We completed this crossword in a most pleasant way – in bed with a cup of tea during a rare weekend at home, before a pub lunch. Its gentle wit was much appreciated, with a number of the answers clued in an innovative fashion.
ACROSS
1. B(EMUS)ED
5. MIMI C a big shout out to El’s dad, who would always say ‘que gelida manina’ when she was small, a memory that made this rather hard clue a bit easier!
8. FEN N.E.C. A new word for us, but easily parsed
9. AC COSTED
10. WEIRDEST ‘rides’ anagramised in ‘wet’
11. (s)HOOT
13. PEACE-KEEPING Very witty – ‘peace’ is kept inside hoPE A CErtainty
15. KINDER G(ART)EN
18. S CUM ‘cum’ is with in Latin
19. ABROGATE (boat gear)*
22. BATTERED dd
23. A M ORAL
24. MA(RR)Y
25. NIELSEN (senile)* n for ‘note’
DOWN
1. BREWER dd, ref Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
2. MINOR sounds like ‘miner’
3. SECRETAIRE (career its e)* Spent rather too long trying to make ‘escritoire’ from this
4. D(RAFT)EE
5. MICE ‘I’m’ reversed, then C.E.
6. MISS H(chAP)EN
7. CRETONNE (centre no)*
12. FETTER LANE (fleet t near)* Didn’t know that this street was well known, only got it because H works near there
13. PE(DOME)TER
14. DISC LAIM ‘laim’ sounds like ‘lame’
16. ALA(D.D. I)N
17. S TRAIN
20. G LOSS
21. FRAY dd, ref clue 17
I am glad you managed FETTER LANE. It was recycled after refusal by another of my (many!) crossword editors. I took the view that there are quite a lot of London solvers and that it wasn’t difficult to work out. Keep up the good work post-Niall!
Yes, good puzzle and blog, took me quite a while to see HOOT and how it worked. FETTER LANE was new to me, eventually emerging as a possibility from crossing letters and the likelihood the second part was LANE.
PS Had not seen comment 1 when writing 2!
It’s very rare that I get chance for Sunday crossword solving (yes, I know that sounds perverse) but thanks to the lovely new lady in my life – who happens to be a crossword lover – this was solved in the relaxed environment of a sunny beer garden, and a very pleasant solve it was too; a perfect mix of accessibility and challenge, so many thanks Don.
We struggled a bit to get FETTER LANE but the cross-checkers made that the only possible answer and it’s now handily stored in the “Things I didn’t know then but I know now” bit of my brain.
Fetter Lane? For goodness sake, how is someone without internet access or a London A to Z supposed to check that? A dreadful clue for a dreadful light.
London thoroughfares that aren’t on a Monopoly board should never appear in national newspaper crosswords. I really wish setters would stop thinking that everyone has intimate knowledge of one of the capital cities of the UK. Stop it, all of you.
FETTER LANE
Just been looking at Wiki – Fetter Lane has an entry whereas several nearby streets do not. There seems to be a fair bit of interesting stuff about it, and it turns out Fetter Lane is also mentioned as an early residence of the central character in the opening paragraphs of Gulliver’s Travels (which I read as a kid, so this reference was long-forgotten for me).
Yes, it’s a bit obscure, but I’d suggest it has sufficient history behind it to make it worth knowing.
If you’ve never heard of FETTER LANE (like most of us haven’t) how could you guess first letter was F.It could have been anything! Made a good fist of this.Never heard of 8a,7d and of course 12d!