Guy is the setter this morning.
A slow and steady solve for me this morning. The first of the two long entries was a write in so that gave me enough crossers to complet most of the top half, but it took a while for me to gain much of a foothold in the bottom half. I plodded on and eventually completed the grid with my LOI being PRESTO, but only becauce I can't see the parsing (I'm sure it's something obvious, but my senile brain simply can't see it!). There were two words/terms in the solutions that were new to me – MOUE meaning grimace and the WW2 arrangement of Lend-lease, which I thought was excellently clued (Czech handling racket for LENDL is magnificent).
Thanks, Guy (and apologies to those logging in looking for an explanation to PRESTO)
| ACROSS | ||
| 7 | MARRAKECH |
African city excited carmaker Henry (9)
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*(carmaker) [anag:excited] + H (Henry, the SI unit of electrical conductance) |
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| 8 | HEELS |
Swine leans over on cruise, say (5)
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Double definition, the first being rotters and the second referring to a ship leaning to one side. |
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| 10 | UNSATED |
Novel Austen completed finally needing more sex? (7)
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*(austen) [anag:novel] + (complete)D [finally] |
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| 11 | CHIRRUP |
Tweet “King and Queen happy” on X (7)
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R (Rex, so "king") and R (Regina, so "queen") + UP ("happy") on CHI (Greek letter that looks like X) |
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| 12 | CONSPIRATORIAL |
Irrational cops suspect plotting (14)
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*(irrational cops) [anag:suspect] |
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| 15 | REPLETE |
Full theatre allowed more at the back (7)
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REP(ertory "theatre") + LET ("allowed") + (mor)E [at the back] |
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| 17 | CRIMSON |
Lips covered with fake colour of blusher (7)
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RIMS ("lips") covered with CON ("fake") |
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| 18 | BROOKLYN BRIDGE |
Put up with grey blind spoiling sight of NYC (8,6)
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BROOK ("put up with") + *(grey blind) [anag:spoiling] |
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| 22 | NIRVANA |
Granny beds camper on island paradise (7)
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NANA ("granny") beds RV (recreational vehicle, so "camper") on I (island), so N(I-RV)ANA |
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| 24 | TEARFUL |
After swimming you left with eyes streaming (7)
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*(after) [anag:swimming] + U (you, in textspeak) + L (left) |
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| 25 | LODGE |
50 for one party coming round, put on record (5)
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L (50, in Roman numerals) + <=(e.g. ("for one") + DO ("party"), coming round) |
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| 26 | LEND-LEASE |
Supply of US arms from Czech handling racket with no trouble (4-5)
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(Ivan) LENDL (Czech tennis player of the 1980s and 90s, so "Czech handling racket") with EASE ("no trouble") Lend-lease was the term used for an agreement during WW2 that the Americans would send arms to other countries that the US considered vital to their security, |
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| DOWN | ||
| 1 | PRESTO |
Touching brake fully when cycling very fast (6)
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I can't parse this one – sorry! |
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| 2 | DANTES PEAK |
Disaster movie’s lead in danger, say after volcano goes up (6,4)
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[lead in] D(anger) + SPEAK ("say") after <=ETNA ("volcano", goes up) Dante's Peak is a 1997 movie starring Pierce Brosnan about a volcanic eruption. |
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| 3 | DEADLINE |
Late by railway last time (8)
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DEAD ("late") by LINE ("railway") |
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| 4 | CHACHA |
Steps I see Charlie repeated the other way (3-3)
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<=(AH ("I see") + C (Charlie, in the NATO phonetic alphabet), the other way and repeated) |
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| 5 | THAI |
Eastern national cup match on the radio (4)
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Homophone/pun/aural wordplay [on the radio] of TIE ("cup match") |
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| 6 | NEAR MISS |
One arm is sufficient to hold something close (4,4)
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Hidden in [to hold] "oNE ARM IS Sufficient" |
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| 7 | MOUE |
Grimace with rodent scratching son (4)
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MOU(s)E ("rodent", scratching S (son)) |
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| 9 | SUPPLANT |
Replace revolting scheme to widen street (8)
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UP ("revolting", as in up in arms) + PLAN ("scheme") to widen St. (street) For the "widen" bit, think of something being forced between two other things (in this case the S and T of St.) to force them apart. |
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| 13 | ORIGINALLY |
Old friend takes doctor home first (10)
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O (old) + ALLY ("friend") takes RIG ("doctor") + IN ("home") |
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| 14 | TRIBUNAL |
Experiment eating cake, assessing body (8)
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TRIAL ("experiment") eating BUN ("cake") |
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| 16 | PROTRUDE |
Romeo stuffs pocket with obscene bulge (8)
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R (Romeo, in the NATO phonetic alphabet) stuffs POT ("pocket", as in snooker") with RUDE ("obscene") |
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| 17 | CAB-STAND |
Rank actors with second-rate parts (3-5)
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B ("second-rate") parts CAST ("actor") + AND ("with") |
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| 19 | YEARLY |
Yule’s beginning before it should, every Christmas? (6)
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Y(ule) ['s beginning] + EARLY ("before it should") The Grinch in me agrees with this sentiment. I think all mention of Christmas should be banned until, at the earliest, the beginning of December. |
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| 20 | GUFFAW |
Poppycock Washington served up, LOL (6)
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GUFF ("poppycock") + <=WA (Washington, served up) LOL is a textspeak abbreviation for "laugh out loud". |
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| 21 | SLOE |
Gin’s infusion taking ages, you’d say (4)
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Homophone/pun/aural wordplay [you'd say] of SLOW ("taking ages") Sloe gin is gin infused with blackthorns, also known as sloes. |
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| 23 | AHEM |
Excuse me, what’s on the bottom of your skirt? (4)
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A HEM might be the answer to the question "what's on the bottom of your skirt?" |
PRESTO — “re stop” is “touching brake fully”, cycling moves the P to the front.
