A themed puzzle today, but a topic many will be familiar with. Thank you Gozo.
The across solutions are all plants, mostly garden plants.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | CATNIP | First of customers returns bottle of milk (6) |
| Customers (first letter of) then PINTA (bottle of milk) reversed (returns) | ||
| 4 | HIBISCUS | Greetings! It has left the digestives, say (8) |
| HI (greetings!) then BISCUitS missing (…has left) IT | ||
| 9 | TEASEL | Oddly, they answer to Liberal leader (6) |
| Every other letter (oddly) of ThEy AnSwEr then Liberal (first letter, leader) | ||
| 10 | BLUEBELL | Dancing girl at Le Lido line in Sussex (8) |
| double definition – dance troupe from Le Lido de Paris and steam railway in Sussex | ||
| 12 | LING | Lodging in hotel in Gretna (4) |
| found inside (lodging in) hoteL IN Gretna – a type of heather | ||
| 13 | SEDGE | Southern border (5) |
| S (southern) EDGE (border) | ||
| 14 | See 24 | |
| 17 | SWEET WILLIAM | Bill coming after dessert (5,7) |
| WILLIAM (Bill) follows SWEET (dessert) | ||
| 20 | OLD MAN’S BEARD | Served dab and red salmon (3,4,5) |
| anagram (served) of DAB and RED SALMON | ||
| 23 | IRIS | Bit of a looker! (4) |
| cryptic definition – a part of an eye (looker, something that looks) | ||
| 24, 14 | DYER’S WEED | Dry seed we scattered (5,4) |
| anagram (scattered) of DRY SEED WE | ||
| 25, 27 | ARUM LILY | Funny Girl – Adele’s leading first (4,4) |
| RUM (funny) LILY (girl, name of) follows (with…first) Adele (first letter, leading) | ||
| 28 | NENUPHAR | Nehru takes nap – out of sorts (8) |
| anagram (out of sorts) of NEHRU with NAP – the water lily | ||
| 29 | MIMOSA | Farrow drinks some of the German wine (6) |
| MIA (Mia Farrow) contains (drinks) MOSel (German wine, only some of) | ||
| 30 | SWEET PEA | Spoke of rooms with endless ringing (5,3) |
| SWEET sounds like (spoke of) “suite” (rooms) then PEAL (ringing, endless) | ||
| 31 | MYRTLE | Attempt to cut tree back (6) |
| TRY (attempt) inside (to cut) ELM (tree) all reversed (back) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | CUT GLASS | Refined accent of Under Milk Wood’s Lord (3,5) |
| double definition – Lord Cut-Glass, character from Dylan Thomas’s play who dreams of 66 clocks that each tell a different time | ||
| 2 | TRAIN SET | Coaches and French model railway (5,3) |
| TRAINS (coaches) with ET (and, in French) | ||
| 3 | IBEX | Goat from central Tibet – spot marked thus (4) |
| tIBEt (middle letters, central) then X (a spot is marked with an X) | ||
| 5 | ILLEGAL ENTRY | False registration made by a burglar (7,5) |
| double/cryptic definition | ||
| 6 | ICES | Confectionery from unjust magistrates (4) |
| justICES (magistrates) missing JUST | ||
| 7 | CREWEL | Basket holding women’s yarn (6) |
| CREEL (basket) contains (holding) W (women) | ||
| 8 | SALADS | Food, alas, upset diners – no stomach for it (6) |
| ALAS reversed (upset) then DinerS (outer letters only, the word is missing its stomach) | ||
| 11 | DEVIL-MAY-CARE | Cavalier villain could be a nurse (5-3-4) |
| DEVIL (villain) MAY CARE (could be a nurse) | ||
| 15 | STILL | No wind yet (5) |
| double definition | ||
| 16 | MAYBE | Former PM extremely believable? Possibly (5) |
| MAY (Theresa May, former PM) and BelievablE (outer letters, extremely) | ||
| 18 | CARRY OUT | Inside truck is your broken implement (5,3) |
| CART (truck) contains (inside…is…) anagram (broken) of YOUR | ||
| 19 | ADAM’S ALE | Water, alas, made impure (5,3) |
| anagram (impure) of ALAS MADE | ||
| 21 | PIANOS | With which Leo’s composed polonaises? (6) |
| PIANOS (which, this the solution) with LEO’S is an anagram (composed) of POLONAISES | ||
| 22 | FIANCE | He’s promised work in cafe (6) |
| anagram (work) of IN CAFE | ||
| 26 | SPAT | Quarrel – it is bath time (4) |
| SPA ((bath) with T (time) | ||
| 27 | See 25 | |
Thanks, PeeDee, I think you meant SUITE (rooms) in 30a. Only “nenuphar” gave me a problem but was only possibility when faced with n_n_p_a_. Thanks for the fun puzzle Gozo.
