Eccles occupies the mid-week slot this week.
We found this a fairly straightforward solve with a good mix of relatively easy clues to get us started and a few rather more difficult ones to keep us on our toes. As expected with Eccles, the surfaces are all good.
Being of a certain age, we had to check on the actor referred to in 23ac, but, being fans of the Who, the Stones and (to a lesser extent) Paul Weller, we enjoyed the misdirection in 18d.
| Across | ||
| 1 | Constable possibly a right idiot, arresting son (6) | |
| ARTIST | A R (right) TIT (idiot) round or ‘arresting’ S (son) – a reference to John Constable, the English romantic artist | |
| 4 | One who has renounced America after partner oddly deported (8) | |
| APOSTATE | A (America) POST (after) |
|
| 9 | Decide about black Russian bread (5) | |
| RUBLE | RULE (decide) round B (black) – yes, it can be spelt without the ‘o’ | |
| 10 | Stress good for English servant (9) | |
| UNDERLING | UNDERLIN |
|
| 11 | Angry blokes losing millions in capital in dispute (4) | |
| ADEN | ||
| 12 | Love lap-dancing? When it’s polished it can be beautiful (4) | |
| OPAL | O (love) + an anagram of LAP – anagrind is ‘dancing’ | |
| 13 | Furious robber scratching head (5) | |
| IRATE | ||
| 15 | See 10D: see first letter of clue. Confused? (7) | |
| DIOCESE | An anagram of IOD SEE and C (first letter of ‘clue’) – anagrind is ‘confused’ | |
| 16 | Go away with husband, travelling east into red light district (4) | |
| SOHO | SHOO (go away) with the H (husband) moved to the right or ‘travelling east’ – is Soho still regarded as a red light district? | |
| 19 | Laugh that comes from the heart (2-2) | |
| HE-HE | Hidden in (‘coming from’) tHE HEart | |
| 20 | Follow bird after hours (7) | |
| EMULATE | EMU (bird) LATE (after hours) | |
| 23 | Report describes eye of cyclone in Orlando, say (5) | |
| BLOOM | BOOM (report, as in a loud noise) round or ‘describing’ L (middle letter or ‘eye’ of cyclone’) – a reference to Orlando Bloom, a British actor | |
| 24 | Rice, perhaps – the last portion of rice for a while (4) | |
| TIME | TIM (Tim Rice) + E (last letter or ‘portion’ of ‘rice’) | |
| 25 | Reserve heading off in pain (4) | |
| ACHE | ||
| 27 | Magnificence of porn led us astray (9) | |
| SPLENDOUR | An anagram of PORN LED US – anagrind is ‘astray’ | |
| 28 | Sing “Hello” by Adele endlessly (5) | |
| YODEL | YO (“hello”) + |
|
| 29 | At the end of the week, I get up and mock those in power (8) | |
| SATIRISE | SAT (Saturday – ‘the end of the week’) I RISE (get up) | |
| 30 | Landlord excluding old Republican (6) | |
| LESSOR | LESS (excluding) O (old) R (Republican) | |
| Down | ||
| 1 | Attacks decorations in Barnet, snipping the tops (3,5) | |
| AIR RAIDS | ||
| 2 | Smooth surface on furniture requires work by computer (8) | |
| TABLETOP | OP (work) after or ‘by’ TABLET (computer) | |
| 3 | Get rid of outhouse (4) | |
| SHED | Double definition | |
| 5 | Cook departed with meals in boat (6,7) | |
| PADDLE STEAMER | An anagram of DEPARTED and MEALS – anagrind is ‘cook’ | |
| 6 | Lost sheep reported? Honestly (8,2) | |
| STRAIGHT UP | A homophone (‘reported’) of STRAY (lost) TUP (sheep) | |
| 7 | I am boring, fussy creature (6) | |
| ANIMAL | I’M (I am) in or ‘boring’ ANAL (fussy) | |
| 8 | Young bird starts to emerge after goose lays egg on time (6) | |
| EAGLET | First letters or ‘starts’ of Emerge After Goose Lays Egg on T (time) | |
| 10 | Modest nun pirouettes in disguise (13) | |
| UNPRETENTIOUS | An anagram of NUN PIROUETTES – anagrind is ‘in disguise’ | |
| 14 | It limits what a dead canary might do (10) | |
| DETERMINER | Canaries were once used to detect gas in mines – so a dead one might DETER MINER | |
| 17 | Falls down, as one contains large quantity of alcohol – helpers called for (8) | |
| CASCADES | A homophone (‘called for’) CASK (‘one contains large quantity of alcohol’) AIDES (helpers) | |
| 18 | John Entwistle, originally a mod icon, is someone who profits from the Stones (8) | |
| JEWELLER | J E (initials or ‘original’ letters of John Entwistle) + WELLER (Paul Weller of The Jam – ‘mod icon’) | |
| 21 | Sailor exploits slags (6) | |
| ABUSES | AB (sailor) USES (exploits) | |
| 22 | Miscellaneous collection of biblical characters (3,3) | |
| JOB LOT | JOB and LOT are two biblical characters | |
| 26 | Here one can burn frumpy red dresses (4) | |
| PYRE | Hidden in or ‘dressed by’ ‘frumPY REd’ | |
Very enjoyable and I agree with B&J about Eccles’ consistently polished surfaces. Lorra laffs too, I thought.
