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If it’s a Phi puzzle, it’s normally the end of the week.
Only one word we had to check here – thankfully everything went in quite smoothly as we have been up against things time-wise this week.
Thanks Phi – we couldn’t spot a theme this week and we think it is too early for the Wellington Burger Competition in New Zealand.
MAIL (armour) CARe (concern) missing last letter or ‘a lot of’
A play on the fact that a warning about a fresh cup of coffee may be ‘MUG’S HOT’
A reversal (‘returned’) of A (American) MALL (shopping centre)
A TALON (part of eagle) I ‘observed’ in CAL (California)
An anagram (‘diversifying’) of I OPEN CHAIN
Hidden (‘welcoming’) and reversed (‘returning’) in ticKER Tape
S (small) CE (church) around or ‘straddling’ HEM (border)
COLUMbus (navigator) without or ‘abandoning’ ‘bus’ (coach) ‘leading’ N (new)
Double definition
RENT (regular payment) after or ‘given to’ PA (secretary)
bRACE (couple) without first letter or ‘not first’
THe (missing last letter or ‘curtailed’) RIFTS (openings) HOP (spring)
PLATE (serving of food) and RED (wine) with S (second) ‘tucked in’
PET (favoured) RA (senior artist)
TUNIs (African capital) missing last letter or ‘mostly’ inside or ‘invested in’ PEA (vegetable)
ROOT (support) LED (took first place)
A Spoonerism of PILE (edifice) MOST (excessively)
I’M A GO (strategy game)
CHAINS (groups of shops) and an anagram (‘possibly’) of OK and ME
OdouR (first and last letters only or ‘edges’) reversed or ‘rising’ + COCO (as in Coco Chanel)
MET (satisfied) HAL (Harry) with a reversal of ON inside
G (first letter or ‘opening’ to Gourmets) A LA (in the manner of)
HIND (back) RACE (people) around or ‘circumventing’ N (Nationalist)
TANKS (military vehicles) around or ‘encircling’ H (Hungary)
PUTTO (cherub) around or ‘swamping’ A OP (work) around ST (religious figure – saint)
An anagram (‘after development’) of CAME FORTH
E (European) UP (promoted) HOt (missing last letter or ‘a lot of’) + a reversal (‘elevating’) of AIR
SPAR (dispute) D (Director) about TOP (leading)
Double definition
FINER (with sharper perception) around or ‘importing’ D (Germany) – we had to check the definition here
HOT (very popular) EL (the in Spanish)
STUNt (publicity event) missing last letter or ‘curtailed’
I liked MUGSHOT and enjoyed the puzzle as a whole.
Ah! Looks as if the gremlins have been banished again. I wasn’t able to post earlier.
Defeated by COLUMN right at the end. Entirely my bad. Did not twig what ‘navigator’ was doing. A solid Phi with which to end the week and a very tightly written one, too. PHOENICIAN, THRIFT SHOP, PLASTERED, CHAINSMOKE, HOMECRAFT and EUPHORIA my faves. Only small query: does ‘viewed by Spooner’ work? I understood the Reverend’s quirk to be specifically verbal and ‘viewed by’ implies a written/visual transposition to me.
Thanks Phi and B&J
PostMark@2 I wondered about “viewed by” as well. I suppose it is a written transformation as there is no sound alike element to the Spoonerism?
At 28 I saw ‘favoured by senior’ as PET with the artist simply the usual RA.
Found this reasonably straightforward bar the FINDER/ROOTLED intersection which took a while as neither was very obvious.
Thanks to Phi and B&J
Thanks both. Same difficulty as redddevil above; not sure I remember ROOTLED and root as a synonym for support seemed curious, although I recognise ‘root for’. THRIFT SHOP was unfamiliar, and I see it’s an Americanism – not normally my role here to point that out.
If Columbus is a “navigator” he wasn’t a very good one–he died believing that all the people he enslaved, exploited, or killed over here were Asian. In fact, the reason the Portuguese (whom he asked first) didn’t bankroll his voyages wasn’t that they disagreed that the world was round, it was that they knew he’d grossly underestimated its circumference. He just got “lucky” that there was a whole extra pair of continents in the way.
Once I’d got Columbus, I was half expecting a Nina, but no. No Santa Maria either.
Bits of words or abbreviations do appear down the left hand side, though. Imho, e.g. too. Weep, arson???
The burger puzzle isn’t far off, but this is the Phi puzzle that follows the release of a new film by Wes Anderson – The Phoenician Scheme. It features Kate Winslet’s daughter Mia Threapleton in her first big role and Threapleton felt like it had to be an anagram of something (PARENT + HOTEL, as it turned out), so there are anagrams of the other stars dotted around: Amalric, Del Toro, Friend, Cera. T(om) Hanks got in more or less en clair.
Anything to seed a grid…
As for “Spooner’s view” where would talk shows be without people who start a long speech with: ‘In my view…’?
Thanks Phi. We were in Paris recently and visited an exhibition about Wes Anderson films. We’d seen a couple but knew very little about him. It was an extraordinary experience especially the VR part which features shots from the Isle of Dogs. It has made us determined to see more of his films – quite a genius with an amazing imagination.