A pleasant challenge from Wanderer today. Good to see some 15 lettered solutions which are becoming a bit of a rarity. I was held up on 19ac and had to resort to looking up Chambers to get the solve. Hunted for that elusive nina, it remains elusive.
FF:9 DD: 9
| Across | ||
| 9 | ALTERNATIVE VOTE | Electoral system briefly in favour (11,4) |
| cryptic clue | ||
| 10 | HAPPY | Bloke heading off to party, extremely drunk (5) |
| cHAP (bloke, heading off i.e. without first letter) PY ( PartY, extremely) | ||
| 11 | ANDANTINO | An older relative can ring about daughter moving rather slowly (9) |
| A (an) { [ NAN (older reative) TIN (can) O (ring)] around D (daughter) } | ||
| 12 | DECORATOR | One that dresses in red coat, splashed with yellow (9) |
| [RED COAT]* OR (yellow = gold) | ||
| 14 | OMEGA | Circular letter very good as a final letter (5) |
| O (circular letter) MEGA (very good) | ||
| 16 | RAMSAY MACDONALD | Former PM, say, entertained by sheep farmer? (6,9) |
| SAY in [ RAM (sheep) MACDONALD (farmer, from the nursery rhyme)] – Nice clue ! | ||
| 19 | YONKS | A long time in that state (5) |
| cryptic def. I hadnt come across this word before but understand that it is british parlance from yonks ago. | ||
| 21 | SYSTEMISE | Awfully messy site gets put in order (9) |
| MESSY SITE* | ||
| 23 | TALKING TO | Lecture chess player taking time over capturing piece (7- 2) |
| [TAL (chess player, mikhail tal) T (time) O (over) ] capturing KING (piece) | ||
| 25 | LE PEN | Where sheep might be found by the French Marine? (2,3) |
| PEN (where sheep might be) after LE (the, in french) – Marine Le Pen is a french politician and head of the National Front. | ||
| 26 | BERMUDA TRIANGLE | One of the British Isles needs alerting about possible danger area (7,8) |
| BERMUDA (one of the british isles) TRIANGLE (anagram of ALERTING) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1, 23 | CATHODE RAY TUBE | Showing off by the actor due a TV part? (7-3,4) |
| BY THE ACTOR DUE A* | ||
| 2 | ATOPIC | Inclined to be hypersensitive, if there’s a theme (6) |
| A TOPIC (theme) | ||
| 3 | GREY AREA | Ill-defined situation roughly a year after a bit of work turned up (4,4) |
| [ A YEAR]* after GRE (reverse of ERG – a bit of work, measure) | ||
| 4 | CAVA | Girl after cold drink (4) |
| C (cold) AVA (girl) | ||
| 5 | MISDIRECTS | Wrongly instructs girl about credit supply (10) |
| MISS (girl) around CREDIT* | ||
| 6 | LEAN TO | Word from bible: antonym for “shed” (4-2) |
| hidden in “..bibLE ANTOnym…” | ||
| 7 | LONICERA | Honeysuckles left waiting in readiness by artist (8) |
| L (left) ON ICE (waiting in readiness) RA (artist) – I believe lonicera refers to the singular form so Honeysuckle would have been more appropriate. | ||
| 8, 15 | HERO AND LEANDER | Lovers reared on Handel composition (4,3,7) |
| REARED ON HANDEL* | ||
| 13 | TIME SIGNAL | Model has drunk a gin with lime – swallowing small pips, perhaps (4,6) |
| T (model, the Ford car) [ (A GIN LIME)* containing S (small) ] – Pip would have been more accurate than Pips? | ||
| 15 | See 8 | |
| 17 | MANGLERS | Those ruining fisherman’s afternoon? (8) |
| ANGLER’S (fisherman’s) after M (noon) – Others may have found this familiar but I havent come across cluing with ‘afternoon’ this way. Clever !! | ||
| 18 | OVERLEAF | Bumpkin catches elver swimming on the other side (8) |
| OAF (bumpkin) containing ELVER* | ||
| 20 | SKI RUN | Drink during the day? On a downhill course there (3,3) |
| KIR (drink) in SUN (day) | ||
| 22 | IMPUGN | Challenge “this setter’s a dog” notion, initially (6) |
| IM (this setter’s) PUG (dog) N (Notion, initially) | ||
| 23 | See 1 | |
| 24 | OKRA | Something to eat? Yes, right away! (4) |
| OK (yes) R (right) A (away) | ||
*anagram
Thanks Turbolegs
There is some wordplay in 9ac and 19ac:
9ac the abbreviation (briefly) of the answer is AV which is hidden in ‘fAVour’
19ac YON (that) KS (state {Kansas})
I loved this puzzle, but needed Gaufrid to explain the delicious 9ac. Some of the surfaces were pure heaven, and I gazed in awe at 16ac. Many thanks to all concerned today.
13ac. The Greenwich Time Signal used on BBC radio stations was known as “the pips”.
Majestic puzzle from one of the FT’s best setters.
25ac (LE PEN) was a particular favourite today – that’s what I call (superb) ‘lift & separate’ (and others don’t).
[however, to be clear, the real Marine Le Pen is not a particular favourite of mine]
Thanks TB, agree with your 9+9.
Thanks Turbolegs and Wanderer, and also to Gaufrid for pointing out the extra wordplay in 9ac which I also missed.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a TV with a cathode ray tube. How things change!
Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs
This was my backlog puzzle for the weekend. See that it followed the very good Redshank puzzle from the previous day … this was right up there as well.
It took some working through, especially with the top two 15 letter ones – local knowledge was required for both of them – or extended electronic help for we who did’t have it ! Especially so for ALTERNATIVE VOTE where the word play to derive it was also of not much help (I certainly didn’t see it!).
I think that honeysuckles is fine at 7d – LONICERA (which was new to me) is the genus of all honeysuckles (according to Wiki there are 180 varieties of them).
Looking back over it, there are just some cracking clues here – in fact most of them were above average in misdirection, humour and variety.
Finished in the SW corner with OKRA, MANGLERS (with that quirky definition of noon = M (meridian)) and YONKS (which I didn’t see the wordplay, so thanks Gaufrid for that).
Just a note TL, I notice that you never amend your blogs with any of the corrections that are pointed out or where the answer is wrong (as in the recent Bradman puzzle) – you can give some of us latecomers a fright when we thought that we had the right answer – and we actually did.