It’s Friday today, so one would expect to be doing battle with Phi.
A medium-difficulty puzzle today, in my view, with no apparent theme, although it could well have gone straight over my head!
I enjoyed having four 15-letter entries in the grid today, and indeed these offered two of my clues of the day: 4, the surface of which brought a smile to my lips and 5 for the smoothness of its surface. I also think the construction at 14D was a clever spot by Phi.
I had forgotten the word for “excellent” in 7 and the definition at 15. I found “bottom” in Chambers but can’t imagine how it is used in this sense – can anyone give me an example? I may be wide of the mark with the parsing of 19, so please confirm or take issue as appropriate.
*(…) indicates an anagram; the definitions are in bold
| Across | |
| 09 – RUN RIOT | Small creature around South American city is to go wild.RIO (=South American city) in RUNT (=small creature, i.e. smallest of litter) |
| 11 – TITUS ANDRONICUS | Shakespeare play, artistic and unsound in turn.*(ARTISTIC + UNSOUND); “in turn” is anagram indicator |
| 12 – SCREWBALL | Zany group of people in second dance.CREW (=group of people) in [S (=second) + BALL (=dance)] |
| 14 – CIRCA | Military leader active, seizing river roughly.R (=river) in [CIC (=military leader, i.e. Commander-in-Chief) + A (=active)] |
| 15 – SECURED | Apprehended scoundrel that’s brought in germ.CUR (=scoundrel) in SEED (=germ) |
| 16 – THIRDLY | How you’d appear after a couple?Cryptic definition: thirdly in sequential order after a couple of others, i.e. firstly and secondly. |
| 17 – LUCID | Sensible copper recalled being in helmet?UC (CU=copper; “recalled” indicates reversal) in LID (=helmet, i.e. slang for hat) |
| 18 – NOISES OFF | The sound of wings?Cryptic definition: the wings are those of a stage in a theatre |
| 20 – NOUVELLE CUISINE | Nice description of recent board activity?Cryptic definition: “Nice” is the resort in France, recent accounts for the nouvelle (=new) and “board” suggests provision of meals, as in full board |
| 23 – INSERTS | Leaflets in newspapers: popular collections? That’s about right.R (=right) in [IN (=popular) + SETS (=collections)] |
| 24 – STAMINA | Mark shrouded in disgrace – one’s bottom?[M (=mark) in STAIN (=disgrace)] + A (=one); bottom is staying power, stamina |
| Down | |
| 01 – GRATIS | Scoundrel captured by soldiers getting free.CUR (=scoundrel) in GIs (=soldiers) |
| 02 – KNIT | Equipment includes new mesh.N (=new) in KIT (=equipment); “mesh” here is a verb |
| 03/10 – FIRST WORLD PROBLEM | Difficulty getting child to speak limiting onset of language? That’s a minor inconvenience.L<anguage> (“onset of” means first letter only) in FIRST WORD PROBLEM (=cryptically, difficulty getting child to speak); a First World problem is “a minor inconvenience” compared to the serious problems of the Third World |
| 04 – STANDARD ENGLISH | A form of strangled Danish? Hardly.*(STRANGLED DANISH); “a form of” is anagram indicator; & lit. |
| 05 – SPIRAL STAIRCASE | Flight‘s first in statutory trials with airspace, possibly.*(S<tatutory> + TRIALS + AIRSPACE); “possibly” is anagram indicator; “first in” means first letter only |
| 06 – TOWN | Not upset about Welsh in Carmarthen?W (=Welsh) in TON (NOT; “upset” indicates vertical reversal) |
| 07 – CLOCK RADIO | Alarm? Notice excellent one, with ring.CLOCK (=notice, spot, in slang) + RAD (=excellent, in US slang, short for radical) + I (=one) + O (=ring, from shape) |
| 08 – EMISSARY | Messenger girl occupying attention before end of day.[MISS (=girl) in EAR (=attention)] + <da>Y (“end of” means last letter only |
| 13 – RACECOURSE | Track lineage: church absorbs this country’s.RACE (=lineage) + [OURS (=this country’s) in CE (=church)] |
| 14 – CHIMERICAL | Country without energy surrounding country without leader? That’s fanciful.<a>MERICA (=country; “without leader” means first letter dropped) in CHIL<e> (=country; “without energy (=E)” means letter “e” is dropped |
| 15 – SOLENOID | Bearer of current not seen amidst fish.NO (=not) in [SOLE + ID (=fish, i.e. two types); a solenoid is a cylindrical coil of wire that converts the electrical current passing through it into mechanical energy |
| 19 – FOETAL | Having moved on from upset regarding developing creature.LATE (=having moved on, i.e. former, departed) + OF (=from); “upset” indicates full vertical reversal |
| 21 – EURO | Regret picking up zero currency.EUR (RUE=regret; “picking up” indicates vertical reversal) + O (=zero) |
| 22 – IRIS | Flag of European country getting trimmed.IRIS<h> (=of European country; “getting trimmed” means last letter is dropped) |
Thanks for the blog, RatkojaRiku. I agree that the surfaces at 4 and 5 are very nice in what was an excellent crossword.
