WANDERER dishes out a fun workout, tricky in places. Thanks WANDERER!
Quite a few cars out there today …
FF: 9 DD: 9
| Across | ||
| 1 | CHAFFS | Ribs or chips for which Henry goes into greasy spoons, perhaps (6) |
| H (henry) in CAFFS (greasy spoons) | ||
| 4 | AFFECTED | Moved camp (8) |
| double def | ||
| 9 | LUMBER | Large brown pieces of furniture no longer of any use (6) |
| L (large) UMBER (brown) | ||
| 10 | GREENERY | Lines written after novelist leaves? (8) |
| GREENE (novelist) RY (lines) | ||
| 12 | IN DETAIL | Fully lit dock (2,6) |
| IN (lit) DETAIL (dock, read as DE TAIL) | ||
| 13 | STUDIO | Doctor outside, shortly to arrive at drawing room? (6) |
| OUTSIDe* (shortly, i.e. without last letter) | ||
| 15 | GOLF | Ground primarily used for sport (4) |
| G (Ground, primarily) , nato alphabet expansion | ||
| 16 | TRIO SONATA | Riot erupts before relative starts to attempt this avant-garde composition (4,6) |
| RIOT* SON (relative) ATA (starts to “..Attempt This Avant-garde..” | ||
| 19 | ADORNMENTS | Do remnants supply frills and flounces? (10) |
| DO REMNANTS* | ||
| 20 | NOTE | Flipped over school mark (4) |
| reverse of ETON (school) | ||
| 23 | LAPPED | What the slowest drivers often are, according to N European journalist (6) |
| LAPP (north european) ED (journalist) | ||
| 25 | UNDERACT | Foreign articles Bill originally thought to be ham? Quite the opposite (8) |
| UN DER (foreign articles, german) AC (bill) T (Thought, originally) | ||
| 27 | AGNOSTIC | Doubting it can go faster – just in third place, sadly (8) |
| IT CAN GO S (juSt, third place)* | ||
| 28 | STRICT | Reporter’s conned by small firm (6) |
| S (small) TRICT (sounds liked TRICKED – conned) | ||
| 29 | STAND PAT |
Stick to your guns in casino after vacation spent with Father Time (5,3) |
| ST (SpenT, after vacation, i.e. without inner characters) AND (with) PA (father) T (time) | ||
| 30 | BEANOS | Comic’s parties (6) |
| double def | ||
| Down | ||
| 1, 9 | CALLING ALL CARS |
Broadcast message using mobile, perhaps, to contact everyone on train? (7,3,4) |
| CALLING (using mobile) ALL (everyone) CARS (train) | ||
| 2 | ARMADILLO | Animal lair old man briefly disturbed (9) |
| LAIR OLD MAn* (briefly) | ||
| 3 | FIESTA | Holiday where female has afternoon nap topless (6) |
| F (female) sIESTA (afternoon nap, without starting letter) | ||
| 5 | FORD CORTINA | Supporting daughter that’s crashed into car, a 70s classic (4,7) |
| FOR (supporting) D (daughter) [INTO CAR]* | ||
| 6 | ELECTRON | Vote for Republican, one endlessly a tiny bit negative (8) |
| ELECT (vote) R (republican) ONe (endlessly) | ||
| 7 | TREAD | To some extent, the sole requirement of sight-reading (5) |
| hidden in “..sighT-READing” | ||
| 8 | DAYTONA | Model working afternoons initially, supporting 24 Hours race venue (7) |
| DAY (24 hours) T (model) ON (working) A (Afternoons, initially) | ||
| 11, 26 | CITROEN VISA | Into cars? I’ve rebuilt an 80s model (7,4) |
| INTO CARS IVE* | ||
| 14 | See 5 | |
| 17 | ADORATION | Love having a party allowance (9) |
| A DO (party) RATION (allowance) | ||
| 18 | INCENSED | Furious as CNN somewhat pointlessly denies being involved (8) |
| CNN DEnIES* (pointlessly – without ‘N’, north) | ||
| 19 | See 1 | |
| 21 | ESTATES | Stuff people have left behind in European countries (7) |
| E (european) STATES (countries) | ||
| 22 | BEETLE | Insect stalked periodically by another (6) |
| sTaLkEd (periodically) after BEE (another insect) | ||
| 24 | PANDA | Animal characters appearing regularly in play (5) |
| cryptic def; PlAy (characters appearing regularly in) – read as P AND A | ||
| 26 | See 11 | |
*anagram
For 10a, I think the “leaves” is the def, and the “ry” is “lines written”, an abbreviation of “railway”
Thanks Jeff. That was the intent but I made the inexplicable switch. Corrected now.
