Artexlen provides our Thursday puzzle this week.
This was a technically sound puzzle with a good range of devices, although nothing was terribly difficult or obscure. A good puzzle for beginners as the charades are clean and the anagrams fairly obvious. For more experienced solvers, some of this was too easy (for example, putting the word “male” in the clue for 4dn immediately gave us HUSBAND (similarly “males” for MEN in 25ac), so the answer was very obvious.
My favourite clue was 13 ac, and my LOI was 18dn.
Thanks, Artexlen.
| Across | ||
| 1 | MOTHERLAND | Insect attached to antelope crossing river in home country (10) |
| MOTH (“insect”) attached to ELAND (“antelope”) crossing R (river) | ||
| 7 | WAVY | Very stuck in street that’s winding (4) |
| V (very) stuck in WAY (“street”) | ||
| 9 | VIEW | Struggle with sight (4) |
| VIE (“struggle” + W (with) | ||
| 10 | SHIMMERING | Son greeting Madame with jewellery gleaming (10) |
| S (son) + HI (“greeting”) + MME. (Madame) with RING (“jewellery”) | ||
| 11 | DOSSER | Vagrant one erased from set of documents (6) |
| I (one) erased from DOSS(i)ER (“set of documents”) | ||
| 12 | ADORABLE | Lovely role: a bad criminal (8) |
| *(a role bad) | ||
| 13 | GOLDFISH | Au fait to occasionally ignore quiet pet, perhaps (8) |
| GOLD (Au) + F(a)I(t) [occasionally ignored] + SH (“quiet”) | ||
| 15 | THAW | What provoked increase in friendliness (4) |
| *(what) | ||
| 17 | SPEW | Run small exercise class with wife (4) |
| S (small) + P.E. (“exercise class”) with W (wife) | ||
| 19 | SHINDIGS | Some beef against residence’s parties (8) |
| SHIN (“some beef”) against DIGS (“residence”) | ||
| 22 | MOUSSAKA | Mostly light eggy dish also called layered dish (8) |
| [mostly] MOUSS(e) (“light eggy dish”) + A.K.A. (“also called”) | ||
| 23 | TIBIAS | Note distortion in bones (6) |
| TI (“note”) + BIAS (“distortion”) | ||
| 25 | HANDMAIDEN | Attendant to give help, feeding males (10) |
| HAND (“to give”) + AID (“help”) feeding MEN (“males”) | ||
| 26 | NAIL | Secure new post, miles away (4) |
| N (new) + (m)AIL (“post” with M (miles) away) | ||
| 27 | MEWS | Ponder aloud making high- pitched cries (4) |
| Homophone [aloud] of MUSE (“ponder”) | ||
| 28 | KEYSTROKES | Typists make these explanatory diagrams so trek gets organised (10) |
| KEYS (“explanatory diagrams”) + *(so trek) | ||
| Down | ||
| 2 | ORINOCO | Hunter getting a duck down, caught over river (7) |
| ORI(o)N(O) (“hunter” getting O (duck) down) + C (caught) + O (over) | ||
| 3 | HAWKS | Birds wash nervously around entrance of KFC (5) |
| *(wash) around [entrance of] K(fc) | ||
| 4 | RESTRAIN | Check on second series (8) |
| RE (“on”) + S (second) + TRAIN (“series”) | ||
| 5 | ANIMAL HUSBANDRY | Awfully manly air about male partner farming (6,9) |
| *(manly air) about HUSBAND (“male partner”) | ||
| 6 | DAMSON | Fruit and nuts served up before lad (6) |
| <=MAD (“nuts” served up) before SON (“lad”) | ||
| 7 | WARRANTED | Justified major conflict; a trend that’s dodgy (9) |
| WAR (“major conflict”) + *(a trend) | ||
| 8 | VANILLA | Pod-bearing plant poorly placed in front area (7) |
| ILL (“poorly”) placed in VAN (“fronT”) + A (area) | ||
| 14 | DOWNSIDES | Blue team’s disadvantages (9) |
| DOWN (“blue”) + SIDE’S (“team’s”) | ||
| 16 | DISTINCT | Clear day is beginning to change in hue (8) |
| D (day) + IS + [beginning to] C(hange) in TINT (“hue”) | ||
| 18 | PROPANE | Item in production, article with neon gas (7) |
| PROP (“item in production”) + A (“article) + NE (neon) | ||
| 20 | GRANITE | Carving in great rock (7) |
| *(in great) | ||
| 21 | DAMASK | US prosecutor to cover up material (6) |
| D.A. (District Attorney, so “US prosecutor”) + MASK (“to cover up”) | ||
| 24 | BANJO | Instrument used by urban joiner (5) |
| Hidden in (“used by”) “urBAN JOiner”) | ||
*anagram
I found this an enjoyable albeit quick solve. My LOI was THAW but was pleased to eventually spot it was an anagram clue. The crossing VANILLA took a little thought as well. The use of “Au fait” in 13a was nice.
Thanks to Artexlen and loonapick.
Funnily enough, PROPANE was my first in. GOLDFISH was my favourite too, with the misleading ‘Au fait to occasionally ignore’ wordplay. I also liked MOUSSAKA (I don’t recall seeing it as a crossword ‘dish’ before) and the parsing of DISTINCT and VANILLA.
Not too hard, but some good words and enough to keep up both the interest and enjoyment.
Thanks to Artexlen and loonapick
@loonapick In the preamble second para, line 3, there’s a typo: 4 dn should read 5 dn.
Thanks for the blog. This was mostly ok, but I don’t understand where the VAN in 8dn comes from…
Grumpy @ 4: from Chambers
van2 /van/
noun (also (Shakespeare)vant or vaunt)
Short for vanguard (often figurative, as in in the van of fashion)
hth
If the job of a setter is to mislead, then he succeeded in leading me down the garden path in 13a, though I had goldfish=pet.I could not justify it for the life of me.
Thanks Loonapick for the explanations. I got ORINOCO on the strength of Orion but how does “o” relate to “duck?” DOSSER was a new word for me but its parsing was simple enough for me to guess correctly. Thanks Artexlen for a fun fill.
Thanks to loonapick and Artexlen
Some nice stuff, but I don’t understand 13’s surface or wordplay.
Tony @ 7
O is a substitute for 0: in cricket, if you make 0 runs, you are said to have made a duck.
hth
Thanks Artexlen and loonapick
Entertaining puzzle that didn’t present too many problems until the last couple in the SW corner – PROPANE (clever word play for PROP) and SPEW (where i had trouble equating that to ‘run’ for a while until thinking ‘flow’). The misdirection throughout the clues was excellent. The use of ‘au fait to occasionally ignore’ to get GOLD FI was sublime and was clearly the cod. WAVY was also very good