I solved this online last night and haven’t seen the paper today, so not sure of the setter I’m afraid. There’s an interesting, entertaining mix of clues – some easy, some harder and some I won’t fully understand until somebody explains them below. So, all in all, everything you’d want from a good Thursday crossword! I’ll take a punt and guess it’s Punk.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ANALGESIA – (ALES AGAIN)* | |
| 6 | MOTET – MO,TET – TET for ‘offensive’ is classic crossword stuff (insofar as I always forget to think of it!) | |
| 9 | A LA MODE – ALAMO,DE – ‘What’s never forgotten in Texas’ is very, very nice. Clue of the day for me | |
| 10 | INGRATE – IN,GRATE | |
| 11 | ONAMATOPAEIA – ON A MAT is the judo part, but not sure where the rest comes from here | |
| 14 | ALIBI – ALI,BI(sexual) – Nice surface reading | |
| 15 | ORIENTEER – ORIENT,EER – You could argue that ‘Lower League’ is completely unneccesary here of course, but that would deny the setter (and, just maybe, editor) the opportunity to take a swipe at the fact that Leyton Orient are not a top-flight team!! | |
| 17 | BOLLYWOOD – (DOLL,[-c]OWBOY)* | |
| 19 | SPECTROGRAPH – R in (POP CHARTS,EG) | |
| 24 | IMITATE – IT in [-pr]IMATE | |
| 25 | SITAR – I in STAR | |
| 26 | EIGHTSOME – EIGHTS,O,ME | |
| Down | ||
| 1 | AGAS – A,GAS – An easy one for me as I grew up with an Aga cooker. Mighty fine they are too | |
| 3 | GROUND IVY – ROUND IV (i.e. the fourth set of questions) in GY | |
| 4 | STEAM LOCOMOTIVE – (COAL ITS TO MOVE ME)* – A nice anag. & lit., dealt with in a similar way in a recent puzzle | |
| 5 | ALISTAIR DARLING – R in (RAIDS TILL AGAIN)* – Took me a while to get this, despite my name being in the answer! | |
| 6 | MUG UP – I can’t work this one at all. Any ideas? | |
| 7 | TRACEY EMIN – (NICE,[-pric]E,MY,ART)* – Another nice anag. &lit. | |
| 8 | THE FAIRER SEX – I,R in THE FA’S,EX | |
| 9 | DAM BUSTERS – A,MB in DUSTERS | |
| 13 | FIELD EVENT – FIELD,EVEN,T | |
| 16 | NEWSPRINT – NEW,SPRINT | |
| 20 | TRIER – A nice double def | |
| 22 | PEKE – “Peak” | |
The setter is Merlin.
6 – Arabic is a type of GUM which is mug (going up). Can’t help with 11 though.
Thoroughly enjoyable puzzle, as always from Merlin.
6D: mug up is gum (Arabic)
11A I suggest homophone APPEAR for the POEIA part from “show” in the clue
I marked 23A as my favourite clue when I got it: (I,T[r]IREME)<
11a The correct spelling is ‘onomatopoeia’, not ‘ona…..’. I was going to suggest ‘on a mat appear’ as a somewhat loose homophone but Beermagnet has beaten me to it.
I thought my spelling at 11A looked dodgy, but having completely missed the fact that it was a homophone, presumed it was right. It also appears that you get the ‘Congratulations’ message online regardless of how you fill in the answers!
Can anyone explain 21D?
Testy
HALO[gen] – gen (low down) removed from halogen (a type of light)
21d is also an excellent & lit. clue in my opinion (HALO being a source of light that appears high-up rather than low-down)
So I finished breakfast, took a couple of paracetamols, still feeling a bit delicate, sat down to the crossword and stared at 1 Across: “Senselessness having drunk ales again”.
How did Merlin know?
This was a brilliant puzzle, I thought, full of &lit touches, with some cleverly cloaked definitions. Thank you, Merlin. I too read HALO as Al Streatfield did in comment 8 above.
Excellent as usual from Merlin, although I’m slightly perturbed that in the ONOMATOPOEIA clue the definition seems to be doing double duty as the homophone indicator.