Decent Tuesday fare, with style and some guile.
Not the hardest but with a couple of tricks to keep complacency at bay, including 2d which I had pencilled in as starting or finishing with ‘S’ until the very death.
Thanks to the Falcon.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BEDSPREADS |
Covers large property with grounds in English county (10)
|
| BED[ford]S[hire] (‘English county’) contains SPREAD (‘large property with grounds’). | ||
| 6 | OBAN |
Beginning of big article on old Scottish resort town (4)
|
| O[ld] + 1st of Big + AN (‘article’). | ||
| 9 | UNOCCUPIED |
Not working free (10)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 10 | VIEW |
Struggle with appearance (4)
|
| VIE (‘struggle’) + W[ith]. | ||
| 12 | FIELD MARSHAL |
Grassland swamp associated with Alabama – Montgomery, for example (5,7)
|
| FIELD (‘grassland’) + MARSH + AL[abama]. | ||
| 15 | ILLEGIBLE |
Unreadable? I’ll say! Book one bishop rejected (9)
|
| I’LL + EG (‘say’) + bIBLE without 1st B[ishop]. | ||
| 17 | INEPT |
Incompetent writer held back by it (5)
|
| PEN reversed in I.T. | ||
| 18 | WAGER |
Bet women get on together, ultimately (5)
|
| W[omen] + AGE (‘get on’) + last of ‘togetheR’. | ||
| 19 | DAMASCENE |
Syrian in a public display of anger behind barrier (9)
|
| DAM (‘barrier’) + A + (to make a) SCENE. | ||
| 20 | IN THE PICTURE |
Where to see film stars adequately briefed? (2,3,7)
|
| Double definition. | ||
| 24 | TRAP |
Hook in role reversal (4)
|
| PART (theatrical ‘role’), reversed. | ||
| 25 | STRIKE HOME |
To achieve the intended effect, refuse to work in the house (6,4)
|
| STRIKE (‘refuse to work’) + HOME (‘in the house’). | ||
| 26 | ECHO |
Parrot or some screech owl (4)
|
| Included in ‘screECH Owl’. | ||
| 27 | ONE FINE DAY |
Building in need of a yard, sooner or later (3,4,3)
|
| Anagram (‘building’) of IN NEED OF A Y[ard]. | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BOUT |
Bowled, dismissed in match (4)
|
| B[owled] (in cricket) + OUT (‘dismissed’). | ||
| 2 | DROP |
Decline small sweet (4)
|
| Double definition, 2nd as in ‘pear drop’. | ||
| 3 | PECKING ORDER |
Hierarchy strictly for the birds? (7,5)
|
| Cryptic whole-clue definition. | ||
| 4 | EXPEL |
Training, after ten, in the Spanish bar (5)
|
| PE (physical ‘training’) after X, all in E.L (Sp. ‘the’). | ||
| 5 | DREAM TEAM |
Hermia and Lysander? (5,4)
|
| Lovers in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. | ||
| 7 | BRIGHT EYES |
All right following cheerful European song (6,4)
|
| BRIGHT (‘cheerful’) + E[uropean] + YES (‘alright’), for Mike Batt hit song from film of ‘Watership Down’, sung by Art Garfunkel. | ||
| 8 | NEWSLETTER |
Fresh landlord brought round second bulletin (10)
|
| NEW (‘fresh’) + LETTER (‘landlord’) around S[econd]. | ||
| 11 | BRAIN SURGEON |
Intellectuals encourage one working in theatre? (5,7)
|
| BRAINS (‘intellectuals’) + URGE ON (to ‘encourage’). | ||
| 13 | TIN WHISTLE |
One’s played card game in shady inlet (3,7)
|
| WHIST (‘card game’) in anagram (‘shady’) of INLET, | ||
| 14 | FLIGHT PATH |
Designated route of escape that’s on track (6,4)
|
| FLIGHT (‘escape’) + PATH (‘track’). | ||
| 16 | BADMINTON |
Ashamed to make money playing sport (9)
|
| BAD (‘ashamed’, as in ‘I feel bad about this’) + MINT (‘to make money’) + ON (‘working’). | ||
| 21 | THIEF |
Robber, one arrested by the force (5)
|
| 1 in THE F[orce]. | ||
| 22 | BOLD |
Striking leader of band, advanced in years (4)
|
| 1st of ‘Band’ + OLD. ‘Striking’ as in, e.g., colour-scheme. | ||
| 23 | DENY |
Refuse in study close to library (4)
|
| DEN (‘study’) + last of ‘librarY’. |
What category of a clue does 5d fall under? Seemed odd.
Adriana@1: I would call it simply a cryptic definition.
I enjoyed this puzzle a lot. I especially liked the surfaces of 12a and 15a. Somehow missed that 27a was an anagram, although the answer was clear. Many thanks to Falcon and GB.
To Adriana @1:
A cryptic definition.
Fans (like me) & Shakespeare scholars (definably not me) refer to his “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as ‘The Dream’, so the couple here are simply illustrative.
‘Dream Team’ is, historically & now metaphorically, a sporting phrase and if you’re not a sports fan it won’t make any sense to you for me to say that for example the ‘ideal pairing’ – the ‘dream team’ – of Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst in the 1966 soccer World Cup final was part of England manager Alf Ramsey’s ‘Dream Team’ which won the cup.
Doubtless this applies to other sports.
Thanks to Falcon and Grant. Lots of fun. I had no trouble with DREAM TEAM but struggled with OBAN and the parsing of BADMINTON (the “bad”). I particularly liked PECKING ORDER.
Lovely puzzle.. great balance i felt… mind I managed to not see OBAN .. despite having B..AN..O in front of me… AND its one of my favourite whiskies! Also managed to spell thief wrong which slowed down 24ac… all worked out in the end..
Thanks Falcon n Grant Baynham
Very enjoyable – a steady romp.
Many thanks to Falcon and Grant B.
Thoroughly enjoyable. I have just done it with my breakfast coffee as I got tied up yesterday afternoon. Thanks Falcon and Grant.
Thanks Falcon, that hit the sweet spot — not a write-in but not hopelessly dense either. Favourites included WAGER (funny surface) and BRAIN SURGEON. LOI was OBAN; it took me forever to get it despite the fact that I had lunch there on my way to Islay a few years ago. Thanks Grant for parsing.
A fairly quick solve for us, but not without problems. FOI was BEDSPREADS, although we had to check in Chambers for that definition of ‘spread’. ILLEGIBLE was obviously the answer to 15ac although we couldn’t see the parsing till we’d finished, and TIN WHISTLE was our LOI. We thought PECKING ORDER a bit of a write-in, and we liked DAMASCENE (which occurred in Sunday’s Indy, although with a totally different clue). We hadn’t heard of BRIGHT EYES but it was easy enough from the wordplay. And no problems with any of the four-letter answers.
Thanks, Falcon and Grant.
Thanks Falcon and Grant
Agree that this was mostly straightforward with a couple of snags in the mix to keep one on one’s toes. It did take a while for OBAN to present as the ‘resort town’ due mostly to the trickily out of order word play and took a while to twig to the adjectival reference to the folk of Damascus.
Finished in that NE corner with NEWSLETTER (after getting the town), VIEW (W for ‘with’ delays me more often than not) and BRIGHT EYES the last one in.
I got here on the second evening, after a break yesterday. Struggled a bit in the middle and then it all steadily fell into place. While I got Dream Team, I didn’t like it as a clue as I don’t know my Shakespeare. Oban and Bedspreads were two of the last few in.