Sorry, sorry, sorry – late blog – with no excuse at all.
I had this blog ready to go apart from the words at the top and simply forgot.
I seem to have lost track of the days over this long weekend. Not to mention the weeks and months and years. I mean the last time I wrote a cheque I dated it 2013 – well, it was 2013 according to my cheque book stub, but nevertheless.
I had trouble getting going on this puzzle. After getting 12A and 3D I couldn’t build on that and got nothing else till 26/18 allowed me to get going in the bottom half. This meant I got more than half the answers in at the “first pass” though it was very slow. Though I never time myself I expect this was the longest Eye solve I’ve had for a very long time. As so often happens, 1A, the first clue read ended up being the last clue entered.
I found 14A STOCKS and 24D ROLLS somewhat unsatisfactory
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | DENTIST | Study tits enhancement as a regular puller? (7) LOI. DEN (study) (TITS)* AInd: enhancement |
| 5 | ASHDOWN | An election team leader has turned “blue”? (7) HAS* AInd; turned, then DOWN (blue) Paddy of that ilk is of course an ex-leader of the LibDems and Chair of its 2015 Election Team. Despite election night promise, still hasn’t sampled millinery nourishment. |
| 9 | CHATTERBOX | Speaker, a keen one; one who’d top you in Conservative fight (10) HATTER (one who’d top you) inside C[onservative] BOX (fight) |
| 11 | BUZZ | Call “Off with it and beat it!” (4) A kind of a cryptic def. If you add OFF to make BUZZ OFF it means “beat it!” |
| 12 | IMPORT | Consequence of PM and direction-less Tories floundering (6) (PM TORI[es])* AInd: floundering. First clue answered |
| 13 | CHIVALRY | Blubber-covered viral disease starts to affect luckless knight’s thing (8) HIV A[ffect] L[uckless] (viral disease and beginnings of clue words) inside CRY (blubber) |
| 14 | STOCKS | Grist for the Stock Exchange, where small-time criminals traditionally ended up (6) DD Very strange to include Stock Exchange in a clue for STOCKS. Is there more to it that I’m missing? |
| 15 | ESCORT | Coarse bloke’s “phwoar, finally got a call-girl!” (6) ‘E’s (“He’s” said coarsely – thus “Coarse bloke’s”) COR (phwoar) [go]T |
| 20 | APLOMB | One Cameron, interlinked with bung – “it’s a cool thing!” (6) A (one) PM (Cameron) and LOB (bung) “interlinked” AP–LO–M–B. |
| 23 | SPARE RIB | Bit of a dish offering to relieve Josh (5,3) SPARE (offering to relieve) RIB (Josh – as in fool, tease etc.) |
| 25 | GUINEA | UKIP leader, Nige besotted with a traditional British professional fee unit (6) (U[kip] NIGE)* AInd: besotted, then A. |
| 26/18 | CALL CENTRE | Summon Miliband’s professed political stance (it has many hangers-on) (4,6) CALL (Summon) CENTRE (Miliband’s professed political stance) |
| 27 | CORRUPTION | Wallowing in pro court power often leads to this (10) (IN PRO COURT)* AInd: wallowing. |
| 28 | SMASHER | Small “sausage companion”, Brenda’s bit of all right (7) S[mall] (bangers and …) MASH ER (Brenda) |
| 29 | ALLERGY | Adverse reaction from everybody with power – get rid of Tyneside etc! (7) ALL (everybody) E[ne]RGY. |
| Down | ||
| 2 | EXHUME | Raise up has-been David, the thinking man (6) EX (has-been) Ref. David HUME – empiricist philospher who could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel |
| 3 | TIT FOR TAT | Boob by stronghold precedes a tense retaliation (3,3,3) TIT (boob) FORT (stronghold) A T[ense] |
| 4 | SCEPTIC | Putrid environment for Clegg’s prime questioner (7) C[legg] inside SEPTIC (putrid) |
| 6 | SEX LIFE | Fix Les’s nuts with a pill, so he can enjoy one? (3,4) (FIX LES)* AInd: nuts, then E (a pill) |
| 7 | DUBYA | Bush compromised by UDA (5) (BY UDA)* AInd: compromised |
| 8 | WIZARDRY | Eddie, last character to go, comes in scoffing Harry’s thing (8) IZARD (Eddie IZZARD – minus one of the Zs) inside WRY (scoffing). The Harry in question here is H Potter. |
| 10 | BACKSTABBER | Ed Miliband, as the Tories would have it, supports Bill on live tour finale (11) BACKS (supports) TAB (bill) BE (live) [tou]R. |
| 16 | COMMITTEE | It meets, it met, cycling in orgasm (9) (IT MET)* AInd: cycling) inside COME (orgasm) |
| 17 | KEEP CALM | Relax Kelvin with piss up and baked clam (4,4) K[elvin] PEE< (piss up) CLAM* AInd: baked |
| 19 | EARACHE | A pain being in underwear (a chemise) (7) Hidden in: underwEAR A CHEmise |
| 21 | LEG PULL | Member (jerk!) perpetrates hoax (3-4) LEG (member) PULL (jerk) |
| 22 | BELONG | Have success with penis enhancement and fit in? (6) BE LONG i.e. Become long (Have success etc. – I won’t spell it out) |
| 24 | ROLLS | Bank out of funds – goes into a spin (5) BANK removed from BANKROLLS (funds) |
A joke! A joke! I haven’t got a joke – I’ll post this asap and edit in a joke when I have one…
Later: Here’s a cartoon that made me laugh recently:
Oh and by the way – this blog has appeared as if it had been published at midnight, i.e. down the homepage before today’s Guardian blogs. This is because I’d scheduled it to appear then, but hadn’t finished it and left it in draft. So I hope those of you that want to see it do find it.
I got Chivalry but could not work it out to save my life. not helped really by the existence of an anagram of ‘viral’ sitting in the middle!!!!
This took me most of two 90 minutes train journeys and more and I’d concur with it being the hardest for a long time though continuing the generally raising of difficulty.
For 14a I suppose the Stock Exchange deals in stocks and shares though it is a little strange for the answer to be stocks when Stock is in the clue.
24d was my last in and while I could see rolls = spin , I couldn’t see the bank bit.
I feel as if clues involving the word ‘bankroll’ have been coming up quite a lot recently, and Cyclops is the only British cryptic I regularly do.
Forgot I couldn’t edit: in 11ac presumably “Call” is the straight definition and everything else is the cryptic definition. 29ac’s parsing confused me up until now because ERG is of course itself a unit of energy.