The online thingy looks a bit different on my pc
A remarkably quick solve for an Eccles – for me anyway. Great surfaces as we expect and enjoy from this setter. No real holdups although I spent longer than I should getting CASCADES as the crossers brought to mind ‘barcodes’ which made no sense. Favourite was DIOCESE.
Thanks to Eccles and BJ.
PS I also wondered if Soho was still a ‘red light district’. I’m sure some Londoners will clarify.
I normally think of Soho (apart from SoHo in NYC) as where I discovered Chines food, Italian grocers, modern jazz , Private Eye office, The Marquee etc but yep it did have a red light sleaze to it-see Steve Coogan playing Paul Raymond.
I rather liked DETERMINER -reminded me of Birdsong. Also liked the stray tup.
Good fun.
I too found it a quick solve, no problems for me with the actor – he’s a ‘local lad’
Thanks to Eccles for the fun and B&J for the explanations
Puzzled by 11A. The capital of Yemen is Sana’a, not ADEN.
Jason @5 We had to check this too. However, according to Wikipedia, Aden was the capital of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen until 1990, when northern and southern Yemen were unified and Sana’a became the capital – it was briefly the centre of the secessionist Democratic Republic of Yemen in 1994 – we think this explains Eccles’ addition of ‘in dispute’ in the clue
Thrown for a while by RUBLE without the ‘O’ and had to guess the ‘mod icon’ from the def. but otherwise everything went in steadily enough.
I had ‘Falls down, as one’ as the def. for CASCADES, and for me the homophone didn’t quite work as I pronounce the first ‘A’ as in ‘asp’, not ‘cask’. Creeping Americanisation I suppose.
Thanks to B&J (I now know more about ADEN than I ever thought possible) and to Eccles.
Another well-constructed puzzle from Eccles although I did have a few question marks:-
29a is not applied solely to those in power (there is life beyond Spitting Image!) and some 2d’s are deliberately made far from smooth, but I guess that’s nit-picking. Thought perhaps 15a was a bit too clever by half – no way that the ‘1’ in the pdf version looks like the required letter.
Learned something new in that spelling of the Russian currency and also the mod icon whom I’d never heard of before! On the other hand, Soho will always be representative of a red light district to me – perhaps it’s an age thing!
Plenty left to enjoy – 12&20a plus 6&22d really hit the spot for me.
Many thanks to Eccles and to B&J for the blog.
Jane@8. I also wondered about the reference to those in power in 29a. Don’t have any problems with 15a though. It is, of course, common in cryptics to replace a 1 with the Roman equivalent of I (not that all solvers write their answers in upper case) and replace a 0 with an O (look different in typing but where would setters be without this device?) so I don’t see why this would be contentious here.
As with Baerchen@1, was jolted by the new look of the puzzle, for me on the I-phone app. It must be the same size grid but the characters have gone all spindly, and every punctuation mark became an underscore. All adds to the mystery I suppose. An enjoyable and fairly straightforward puzzle, apart from the same homophone grief at 17d as WordPlodder@17, being a southern softie. Thanks to Eccles and B&J.
Hovis@2. Input ‘red light district London’ into Google and, as far as I can see, every article listed relates to Soho.
The typeface thickens up a bit, vertically, on the desktop version.
Anyway, nice stuff from Eccles.
Good puzzle; blog the same. Thanks to B&J and Jennifer.
What Kathryn’s Dad said.
I haven’t anything new or interesting to add, so I’ll just ditto the previous two comments. Many thanks.
We meet again, B&J – many thanks for the excellent blog. Your comment at @6 was exactly what I was thinking – I also did quite a lot of reading about Yemen. Fair call about 29a, perhaps a QM would have improved it. As for cascades, in my Yorkshire accent, the a in cask sounds like the one in asp, and at the start of cascades. I suppose I assumed that people who pronounced cask with a longer a also would do so for cascades! A side note about diocese – I wrote it, then kept it for a puzzle with a 10D in, but soon found that virtually no (reasonable) grids have a 10D. When I saw one that did (I think it was a Dutch puzzle), I nicked the grid and seeded it.
I’ve just had a look at the new layout. I like the new look, although the page did freeze for a short while. Hopefully it will turn out to be an improvement there, too.