A nice Sunday puzzle as usual from Tees, makes you think a bit but not so much as to spoil the digestion. Thank you Tees.
| ACROSS | ||
| 8 | SANSKRIT | Language without appeal draws in two kings (8) |
| SANS (without) IT (appeal) contains (draws in) K R (king and rex, two kings) | ||
| 9 | PREFAB | Building quickly assembled before cracking (6) |
| PRE (before) FAB (cracking, excellent) | ||
| 10 | REMORA | Obstacle on marshland where ship departs (6) |
| RE (on, regarding) them MORAss (marshland) missing (where…departs) SS (steam ship) | ||
| 11 | WATERSKI | Engage in sport and kit wears out (8) |
| anagram (out) of KIT WEARS | ||
| 12 | FLOE | Enemy circles large ice sheet (4) |
| FOE (enemy) contains (circles) L (large) | ||
| 13 | DEROGATORY | Offensive revolutionary deeply hurt a right-winger (10) |
| GORED (deeply hurt) reversed (revolutionary) then A TORY (right-winger) | ||
| 15 | VACCINE | Short holiday viewed as sound, healthy preparation? (7) |
| VAC (short for vacation, holiday) then CINE sounds like (as sound) “seen” (viewed) | ||
| 17 | BLUSTER | Storm in Belgium with freakish result (7) |
| B (Belgium) with anagram (freakish) of RESULT | ||
| 20 | EPSOM SALTS | Purgative from sailors in Surrey? (5,5) |
| EPSOM SALTS might be sailors (salts) from Epsom (somewhere in Surrey) | ||
| 22 | LADY | Woman into bed with Democrat (4) |
| D (democrat) inside (going into) LAY (bed) – or “bed with” could also indicate LAY | ||
| 23 | CAPSICUM | Music rocks on beat that can be hot (8) |
| anagram (rocks) of MUSIC follows (on) CAP (beat, be better than) | ||
| 25 | RUSTIC | Country game needs good man in charge (6) |
| RU (Rugby Union, game) with ST (saint, a good man) and IC (in charge) | ||
| 26 | J-CLOTH | Jack meets fool and hospital cleaner (1-5) |
| J (jack) with CLOT (fool) and H (hospital) – a brand of cleaning cloth, by Johnson and Johnson | ||
| 27 | SHAMROCK | Is it paste produced in this plant? (8) |
| SHAM ROCK might be paste, artificial (sham) diamond (rock) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | CAMELLIA | One found in bed happened to have a bad back (8) |
| CAME (happened) then A ILL (bad) reversed (back) – something in a flower bed, or more whimsically, The Lady of the Camellias who was in bed with her lovers when she was healthy and in bed with consumption when she was not | ||
| 2 | ASHORE | American playwright discussed on the beach? (6) |
| A (American) then SHORE sounds like (when discussed) “Shaw” (playwright) | ||
| 3 | GREATDANES | Perhaps Bering, Blixen and Kierkegaard, or certain 7s? (5,5) |
| examples of famous Danish people, and dogs are barkers | ||
| 4 | STEWARD | Crew member checks mounting fear in two ways (7) |
| AWE (fear) reversed (mounting) inside ST and RD (street and road, two ways) – I think checks is a link word, “to verify by comparison” | ||
| 5 | SPIT | Son, mine, an exact likeness (4) |
| S (son) PIT (mine) | ||
| 6 | DETRITUS | Car capital leaves nothing — just endless rubble (8) |
| DETRoIT (car capital) missing (leaves) O (nothing) then jUSt (inner letters only, end-less) | ||
| 7 | BARKER | One earning crust from bread engages right tout (6) |
| BAKER (one earning crust from bread) contains (engages) R (right) | ||
| 14 | GULF STREAM | Warmer in the main with huge opening flower? (4,6) |
| GULF (huge opening) and STREAM (something that flows) – the main is the sea | ||
| 16 | CROSSBOW | Peevish with formal greeting showing arm (8) |
| CROSS (peevish) and BOW (formal greeting) | ||
| 18 | ELDRITCH | Weird Scots rook inside the Spanish moat? (8) |
| R (rook, chess) inside EL (the, Spanish) DITCH (moat) – a Scottish word for uncanny, supernatural | ||
| 19 | BLEMISH | Some terrible mishap brings scar (7) |
| found inside (some of) terriBLE MISHap | ||
| 21 | PLAICE | Swimmer one put outside (6) |
| I (one) inside (with…outside) PLACE (put) | ||
| 22 | LUSTRE | Ulster manoeuvring shows brilliance (6) |
| anagram (manoeuvring) of ULSTER | ||
| 24 | COHO | Characters inside school getting cooked salmon (4) |
| anagram (getting cooked) of sCHOOl (only the characters inside) | ||
I suppose the words are separated by centuries, but I hadn’t come across REMORA or J-CLOTH before. Some others to make the solver think including SANSKRIT and my last in GULF STREAM. Glad though that I didn’t have to spend too long on ELDRITCH which has now appeared quite a few times over the last few years in the realm of crossword land.
