A themed puzzle from Cinephile in his customary Wednesday slot.
The ‘leaving body’ indicated a ‘body with leaves’ or put more simply a tree. It helped that I tackled the down clues first so the first thematic clue I met was 5dn. This was easy to solve and immediately made the theme apparent which helped greatly with the other thematic entries.
I initially questioned the anagram indicator in 4dn, but I suppose one could make a case for earning=acquiring=getting and you can get ‘pence virtue’ from the letters of ‘unreceptive’.
Across
1 BUCK HOUSE *(U-[t]UBE SHOCK)
6 POSER dd
9 FORBEAR FOR BEAR (Pooh)
10 MAIGRET MAIGRE (fast food) T (time) – maigre: “(of food) containing no animal flesh and so able to be eaten on a fast-day” (Chambers)
11 GUAVA *(A VAGU[e])
12 CHILE PINE *(CINEPHILE)
14 OAK cd
15 COPPER BEECH COPPER (policeman) homophone of ‘beach’ (shore)
17 PUSSY WILLOW PUSSY (cat) WILL OW (cry with pain)
19 GUM MUG (face) reversed
20 SCOTCH EGG *(SHE GOT CC G)
22 IDEAL I DEAL (I’m in business)
24 THIRDLY DL (100 millilitres) in THIR[st]Y (wanting a drink no saint) – defn. (c)
26 CADMIUM CAD (no gentleman) I (one) in MUM (his mother)
27 SUGAR RAG (paper) US (American) reversed
28 WELL WOMAN MOW reversed (cutback) in WELLAN[d] (nearly all of Fenland river)
Down
1 BEFOG GO (leave) FEB (month) reversed
2 CAR PARK CARP (fish) ARK (old ship)
3 HIERARCHY HI (greeting) ARCHERY (ancient sport) with ER (monarch) moved to the front
4 UNRECEPTIVE *(PENCE VIRTUE) – ‘earning’ as an anagram indicator?
5 ELM hidden in ‘hotEL Maybe’
6 PRIDE P (quiet) RIDE (journey)
7 SERVICE dd
8 ROTHERHAM ROT (decay) HER (lady’s) HAM (meat)
13 IDEOLOGICAL *(E[xtact] OIL DIG COAL) – a misprint here, ‘extact’ should be ‘extract’ Edit: typo corrected, thanks for pointing out the error Steve
14 OPPOSITES OP (work) PO ([postal] order) SITES (locations)
16 BOW WINDOW IN D[og] in BOWWOW (dog)
18 SNOWING WIN (success) in SNOG (cuddle)
19 GRECISM G (FBI man) *(CRIMES) – the American way of spelling Graecism
21 CEDAR hidden in ‘ abeCEDARians’
23 LEMON dd – from the expression ‘the answer is a lemon’, used in previous puzzles by Araucaria and Orense amongst others
25 YEW homophone of ‘you’ (solver)
Nice of the Reverend to use the obvious anagram of his name……shame Gaufrid couldn’t draw himself to use it in the title, preferring to use the more formal name for the monkey puzzle 🙂
Hi Ferret
Thanks for pointing out my senior moment which has now been corrected. It was early and I forgot which paper I was covering. 🙁
Gaufrid — No Guardian blog today?
Hi Liz
I posted one five minutes ago. Sorry for the delay.
Most unusual to see so few comments on a ‘Monkey Puzzle’ crossword.
I thought this was a good puzzle, full of the expected amount of wit and invention.
The ‘leaving body’ definition made it a bit different to the usual”certain clues are of a kind’ preamble
It was a pretty easy theme to spot though there were some good clues in the puzzle,particular favourite being
8 down.
Had to look up ‘maigre’ but the answer was obvious even if you didn’t know the word.
Hi Gaufrid – ironically enough, I think you also had a ‘misprint’ in the answer to 15 down (should be ideological).
I should have said 13d
Thanks Steve, I have corrected the typo.