A bit more challenging than the usual Phi, but not as satisfying. A lot of tenuous clueing in place of the usual witty word play.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | BORSCHT | TH(C+S)ROB<. Fairly tenuous with ‘c’ and ‘s’ being the bits of ‘Cannellini’ and ‘such’. |
| 5 | CURACAO | CUR (= scoundrel) + A CAO (i.e. a person linked to a company). A difficult word to clue and I have to admit I can’t think of anything less tenuous than this. |
| 9 | GENERAL PRACTICE | GENERAL (= military leader) + PR(A + CT)ICE. ‘Price’ = ‘charge’ is nice. ‘ACT’ seems to have been clued as ‘A CT’ for ‘a court’. |
| 10 | EXTRA | Quite nice double def. Here, an extra in the first sense here is a run scored in cricket without using the bat. |
| 11 | PROPELLED | PROP + (f)ELLED (= knocked over, but not initially). Nice surface. |
| 12 | DOMINANCE | D(NO I’M)*ANCE. Nice play with meaning of ‘lead’ for a good surface. |
| 18 | FRANGLAIS | (SLAFARING)* (replacing ‘e’ with ‘l’ in ‘seafaring’). My favourite in this puzzle: nice mix of abbreviation and anagramming to give a decent surface. |
| 22 | BLUNT INSTRUMENT | The beginnings of some good word play, but the surface never quite held together. |
| Down | ||
| 1 | BIGHEAD | (ABDEGHI)* There may be some subtle double meaning that I’m missing here, but ‘anagram of first nine letters unable to include C or F’ is an anagram of the first nine letters of the alphabet, excluding C and F. |
| 4 | TULIP | T(UL)IP. ‘UL’ = university lecturer. Interesting double meaning of ‘bloomer’. |
| 5 | CORPOREAL | COR(PORE)AL. There’s a subtlety that isn’t obvious at first, but the ‘in’ forms part of the definition: in body, not body. |
| 6 | RECCE | RE(CC)E(l). ‘Reel’ = some film. Nice word. |
| 7 | CHINLESS WONDERS | Interesting history of the expression that I hadn’t looked into before. Worth a google if you hadn’t either. |
| 8 | OPEN DAY | OP (= (a) work) + END (= finish) + A Y (= a year). Phew. |
| 13 | NO BRAINER | BR(A)INE(R) = sea water around a river (A … R). Quite nifty, cheeky, pleasing surface. |
Enjoyed this which I did not find too difficult. Read 5 Across as CUR A C(A)O i.e. company “importing” A. My one doubt was 21 across which I think is Tom HANKS but the other meaning was new to me, just about confirmed by dicts, I think.
I was reading CAO as Chief Accounting Officer, but I much prefer your reading.
I got HANKS too, and looked up the other meaning of a coil of rope. Not so sure about the ‘confused’ bit though.
Extraordinary coincidence: CURACAO was also in today’s Times (Despicable sort I excluded from a farewell drink), and NO-BRAINER was in Wednesday’s Times (Trivial matter head doesn’t need to be bothered with). I thought it was one-all. The Phi clue for NO-BRAINER is far better, in my opinion.
Still can’t understand why it’s HANKS, apart from the fact that he’s a Hollywood star.
HANKS Yes, I’ll confess I’d trouble with that. However clue says “often confused lines” (surface reading suggesting acting, I guess) and Chambers says “to catch, be entangled” so was happy in the end and other contributions to the thread suggest it is indeed the answer.