Just what I like for a bit of a Sunday afternoon diversion. Thanks to Tees and PeeDee
Just right, thank you Tees and PeeDee
I found this quite tough, especially NW corner, and needed word list help for ‘remora’. Held up for too long by trying to justify Mercedes’ at 6D. Enjoyable though, so thanks Tees and PeeDee.
For me, it was the SE corner that held out the longest and made me wonder if I’d need to resort to help but, once I’d made sense of SHAMROCK, it came to a satisfying close. I’m always pleased to spot another APSE and enjoyed my second dose of salts of the day! REMORA was certainly strange – once I’d worked out that morass was being equated with marshland (not sure I’d ever use the words interchangeably but it’s in the dictionaries), the solution suggested itself but, as others may have found, it’s primarily listed as a type of fish when you Google it!
I liked the connection between BARKER and GREAT DANES (once I’d remembered they were Danes and not Norwegians which confused me for a while. Doh!) and it was really nice when Detroit/DETRITUS suddenly made sense. COTD is VACCINE for its clever construction as well as unfortunate topicality.
Thanks Tees and PeeDee (you’ve been a busy blogger this weekend! Probably fewer comments to review today! Thanks for the extra layer of insight into CAMELLIA)
Just right for a Sunday in dry January with the two of us working on it at the same time!
New words for us : Camellia, Coho and Remora (also a fish!!). Slightly surprised by sans for without, without any language indicator of French, but we got there with reverse parsing. We got shamrock but needed the parsing from the blog until Hannah remembered what paste can mean.
Thanks Tees and PeeDee!
Labradoodle @ 5
‘Sans’ for without is also regular English usage, pronounced as it looks, not the French way.
“Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
remora certainly was an obstacle to solving at least.. took a while to find it defined as anything other than a fish…
everything else went swimmingly..
thanks PeeDee n Tees
Very satisfying, for me the hardest of the week because of the SE corner. Didn’t realize that “eldritch” was a Scots word, and only got “shamrock” with an alphabet trawl. 10A solved through the parsing, interesting word!
All very straightforward until we were left with just 10a (remora) which we couldn’t get at all, and had to cheat mightily. Eldritch was also new to me but had to be from the wordplay, though none of my dictionaries consider it Scottish. Enjoyed J-cloth, detritus and Gulf Stream!
A don’t usually complain that a crossword is too hard, but this was a bit odd for a Sunday. I too was done in by ELDRITCH and REMORA, as to which I only knew (and am still none the wiser)of the fish, which I fail to equate with “obstacle.”.
Hi Ian,
Remora comes from a Latin word meaning delay or hinderance, hence the English meaning of obstacle. The “sucking fish” got the name remora as it was believed to stop ships by sucking on to their hulls. I would agree this is more the territory for Azed than the Independent on a Sunday.