I took 19 FOETAL (down as 16 in the blog) to be a reversal of “late of” meaning “recently moved from” or “having moved on from” in the clue.
Thanks for the blog. Another excellent Friday crossword. I found it got a lot harder towards the end – couldn’t get chess and surfing out of my head for the Nice clue, even though I guessed it would be French, and there are some unfamiliar elements in some of the clues, all of which are confirmed in Chambers (bottom = stamina is one. It was just about familiar – one of those terribly British usages that I hope won’t die out: “Decent enough chap but the man has no bottom…” etc.) Re “recently moved on from” (= “late of”) I thought along the same lines as muffyword, in particular of the currently ubiquitous “late of this parish”. I seem to hear it on Radio 4 every day.
The three long anagrams helped me a lot with solving this puzzle. My favourite clues were 4d, 12a, 14d & 19d.
New word for me was SOLENOID (last in).
I couldn’t parse 7d, 15d, 14a, 20a, 24a.
Thanks for the blog, RatkojaRiku. I parsed 19d as you did (as well as muffyword & Thomas99), and it was one of my favourite clues.
I thought this was going to be easy when three of the four long answers went in almost immediately (11ac, 4dn and 5dn) but I slowed up considerably after that, especially on the RHS, and I had to give some of the clues a lot of thought. My last in was STAMINA from the wordplay because I had either forgotten or never knew that meaning of ‘bottom’. Another very good Phi puzzle.
Entertaining puzzle with some nice clues.
Thanks RatkojaRiku; a couple of obscurities – bottom=stamina is apparently a horse racing term. Also, a bit naughty, I thought, using US slang (RAD=excellent) without any indication.
I particularly enjoyed THIRDLY, SOLENOID and NOISES OFF
It took me a full hour to battle through this. At various times, I thought I’d finish it quite swiftly (e.g. after getting Titus Andronicus early on and then spiral staircase), but there were lots of pesky clues that held me up like 16 and 24. I thought there might be some theatrical theme with a couple of plays (Titus and Noises Off) in the across answers.
More challenging than many a Phi offering, but worth persevering with. No theme or nina that I can see, despite the grid layout with unches across top and bottom. And I certainly needed the blog as I struggled to parse several answers.
Another one here who set off at a rate of knots. Was thinking I might be sub five minutes and came to a crashing halt in the bottom half. Spent ages looking at stamina trying to justify the definition, nice and sneaky Phi. Ta for the blog RR perhaps paul b won’t complain about the lack of clues this time.
Pretty much the same as everyone else, really – a tough one by Phi’s Friday standards. But it was all gettable, though I didn’t understand some of the parsings until I came here (thanks, RR).
STANDARD ENGLISH was a lovely clue and I thought the clue for THIRDLY was cleverly written. Never heard of FIRST WORLD PROBLEM, but it had to be that. I think THIRD WORLD is going out of fashion these days; the preferred term now seems to be DEVELOPING WORLD.
Thanks for Phi for the puzzle.
Both in the paper copy and online 6dn has ‘Carmathen’, which doesn’t seem to exist. No doubt just a slip, but it was a bit misleading. Otherwise very good I thought. Had also never heard of First World Problem.
I noticed the Carmathen spelling as well, Wil, but like you just assumed it was a typo.
We completely missed the typo in 6d – just saw what we expected to see!
We thought it had to be STAMINA but just couldn’t see why and came here to check without looking it up in Chambers.
We also took longer than usual being held up in SE corner.
Thanks RR and Phi.
I should own up to a couple of things: Carmathen is my typo (hmm, this spell-checker spots it and suggests ‘Mathematica’ as well; clever things, spell-checkers) and the clue to FOETAL you all like is an editorial amendment, not my original.
FIRST WORLD PROBLEM is increasingly around, often in comments to news stories about, say, well, difficulties with spell-checkers. And it never occurred to me that RAD was still considered American. I’m not exactly an habitué of the cutting edge, but I stumble across it regularly enough.
Thanks for spotting the numbering typo in the blog, Muffyword, which I have since corrected.
When typing out the clues for the blog, I took the liberty of correcting the spelling of the Welsh place name, since I assumed it could only have been a typo. I am pleased that I did not overstep the mark 😉