Thanks, GDU – so obvious!!
HEELS stumped me. I’ve never equated a bun and a cake — perhaps you Brits think differently. Rep/theatre was a head scratcher, but I vaguely recall it being explained to me once before. I didn’t think LEND LEASE could be right as I thought they were an Australian company unknown elsewhere, but apparently they’re not.
New to me MOUE.
Not easy, but good fun.
And of course the Australian company (which is unhyphenated) has nothing to do with the clue!
Chapeau Guy for lend lease.
Also loved tribunal, marrakech, many others.
No moans, and a good blog.
I had a similar experience to loonapick with not much to add. Thanks GDU@1 for parsing PRESTO (I got the stop cycling but not the RE)
Thanks Guy and loonapick
Liked CHIRRUP, LEND-LEASE, DANTE’S PEAK, NEAR MISS and CAB-STAND.
Thanks Guy and loonapick
Collins gives ‘swines’ as the plural form of ‘swine
(when it means a despicable person).
That’s a good point, KVa, that I didn’t spot. I would certainly say “They are both swines”, for example.
I felt very satisfied to complete this one. I liked lend-lease, and Marrakech, because I have very happy memories of having been there in the early 70s . I had to think hard to parse Heels, but that was alright. And I have always liked the word Guffaw. I thought Presto might have something to do with pressing and toes, but that didn’t make much sense . . .
Thanks Guy and loonapick
8ac: Yes, KVa@7, Collins 2023 p 1999 gives “pl swines” for the relevant meaning of swine. However, Chambers 2016 p 1573 has “pl swine” for all meanings. ODE 2010 p 1799 has “pl. same or swines” for the meaning used in this clue. Pocket Oxford 2013, Concise Oxford 2011, and Shorter Oxford 2007 agree with ODE, perhaps unsurprisingly. I think this clue works.
Enjoyed this a lot, though I, too, failed to parse PRESTO (thanks GDU, it seems obvious now).
I’m sure I’ve heard people say “All men are swine”.
Thanks Guy and loonapick.
Lots of fun. As ever I came up short on a few but I don’t need to be perfect and I don’t resort to new fangled tools like wordfinders so I expect to miss a few.
No real problems apart from first thinking of ‘waffle’ for 20dn (not fully parsed of course) which held us up for 18ac, although we usually have difficulty with partial anagrams anyway. We liked the misdirection in 7ac, ‘carmaker Henry’ suggesting Ford.
Thanks, Guy and loonapick.
Thanks Guy for a great set of clues. Most of this went in without problem but I revealed CAB-STAND, not remembering that they’re called ‘ranks’ in Britain. I couldn’t parse PRESTO or HEELS but the crossers made those answers obvious. My many favourites included CONSPIRATORIAL, NIRVANA, TEARFUL, LEND-LEASE (COTD), YEARLY (liked the sadly accurate surface), GUFFAW (another accurate surface), and AHEM. Thanks loonapick for the blog.
Late to the party today – quick thanks to Loonapick and to Guy. I enjoyed working out “lend-lease” which rang the faintest of bells after I’d solved it, and was pleased to build up several of these bit by bit until I was staring at a proper word.
GDU@3: In the Uk at least you can buy sweet buns such as a currant bun, an iced bun, an Eccles cake and so forth, all of which might equally be called cakes. It’s a misleading and borderline fair equivalence, but it’s in a crossword when we live on the borderlands much of the time.
Loonapick – for 7ac the henry is the unit of inductance, not conductance, which is the siemens or the mho (yes, that is ohm backwards and yes it is one of the few jokes in physics that made it into official status).
14dn: The first definition of bun¹ in Chambers 2016 (p 203) is “a kind of sweet roll or cake”. Collins 2023 p 275 has “bun 2 any of various types of small round sweet cakes”. I think this is totally fair, not just borderline fair.
LEND-LEASE is fairly well known in America; we naturally tell a US-centric narrative of the war, in which one of the questions we have to answer is why it took us two years to enter the war. (The pacifists and isolationists and pro-German elements were too strong, until we were attacked directly, in a nutshell.) Lend-Lease was part of Roosevelt doing the nudging in that direction. Of course the name is preposterous; did anyone really expect the British to give back, or pay rent on, those bullets and tanks? But it was still politically necessary to couch it that way.
did anyone really expect the British to give back, or pay rent on, those bullets and tanks?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/britain-pays-off-final-instalment-of-us-loan-after-61-years-430118.html