A solid Tuesday offering with some notably smooth surfaces.
A good surface does nothing to help (or hinder) a solve but it certainly adds to the aesthetic pleasure of the excercise. Thanks to Peto.
| Across | ||
| 1 | PICKLE | Pluck shown by the French in a difficult situation (6) |
| PICK (‘pluck’) + LE (Fr. ‘the’). | ||
| 4 | OFFSTAGE | Removed from raised area as it’s hidden from the audience (8) |
| OFF (‘removed’) + STAGE (‘raised area’). | ||
| 10 | SENSELESS | Foolish of London area head to accept extremely strange student (9) |
| S[outh] E[ast] (‘London area’) + NESS (‘head’) includes StrangE + L[earner]. | ||
| 11 | CLOUT | Look inside to switch off power (5) |
| LO (‘look’) In CUT (‘switch off’). | ||
| 12 | ODIN | Sculptor’s earliest cast of god (4) |
| Sculptor rODIN casts off 1st letter. | ||
| 13 | OUT OF ORDER | Unacceptable for detour to go wrong around Ohio (3,2,5) |
| Anagram (‘to go wrong’) of FOR DETOUR around O[hio]. | ||
| 15 | EMANATE | Give out advance payment to cover article on space (7) |
| EM (printer’s ‘space’) then ANTE (advance payment’) around AN (‘article’). | ||
| 16 | ELAPSE | Pass by part of church with oddly neglected bell (6) |
| APSE (‘part of church’) preceded by even letters of ‘(b)E(l)L’ | ||
| 19 | BEDAUB | Happen to have unpleasant turn over unionist’s smear (6) |
| BE (to ‘happen’) + BAD (‘unpleasant’), reversed, around U[nion]. | ||
| 21 | LUCERNE | Soldiers caught in retreat trapped by river somewhere in Switzerland (7) |
| R[oyal] E[ngineers] + C[aught], reversed, in N. English river LUNE. | ||
| 23 | CALL IT A DAY | Stop showing juggling act with Lily and Ada (4,2,1,3) |
| Anagram (‘juggling’) of ACT + LILY + ADA. | ||
| 25 | SWAP | Starts to worry about profits after opening of stock exchange (4) |
| 1st letters of W(orry) A(bout) P(rofits) after sim. of S(tock). Nice surface. | ||
| 27 | EXTRA | Unusually without cunning in retrospect (5) |
| EX (‘without’) + ART (‘cunning’), reversed. | ||
| 28 | BATH CHAIR | Hard to break absurd car habit with another means of transport (4,5) |
| H[ard] in anagram (‘absurd’) of CAR HABIT. | ||
| 29 | MANNERED | Artificial intelligence ultimately occupying fellow geek (8) |
| E (end of ‘intelligencE’) In MAN (‘fellow’) + NERD (‘geek’). | ||
| 30 | BROLLY | Outer portions of busby covering part said to provide elementary protection (6) |
| Outside letters of ‘BusbY’ around homophone (‘said’) of ROLE (‘part’) & cryptic definition. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | PUSHOVER | It’s easy to exert pressure directly above (8) |
| PUSH + OVER. | ||
| 2 | CANDIDATE | Open letter about fellow seeking office (9) |
| CANDID (‘open’) + reversal of ETA (a Gr. ‘letter’). | ||
| 3 | LEER | Ogle poet in recital (4) |
| Homophone (‘in recital’) of Edward LEAR. | ||
| 5 | FAST ONE | Deceitful practice in FE involving Midlands university (4,3) |
| FE around the (University) of ASTON in Birmingham. | ||
| 6 | SACROSANCT | Very holy woman after bag with books concealing cocaine (10) |
| ROSA (a ‘woman’) after SAC + N[ew] T[estament] around C[ocaine]. | ||
| 7 | AVOID | Love feeding greedy duck (5) |
| 0 (‘love’) in AVID (‘greedy’). | ||
| 8 | ENTIRE | Complete with nationalist wearing English flag (6) |
| E[nglish] + TIRE (to ‘flag’) around N[ationalist]. | ||
| 9 | SECURE | Having no doubt about the city being safe (6) |
| SURE around EC (City of London). | ||
| 14 | PALATINATE | Alcuin’s first language embraced by head of historical territory (10) |
| A(lcuin) + LATIN in PATE (‘head’) = a seat of one of the Electors of old Germany. | ||
| 17 | SCREWBALL | Odd fastener seen on clog (9) |
| SCREW (‘fastener’) + BALL (to ‘clog’, of hair, yarn &c). | ||
| 18 | TEAPARTY | Set up in addition to protect separate gathering of drinkers (3,5) |
| Reversal of ‘YET’ (‘in addition’, as in ‘better yet’, more or less) surrounds APART (adj., ‘separate’). | ||
| 20 | BRAMBLE | Bush and Blair at the outset lack organisation (7) |
| 1st letter of ‘Blair’ + RAMBLE (to ‘lack organisation’). | ||
| 21 | LEAN-TO | Essential to dismantle Antonio’s shed (4-2) |
| Inclusion in ‘dismantLE ANTOnio’. | ||
| 22 | SCREAM | Appear to be heard describing King Charles as a funny guy (6) |
| Homophone of SEEM (to ‘appear’) around (‘describing’) C[arolus] R[ex]. | ||
| 24 | LET ON | Reveal impediment to Rona stripping off (3,2) |
| LET (a legal hindrance, an ‘impediment’) + inner letters of ‘rONa’. | ||
| 26 | SCAR | Section on motorists laid up as a result of injury (4) |
| S[ection] + R[oyal] A[utomobile] C[lub], reversed. | ||
*anagram
Thnks Peto and GB. Enjoyed solving but had trouble parsing soma answers (e.g. 10a, 6d and 14a).
Thanks Peto and Grant
Took over an hour but did have interruptions to do this. A couple of tricky parsings with 17d and 18d that I needed help here to completely tick off.
A lot of subtle uses of the word play throughout, including the two mentioned – but also with EMANATE, SENSELESS and SACROSANCT (which all took a while to work out what was going on with the composite parts).
Finished in the SW corner with EXTRA (another that took a while to parse), SCREAM and MANNERED.
I think that your deliberate blog error (to see that we do actually read it) is in 15a where the article should be A not AN 🙂
About the right standard for a Tuesday, not too fearsome but with some quite difficult parsing and a few that held me up at the end including EMANATE and MANNERED. Don’t remember having come across LUNE as a ‘river’ before and couldn’t make the link between ‘clog’ and BALL.
The surface for BRAMBLE and the ‘elementary protection’ in 30a were my picks of the day.
Thanks to Peto and Grant
Thanks to Peto and GB. Enjoyable. I had the same problems as those already mentioned. I did not know the river Lune, took a while getting EXTRA, MANNERED (I needed all the crossers to get both), and the parsing of EMANATE (“ante” eluded me).