I really struggled with this, and was prepared to wreak mighty vengeance on Monk in this post – but, on reflection over a cup of coffee, I can see that most of the faults lie with my sub-par brain, rather than with the setter. True, many of the clues seem desperately over-complicated to me, but, on the whole, a fairly fair puzzle, I think.
ACROSS
1. CRATERS R(ecorded) within C [Conservative] + rates [estimates (value of)]
5. POTASH Play on pot [cannabis] ash [burnt remains] to give the fertilising chemical
9. IVANHOE Ho(use) within I [1, one] + vane [part of a windmill] to give Walter Scott’s swashbuckling hero
10. HAIRCUT Air [atmosphere] + c(aught) within hut [small house]; the definition is ‘bob[,] for one’
12. REJUVENATE Anagram of Janet + revue [see 2dn]
13. ANEW Wane [decline] with w(ife) ‘delayed’, i.e. moved to later in the word
14. PIECE I think this alludes to the fact that piece can follow show-, after-, work- and party- to make new words
15. TOODLE-OO O(ld) and Leo [a rather obscure Roman ruling dynasty] within to-do [commotion]
17. COQUETTE Croquette [potato cake] minus r(uns); ‘mash’, a slang term meaning to flirt or coquette is the definition
19. TUBED Reversal of debut [start]; one on the London Underground could be said to be ‘tubed’
21. LEAR Real [true] with both sides (L and R may represent the left and right sides, but the clue would also work with other letters) switched to give Shakespeare’s most tragic hero
22. BARBER-SHOP Bar [pub] + ER [Elizabeth Regina, queen] + sh [‘keep mum’, be quiet] within bop [dance]
24. EYELASH Eye [attitude?] + lash [flog]
25. BRONCHI Br(itish) + on [working] + chi [letter of the Greek alphabet] to give the tubes of the lung
26. EXOCET Reversal of CO [Commanding Officer] within Exet(er) [west-country city] to give a kind of guided missile
27. STRIKER Double definition, with ‘match’ not attached to ‘football’ but, rather, meaning a safety match, which might be ‘struck’
DOWN
2. REVUE (Gri)ev(ing) within rue [regret]
3. TONSURE Sure [certain] following ton [weight] to give a monk’s haircut (see 10ac)
4. ROOSEVELT Eve [Biblical first lady] within anagram of lost or to give either Teddy or FDR
6. ORATE Not sure about this one: rat is ‘informer’, but how does ‘a pair of shoes’ relate to O and E? Surely it doesn’t just mean ‘a pair of letters from ‘shoes”?
7. AIR-MAIL Irma [girl’s name] within ail [be sick]
8. HOUSEHOLD House [shelter] + hold [stay]
11. SALTPETRE Saltire [type of cross, a day late for St Andrew’s Day] with I replaced by pet [stroke] to give the chemical compound
14. PROSELYTE Anagram of polyester to give a term for one who converts from one religion to another
16. ON THE TROT (M)onth + reversal of torte [tart]
18. UTRILLO Anagram of illustration minus the letters of stain to give the French painter
20. BASENJI N(o) j(oy) i(n) beneath (‘oppressed by’] base [vile] to give a species of dog
22. BASTE Double definition: to baste can mean ‘beat’ [clobber] or ‘stitch loosely’ [sew]
23. OCHRE Hidden in enOCH REacted
Thanks Ringo
In 15ac I took LEO to be ‘house’ as in one of the twelve divisions of the heavens in astrology (zodiac).
My reading of ‘a pair of shoes’ in 6dn was as you indicated, [sh]OE[s].
Thanks Gaufrid. I actually wrote in the astrological definition first, but then a Google double-check brought up the House of Leo; I think you’re probably right, though.
‘A pair of shoes’ still seems a bit unsatisfactory…
Thanks for the blog – it must be daunting to draw Monk. He has an almost equally hard one in the Independent today.
Can anyone help with the apparent ninas? It says CIRCLE down the left hand side but TWO PIR down the right. Does it mean something?
Very well spotted, Thomas! I misssed that completely. The circumference of a CIRCLE is TWO PI R (twice pi times the circle’s radius) – and the words appear in the circumference of the puzzle. Is there any more to it than that?
2 pi r – of course! Well done for interpreting it, Ringo (I suppose your doubly circular name makes it more appropriate that you should crack it)! Tonsures and craters are round-ish but I don’t see a pervasive theme.
Thanks Ringo. It helps if you did today’s Monk in the Independent as this one in the FT is slightly less convoluted. I put ticks next to the clues for Coquette, Saltpetre, On the trot and Utrillo which I would describe as brilliant rather than convoluted. I’m hopeless at dogs so I am relieved that Monk gave us fairly straightforward wordplay for Basenji. It goes without saying that I missed the Nina.