Thanks WANDERER, for a fiendish puzzle , that was deceptively difficult in parts, parsing much more so than solving! Several clever surfaces made this that much more fun.
FF: 10 DD: 9
| Across | ||
| 1, 5 | AGATHA CHRISTIE | Writer of primarily heretical articles found in new atheistic rag (6,8) |
| HA (Heretical Articles, first letters) in ATHEISTIC RAG* | ||
| 9 | GLAD RAGS | Best clothes: those seen on TV, viewed in short mirror (4,4) |
| DRAG (clothes: those seen on TV, transvestite) in GLASs (mirror, short) | ||
| 10 | MOIETY | Half a second! That is extremely tricky (6) |
| MO (second) IE (that is) TY ( TrickY, extremely) | ||
| 11 | CELLAR | Visitor swapping A&E for wine store? (6) |
| CALLER (visitor) with A and E exchanging places | ||
| 12 | LEARNERS | Those finding out what’s kept in 11 (8) |
| answer to 11ac is CELLAR, containing 2 L’s which can stand to mean LEARNERS | ||
| 14 | AMBASSADRESS | Male singer, one wearing a garment usually worn by female diplomat (12) |
| [M (male) BASS (singer) A (one) ] in (A DRESS {garment usually worn by female}) | ||
| 18 | CAPERCAILLIE | Grouse about a Celtic social event, say (12) |
| CA (about) PER (a) CAILLIE (sounds like CEILI, celtic social event) – didnt have a clue about this, literally !! | ||
| 22 | ATTEMPTS | Goes past me two times running (8) |
| PAST ME TT (time = T, two of)* | ||
| 25 | CHOREA | Disorder before a household task? (6) |
| CHORE (household task) A | ||
| 26 | SOFTEN | Temper that kicks off somewhat frequently (6) |
| S (starting letter of Somewhat) OFTEN (frequently) | ||
| 27 | ANTIGUAN | Islander trapped by giant iguana (8) |
| hidden in “..giANT IGUANa” | ||
| 28 | THIRTEEN | In Tunisia, supply either 10 of 26 (8) |
| 10 of 26 is 13 [half {referring to 10ac} of 26]; EITHER* in TN (tunisia) | ||
| 29 | DINNER | Meal in the German pub? (6) |
| INN (pub) in DER (the, in german) | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | GOLFER | Once again beat rising player, of course (6) |
| reverse of REFLOG (once again beat) – course in the clue referring to golf course | ||
| 3 | TIDAL WAVE | Women entering live data about tsunami? (5,4) |
| W (women) in LIVE DATA* | ||
| 4 | ANAEROBIC | Sort of exercise writer needed after a chocolate bar (9) |
| AN (a) AERO (chocolate bar) BIC (writer) | ||
| 5, 20 | CASTLES IN SPAIN | Daydreams causing endless sparring? (7,2,5) |
| cryptic def; SPARRINg (endless) is ‘RR’ in SPAIN , RR – chess terminology for rooks | ||
| 6 | RUMBA | Sweet sailor’s missing from dance (5) |
| RUM BabA (sweet, without AB – sailor) | ||
| 7 | SCION | Shoot a young family member that’s forged coins (5) |
| double def; COINS* | ||
| 8 | INTEREST | Benefit from hobby (8) |
| double def | ||
| 13 | RED | What stripper did, leaving graduate looking embarrassed? (3) |
| baRED (what stripper did , without BA – graduate) | ||
| 15 | ALLOCATED | Made an assignation with gangster that’s drunk cold tea (9) |
| AL (gangster, capone) [COLD TEA]* | ||
| 16 | REED ORGAN | Love being transported by gardener playing wind instrument (4,5) |
| O (love) in GARDENER* | ||
| 17 | SAWTOOTH | Sort of waveform understood by Tusk? (8) |
| SAW (understood) TOOTH (tusk) | ||
| 19 | RUM | No regular flyers for 6? That’s odd (3) |
| 6dn refers to a sweet called RUMba (without regular flyers – British Airways) | ||
| 20 | See 5 | |
| 21 | REGALE | Amuse, perhaps with stories about wind (6) |
| RE (about) GALE (wind) | ||
| 23 | ENTER | Key part of hospital emergency room (5) |
| ENT (part of hospital) ER (emergency room) | ||
| 24 | PENCE | Presidential opening for vice- president (5) |
| P (Presidential, first letter) stands for PENCE (mike, in this case, ref US) | ||
*anagram
This was a weird experience. I normally find Wanderer more difficult than this: but I printed out the clues at midnight and completed the whole thing within half-an-hour — except for the SW corner, which took me ages this morning. I still don’t understand whether 24dn PENCE is a lazy clue or something subtle that I don’t get. Anyway, thanks Wanderer for the nightride, and Turbolegs for illumininating it.