Quite enjoyable — my FOI was LING so I figured the theme would either be fish or plants — SEDGE gave me that answer. There were a number of plants that were new to me but I managed to parse all but NENUPHAR which I got using an anagram finder. Favourites were SWEET PEA, MYRTLE, FIANCE, and SPAT. Thanks Gozo for an excellent crossword and PeeDee for the blog.
Thanks john for spotting the suit/suite error. Fixed now.
Thanks for the Vlad relief Gozo. I really appreciated this one. And PeeDee for the explanations. I started with the down clues, after reading the instruction. When the first two themed ones popped out at 20a and 24a I wondered if they were all going to be noxious plants. 20a certainly is in this part of the world. It was nice to see the plant LING for a change too. ADAMS ALE hasn’t popped up for a while either. NENUPHAR was a case of putting letters in and then checking if it existed. Got it second time. All good fun.
We’re usually wary of puzzles with rubric at the beginning but a quick glance at the clues gave HIBISCUS as a write-in and the theme was immediately obvious. So we got most of the acrosses in one pass and the downs followed similarly. We just had to check NENUPHAR in Chambers and look up Under Milk Wood for the name of the lord (and kicked ourselves for not thinking of it).
Most delightful. Thank you, Gozo and PeeDee.
Thanks Gozo and PeeDee
Was able to complete most of this with a coffee and croissant but needed another 10 minutes at home to finish off the last three or four clues.
Saw LING immediately which led to the thinking of a fish theme but refrained from writing it in until getting IBEX / CATNIP crossers and re-thinking the plant theme. Knew most of the plants and only needed to check on DYER’S WEED and used Google to check my NUNEPHAR before it corrected it to NENUPHAR. Made initial errors with OLD MAN’S BREAD and an unparsed ZINNIA that held up the SE corner – eventually got away from the litter of pigs ‘farrow’ to MIA, leading to CARRY OUT and the correct OLD MAN’S BEARD.
Only needed to sort out the CUT GLASS clue – needing references for both the posh accent and the Dylan Thomas character to finish off the puzzle. Great fun !
By the way PeeDee, your explanation of the alternative letters of ‘they answer’ + L (Liberal leader) to give TEASEL is missing.
Well spotted Bruce. Missing annotation is back again now. Thanks.
I’ve no fresh insights to add, being caught out like most others by NENUPHAR for which I needed an anagram solver. But I always look foward to a Gozo grid and do enjoy working through these themed puzzles (just as long as it’s not cricket!) Of these, CATNIP was my favourite. Among the down clues, I liked DEVIL-MAY-CARE, PIANOS and STILL as I’m rather partial to pithy double defintions.
Time well spent.
Thanks to Gozo and PeeDee.
Tony Santucci, thanks for pointing me here… quite enjoyable! Got most of it, defeated only by 1d, plus a few DNPs… but most importantly, got all the plants 🙂
Mystogre, re OLD MAN’S BEARD, curious which species is your invasive… Clematis vitalba, which Wikipedia notes is invasive in some places? Here in California, OLD MAN’S BEARD refers (in my experience) just to lichens, of genus Usnea, so wondered how that fit the plant theme, but Wikipedia offers several plants as well (wonder which GOZO had in mind). One is Tillandsia usneoides (named for resemblance to Usnea lichens), which I see on family visits in Florida, but I know it as Spanish moss (tho it’s a flowering Bromeliad, not a moss).
In my area TEASEL is moderately invasive; have sometimes helped remove it as part of habitat restoration efforts.
DNK NENUPHAR, but figured out it based on the genus Nuphar (yellow pond lilies), which I’ve seen native/wild in CA, FL, and also my home state of Michigan.
My gratitude to setter, blogger, and commenters for the fun!