Hard but fair and very stylish from Loroso this morning.
I was shamefully slow out of the traps with this one – just two on the first Across pass – but enjoyed it more and more as things fell into place. Some great surfaces and a couple of new bits of vocab. Excellent.
| Across | ||
| 1 | PEREMPTORY | Final free property to house them (10) |
| Anagram (‘free’) of PROPERTY surrounds ‘EM. Chambers gives ‘final’ as def 4. | ||
| 6 | MESH | Netting frames hold nets (4) |
| Inclusion (‘nets’) in ‘fraMES Hold’. | ||
| 9 | WINDSOR | Collect a Nintendo console or a tie (7) |
| WIN (‘collect’) + DS (‘Nintendo console’) + OR. Papa always told us that a Windsor knot was the sign of a cad. | ||
| 10 | SEQUELS | “Carry On” films (7) |
| Whole clue cryptic. Neat. | ||
| 12 | CHUCKWALLA | Lizard has to leave area around rock face (10) |
| CHUCK (of a love-affair, to ‘leave’ heartlessly) + A[rea] including WALL (‘rock face’). New lizard to me. Edible, apparently. Yum. | ||
| 13 | TEA | Drink milk from this? Almost (3) |
| TEAt. | ||
| 15 | PAROLE | Secretarial work release scheme? (6) |
| A secretary’s work is a ‘P.A. ROLE”. | ||
| 16 | AUDIENCE | Meeting house (8) |
| Double def., 1st royal, 2nd theatrical. | ||
| 18 | RAKEHELL | Degenerate knight in here, all agitated (8) |
| K[night] in anagram (‘agitated’) of HERE ALL. Another new word to me, ‘rake’ evidently being the short form. Well, well. | ||
| 20 | WIDEST | Whiskey? That is most generous (6) |
| W[hiskey], as in radio code, + ID EST (L., ‘that is’). Lovely clue. | ||
| 23 | COL | Pass regularly through school (3) |
| Alternate letters of ‘sChOoL’. | ||
| 24 | INSTIGATOR | One starting out, initially poor leader (10) |
| Anagram (‘poor’) of 1 + STARTING + O[ut], initially. | ||
| 26 | AT ISSUE | A matter being discussed (2,5) |
| A + TISSUE. | ||
| 27 | DEICIDE | Judge accepting one’s 19 of god (7) |
| Thus, ‘killing’ of a god = 1 in DECIDE (‘judge’). | ||
| 28 | ERGO | So … um … leave (4) |
| ER, GO. | ||
| 29 | ELIMINATED | Was killer ecstatic about accomplice’s words? (10) |
| ELATED (‘ecstatic’) around I’M IN (possible words of accomplice). | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | PAWN | Lay hands on new tool (4) |
| PAW (‘lay hands on’) + N[ew]. ‘Tool’ in the sense of a manipulable person. | ||
| 2 | RANCHER | Was singer’s manager a cowboy? (7) |
| RAN (‘was manager’) + CHER (‘singer’) | ||
| 3 | MUSICAL CHAIRS | Game which only the one behind can win (7,6) |
| Cryptic def., winner being the last bum-on-seat. | ||
| 4 | THROWN | Sound of toilet in shed (6) |
| Homophone of ‘throne’, a toilet. | ||
| 5 | RUSTLE UP | Pure lust can make you get together (6,2) |
| Anagram of PURE LUST. | ||
| 7 | EVERTON | Tennis player available for football team (7) |
| Chris EVERT + ON (‘available’). | ||
| 8 | HIS MAJESTY | The king welcomes PM, welcomes banter (3,7) |
| HIS (‘welcomes’) + Theresa MAY around JEST (‘banter’). | ||
| 11 | QUALIFICATION | Rider’s skill (13) |
| Double definition. | ||
| 14 | APPRECIATE | See increase in value (10) |
| Another DD, 1st being ‘see’ as in ‘understand, get’. | ||
| 17 | ALLS WELL | We’re happy – everybody wave (4,4) |
| ALL + SWELL. | ||
| 19 | KILLING | Huge profit hardly essential to former bank governor (7) |
| ILL (‘hardly’, as in ‘it ill beomes you…’) included (‘essential’) in Mervyn KING (former governor of Bank of England). | ||
| 21 | EGOTIST | Say too much about one’s being boastful (7) |
| EG (‘say’) + OTT (‘too much’) around 1’S. “One’s” doing double duty here, I think. | ||
| 22 | DIADEM | Crown princess gets bust made (6) |
| DI (late ‘Princess’) + anagram (‘bust’) of MADE. Another very economical clue. | ||
| 25 | WEED | Mary Jane, midget’s daughter (4) |
| WEE (‘midget’) + D[aughter]. | ||
*anagram
I started this crossword a couple of hours ago and made not a bad start (8 answers).
Then I got stuck, put it aside, solved today’s Boatman and came back to Loroso.
And see, all at once the ball started rolling again (and kept on rolling till the very end).
Last one in was WEED (25d), didn’t know the marijuana definition.
I also needed the blog for fully understanding 19d (KILLING), so thanks for that, Grant.
A pity that 21d has indeed “one’s” doing double duty, not really what you may expect from Loroso.
Nevertheless, altogether another excellent puzzle from The Dean.
For which thanks.
Thanks for a great blog, Peedee – I could echo your preamble almost verbatim – and Loroso for a most enjoyable challenge.
Really enjoyed this. Almost finished (eventually) without aids but needed a word fit to get CHUCKWALLA which I didn’t know. Also didn’t know RAKEHELL but got this from the clue. For EGOTIST I settled on ‘being’ referring to a person, so being boastful becomes egotist. Thanks to Loroso and Grant.
To Eileen @2: PeeDee certainly gives excellent Blog. Happy you thought I was he.
I’m so sorry, Grant @4 – I don’t know how that happened. [And I didn’t even write his name properly.] You do write great blogs, too. 😉
Hovis @3, re EGOTIST: that makes (more) sense!
Thanks Loroso, Grant
Loved it. Particularly SEQUELS.
To Hovis @3 and Sil @6 re EGOTIST:
No, it doesn’t make more sense. ‘Being boastful’ as a noun in English? I think not, gentlemen. I’m happy with the double-duty: it’s legal and certainly Araucarian if not Ximenesian.
Not sure I understand your nounal objection @8. Boastful is an adjective meaning ‘given to bragging’, so ‘being, given to bragging’. I agree that the word ordering is suspect but I felt that was less an issue than double duty. To each his/her own as to what is acceptable. My own views have changed over the years and will probably continue to do so.
Thanks to Loroso and GB. I got most of the answers (after a lot of guessing) but QUALIFICATION and SEQUELS defeated me. I did finally get CHUCKWALLA with an assist from Google but needed help parsing EGOTIST, PAROLE, and especially KILLING. Still, lots of fun.
Thanks Loroso and Grant (sometimes apparently disguised as PeeDee)
Found this hard – at least a couple of hours of work over a number of sittings – finally was able to complete it over a pretty long coffee (ahhh … the effects of caffeine!) . CHUCKWALLA, RAKEHELL and Mervyn KING were all new to me and I couldn’t work out the ILL part of 19d nor the parsing of INSTIGATOR until coming here.
Just about every clue was a delight to finally nut out – and got to say many of them required a bit of electronic help – the few that weren’t were just the ‘easier ones’ that allowed one to get a toehold into the solving of it. Finished with the clever cryptic definition SEQUELS and the even cleverer word play of WIDEST.