A nice mix of easy and not so easy. I was particularly pleased to get CASTLES IN SPAIN since I’ve only ever heard ‘castles in the sky/air’, so had to work it out from the cryptic fodder.
I’ve heard of CAPERCAILLIE but had no clue how to spell it or that it was a grouse. Used a word fit to get that. Guessed CHOREA, which I also didn’t know.
Thanks to Wanderer and Turbolegs.
Thanks, Turbolegs for a great blog and particularly for the parsing of CASTLES IN SPAIN, which defeated me.
Like Hornbeam, I spent a long time on the bottom left corner, until ATTEMPTS gave me a breakthrough. [I think 24dn is a great clue!]
I first met CAPERCAILLIE in a crossword and remembered it, because it’s such a lovely word. My other favourite today was THIRTEEN, for the satisfaction I felt when I finally solved it, after the merry dance I had [as intended, I’m sure] trying to do something with either MOIETY of SOFTEN. 😉
AMBASSADRESS took me back to my very early blogging days, when I was most indignant to find it defined as ‘diplomat’s wife’!
Many thanks to Wanderer for the challenge – I thoroughly enjoyed it.
CAPERCAILLIE is ambiguous. It has an alternative spelling CAPERCAILZIE, pronounced the same way, with the (to me) delightful Scottish silent “Z” (as per Dalziel).
In the 1970s I used to play in a band based in Chingford Morris Men that used the z-spelling, before a rather more famous Scottish group became prominent.
Not as difficult as it seemed at first sight, although I couldn’t finish the SW corner without some re-thinking.
CAPERCAILLIE was actually one of my ‘first ones in’. Didn’t know that it was a game bird but knew (and once saw) the influential Scotttish folk band of that name, fronted by the wonderful Karen Matheson.
While I saw the L,L trick in 12ac immediately (trademark Wanderer), I plainly forgot to parse CASTLES IN SPAIN (with a similar device).
2d (GOLFER) is the kind of clue I do not like very much – wthout crossers it could have led to ‘reflog’.
Last week, in Vlad’s blog (The Guardian), some solvers ‘complained’ about clues that were formulated ‘inversely’. I mildly agreed but didn’t see a reason to complain.
Wanderer doesn’t do it usually but today we had three occasions on which I thought ‘mmm’.
25ac: ‘before A B’ = ‘B before A’ , 29ac: ‘in A B’ = ‘B in A’ , 6d: ‘A B’s missing from (C)’ = ‘B’s missing from A, with C the definition’.
Nothing wrong with it, just a bit inelegant in my book of crosswords. That said, in 6d the added apostrophe-s is rather essential (just like the comma in 28ac which is also ‘inversed’).
Anyway, another good and adventurous crossword from Wanderer, for which thanks.
And many thanks to you too, Turbolegs.
When we went to decimal pence became p.
Patricia @ 6: Eh? When we went decimal the currency units became just pound and penny, plural of the latter pence, abbreviation p, spoken (say) “five pence” or “five pee”.
Initially wrote REFLOG at 2d which made my grid messy as l fill in ink. COD MOIETY. FOI REGALE, LOI 28a.
Very enjoyable, though took two ATTEMPTS to finish. Missed the ‘TV’ bit of 9a, couldn’t see PENCE and bunged In CAPERCAILLIE from the def. I first came across the word in the Wallander novels – as I remember his father used to paint them.
LEARNERS and especially CASTLES IN SPAIN were beauties.
Thanks to Wanderer and Turbolegs
Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs
What a wonderful puzzle to end a very good week of FT crosswords ! Only got to it on the Monday morning – in the early stages of a trip up to Queensland.
Found that there was a lot of reference work required to be able to properly work out some of the answers and some of the word play of others – CAPERCAILLIE, MOIETY and CHOREA were all new terms to me … as was the RUM BABA required in the word play of 5d.
Because 9a was my first entry, the direction of GOLFER was never a problem. Didn’t see the proper parsing of CASTLES IN SPAIN – I couldn’t get away from the Quixotic ’tilting at windmills’ (except I initially was thinking that castles were involved) and thought that the ‘sparring’ reference just made it a cryptic clue. The real word play made it a brilliant clue !
The SW corner proved to be the hardest and was where I had finished with the clever PENCE, tricky THIRTEEN which was only revealed when I got what MOIETY meant and SAWTOOTH for which I needed a word finder as the last few in.