devil to shift (9) |
| TRA (painting = ART, reversed) [A DEVIL]* | ||
| 7 | WOMEN | 15 in the future will occupy Mars, employing nanobots initially (5) |
| starting letters of “..Will Occupy Mars Employing Nanobots…” ; answer to 15 is .. GIRLS – clue refers to what girls will be in the future | ||
| 8 | RED ARMY | Foreign troops once forced to capture king within year in Revolution (3,4) |
| [ MADE (forced) containing R (king) ] in YR (year), all reversed | ||
| 9 | CAMPUS | Introduction to philosophy penned by French author for academic world (6) |
| P (introduction to Philosophy) in CAMUS (french author) | ||
| 15 | HEAD GIRLS | Changing form, Sir glad he gets trustworthy pupils (4,5) |
| SIR GLAD HE* | ||
| 17 | PEDIGREES | Lines eg spider’s woven to trap insects at the centre (9) |
| EG SPIDER* containing E (insEcts, at the centre) | ||
| 18 | AVOIDANCE | A ring arrested in hustling and vice prevention (9) |
| A [ O (ring) in {AND VICE}*] | ||
| 19 | STUMPED | Defeated politician (bridge player) in poker game (7) |
| [MP (politician) E (bridge player, east)] in STUD (poker game) | ||
| 21 | LORDLY | I’m surprised about learner driver being magnificent (6) |
| LORDY (i’m surprised) around L (learner driver) | ||
| 23 | RIPEN | Mature and frail, peeing regularly (5) |
| alternate letters of fRaIl PeEiNg | ||
| 24 | TRAMP | March in exercise that’s upwards trudge (5) |
| MAR (march) in PT (exercise), all reversed | ||
| 26 | UMBER | River leaving the capital is brown (5) |
| cUMBER (river, without its starting letter) | ||
*anagram
Finished reasonably quickly. Never seen ‘prezzie’ spelt with SS, but Chambers has it. Never seen the word PAPERWARE either. Neither of these were in my Collins. An enjoyable solve. Took some time to get OMENS, with the devious reversal indicator – my favourite here. Thanks to S&B.
Meant to say, I had hUMBER for 26d.
Didn’t parse ‘Red Army’ once the solution was clear. I’m with Hovis on the parsing of 26a.
Enjoyable puzzle.
Yes, surely (h)Umber.
Thanks to Artexlen and Turbolegs. I did not know PRESSIE-pressie or BLACKPOOL TOWER (my LOI) but could parse both and, after a slow start, got through fairly quickly. Enjoyable.
Thanks to Artexlen and Turbolegs
Quickly finished. Apparently there is a River Cumber in Ireland, which gets a mention but not an article in Wikipedia, but the Humber is far better known.
Thanks Artexlen and Turbolegs
A little easier than he can be but no less enjoyment for that. Thought that ‘slaver’ / DROOL was very clever and that RED ARMY was certainly a tricky parse.
Was with H UMBER as the river as well.
Finished with LORDLY (which made mschuckle on parsing it) and PAPERWARE which I had to use a word finder and then a little while to oarse why it was so.