Regards,
TL
I buzzed through this but, oh bum, bad day at the office. In 22, alternate letters of ‘iNsEcT sTaLkEd’ gave NETTLE past which my sad old brain would not compute, despite BEETLE being thematic. And I got but failed properly to parse CALLING ALL CARS. Grr.
Good puzzle, thanks to both, as aye.
Thanks, Turbolegs.
I always enjoy Wanderer’s puzzles but I wouldn’t have expected to enjoy a theme of cars, particularly – but this one brought back happy memories of our FORD CORTINA estate, our first ‘grown-up’ car, which we took all the way to the East coast of Italy, towing a trailer tent, with four children. [Coincidentally, we stopped overnight at CORTINA on the way home.]
I didn’t know the expression STAND PAT but realised how precisely it was clued when I googled the solution after guessing it. [I had spent time trying to do something with CO {casino after vacation}]. I also admired the precision of ‘somewhat’ in 18dn, to indicate that only one n was to be deleted.
Other favourites were 8dn, DAYTONA, for initially beguiling me with Le Mans, the only 24-Hour[s] race I’d heard of – doh! – ADORNMENTS, because that’s just what remnants are often used for and AGNOSTIC, for the way the surface fitted the theme.
Many thanks, as ever, to Wanderer for an entertaining and enjoyable puzzle.
Good puzzle as ever which didn’t take me as much time compared some other Wanderers.
Initially I thought, too, that the S in 27ac’s anagram was coming from ‘juSt’ but that would make ‘faster’ totally redundant.
So, I think, it must be the third letter of ‘faSter’ with ‘just’ being part of the indicator.
Many thanks to Turbolegs & Wanderer.
An enjoyable solve, although we didn’t understand 29ac apart from deducing ‘pat’ and thinking ‘stand’ couldn’t be anything else. But we parsed AGNOSTIC as did Sil@5.
And like Grant@3 we first thought of ‘nettle’ for 22dn and wondered if the clue was faulty, but then we saw it as BEETLE.
We obviously got the cars at 5/14 and 11/26 but didn’t connect them to a theme. And were slightly misled by the ‘train’ in 1/19 as we don’t usually refer to ‘cars’ in UK railway parlance – they’re coaches or sometimes carriages.
Favourite was TRIO SONATA.
Thanks, Wanderer and Turbolegs.
I parsed AGNOSTIC as Sil and allan did – I overlooked it in the blog.
allan, we talk of dining / sleeping cars, don’t we?
As I said above, it’s not a particular interest of mine [I’ve never driven] but, apart from FORD CORTINA and CITROEN VISA I spotted GOLF, FIESTA, DAYTONA, ESTATE, BEETLE and PANDA. Please tell me what I’ve missed!
Eileen,
My car is a Ford Fiesta STUDIO.
NNI – my daughter had two or three Fiestas but I don’t think that was one of them.
Other cars include Note, Electron, Trio and Sonata. Quite a haul!
Thanks to both. An enjoyable wee time. I had to google the VISA as I don’t think any made it this far. They would have reached New Caledonia and/or Tahiti though. You could probably include LAPPED as thematic too and TREAD for tyres.
Eileen @4 STAND PAT is a well worn expression in the US. When Nixon was president one of his speeches included the line “the nation cannot stand pat.” His wife was named Pat so the comedians had a field day.
Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs
Quite a challenging puzzle which took a couple of decent sessions to get out. Had to trawl through the Chambers online to find the link between chip and chaff. Couldn’t equate LIT to ‘in’ anywhere though !!
Caught on to the theme quite early on (for a change) and it did help with some clues along the way – still missed half a dozen of the other models hidden throughout. Knew about STAND PAT – maybe not used so much these days but was common not all that long ago. A couple of other terms that were new included LUMBER (as unwanted furniture) and TRIO SONATA.
Initially had a biffed ELECTION at 6d, later justified it with swapping the R from electron with a I (one) – which didn’t account for ‘endlessly’ and finally saw that it was really ELECTRON.
Finished in the SW corner with the tricky PANDA and LAPPED (which took longer than it needed after being a bit fixated on LETT as the Northern European).