This was delightful! I was perplexed at the threshold of many clues, but never in the dark for too long. There are six anagrams, more than we often get—but not too many for me—and I was equipped with all the necessary info. Yet it was not a doddle but required careful navigation.
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Island boy taking female group around festival (6) |
| DIWALI I(sland) + LA(WI)D <=“around” Women’s Institute The annual Hindu festival of lights starts at the beginning of the lunar month between mid-October and mid-November—the darkest day, the new moon—this year on October 20. |
|
| 5 | Recall put into motion in Burgundy store? (6) |
| CELLAR (recall)* |
|
| 9 | Alumnus sitting in complex (9) |
| OBSESSION O(ld) B(oy), “Alumnus” + SESSION, “sitting in” |
|
| 10 | Foul causing injury pushing head right back (4) |
| VILE EVIL, “causing injury,” has the first letter (“head”) knocked to the end. |
|
| 11 | State of duck mostly seen in northern area (6) |
| NEVADA N(EVAD |
|
| 12 | A person with issue about page in manifest (8) |
| APPARENT A (P) PARENT or A P(P)ARENT |
|
| 14 | Worker with one explosive thing that levels field? (8) |
| HANDICAP HAND, “Worker” + I, “one” + CAP, “explosive thing” “a small amount of explosive enclosed in paper and used in a toy gun” (Collins) …I was thinking it might be short for “blasting cap,” not remembering at first the cap guns of my rootin’-tootin’ American childhood. |
|
| 16 | Really dislike stripping, it’s an obscene thing (4) Prude! |
| OATH |
|
| 18 | Source of lines one’s found in manuscript (4) |
| MISS M(I’S)S MISS meaning a schoolteacher who could impose upon one of her young charges the punishment of “lines,” or “writing the same sentence or phrase out a specified number of times” (Collins) |
|
| 19 | Romantic confession of one leant on that US agency broke (8) |
| IDEALIST I (DEA) LIST Drug Enforcement Agency |
|
| 21 | Political type of protest singer holding note (8) |
| DEMOCRAT DEMO, “protest” + C, “note” + RAT, “singer” |
|
| 22 | Slightly blue soup (bishop omitted to follow recipe) (6) |
| RISQUE R(ecipe) + |
|
| 24 | Anger reported in The Observer (4) |
| EYER “ire” |
|
| 26 | Uplifting underwear or drab new pants (9) |
| WONDERBRA (or drab new)* |
|
| 27 | Political thinker works well together with nurse (6) |
| ENGELS E(nrolled) N(urse) + GELS, “works well together” Friedrich Engels was truly ein Engel to Karl Marx! |
|
| 28 | Music producer strangely terse getting Oscar (6) |
| STEREO (terse)* + O(scar) |
|
| DOWN | |
| 2 | I’ve a pointer for sculpting bust (11) |
| INOPERATIVE (I’ve a pointer)* |
|
| 3 | Son tucks into a cuppa in the main (2,3) |
| AT SEA A T(S)EA For once, the phrase is clued by its literal sense. |
|
| 4 | Example of popular intellectual attitude (8) |
| INSTANCE IN, “popular”+ STANCE, “intellectual attitude” |
|
| 5 | Is it possible to get work on yard and awning? (6) |
| CANOPY CAN, “Is it possible to” + OP, “work” + Y(ard) |
|
| 6 | Liberal donor leaving grand fund for city (9) |
| LIVERPOOL L(iberal) + |
|
| 7 | Trouble in correctional institution judge ignored (3) |
| AIL |
|
| 8 | Idiot snapping following sacking is sad (13) |
| DISAPPOINTING (Idiot snapping)* |
|
| 13 | After mixing, use on a gas at absolute zero? (3,1,7) |
| NOT A SAUSAGE (use on a gas at)* |
|
| 15 | Duke one’s seen on track in Converse (9) |
| DISCOURSE D(uke) + IS, “one’s” + COURSE, “track” |
|
| 17 | Those starting courses left by bread-makers (8) |
| LEARNERS L + EARNERS |
|
| 20 | Potential queens getting a fill of royal seafood (6) |
| PRAWNS P(R)AWNS |
|
| 23 | Black market to be stopped by British leader (5) |
| SABLE SA(B)LE |
|
| 25 | Foreign capital or country you won’t see me in (3) |
| YEN YE |
|
14A – strictly, “explosive thing” is indicating “cap”, with “explosive” as an adjective, as a cap is a bit more than just “explosice”, leaving “that levels field” as one of those descriptive noun defs with a “silent ‘thing’”.
K
Got this one but thought it a bit ‘rough around the edges’ for a Sunday special. So it is with a little trepidation that I will print today’s.
Liked 12ac APPARENT, 3d AT SEA and 4d INSTANCE for concise straight up deception. Wondered whether 18ac MISS might have referred to a source of spare lines in Word or similar. In either case, a somewhat strange clue.
Not so fussed on EVIL meaning ‘causing injury’, nor that 24ac EYER and 26ac WONDERBRA were ‘real’ words (whatever that means).
Thank you Guy and setter.
I’m always early Sat and Sun due to time difference. How do you guys do it?
It’s 9:01 pm here in Brooklyn. I scheduled the blog to post two hours ago.
I was a bit surprised by EYER, but it’s in Collins. Wonderbra is not, but it seems a very well-known brand name.
U are ‘tongue in cheek’, yes?
Will MARMITE be next?
Alternatively: I understand we need to lift and separate, but there does seem to be a trend of fetish with these setters.
Are there no leg men left?
Not tongue in cheek – some people seem to think that brand names shouldn’t appear, but we routinely use names of newspapers, airlines and car manufacturers, and organisations like the AA which are businesses.
I had no idea what ‘source of lines’ meant, but fortunately the wordplay was clear. I was surprised to see the DEA here.
I found this pretty easy, although I could make nothing of miss, so just followed the cryptic. Everything else was clear, and there was little attempt to conceal the literal. I would have preferred something a bit harder.
Time: 25:46
This was quite hard enough , thank you. Don’t encourage the setter!
40 minutes. 18ac seemed straightforward to me but I thought it might have taken a question mark since it requires a bit of lateral thinking. I noted CELLAR as my LOI adding 3 minutes to my solving time and wonder now what on earth could have delayed me.
If something like “Source of lines” is at the end of a clue, I think I would add a question mark. But when it’s at the front, I can’t see that a distant QM is much help. If people think a QM relates to a set of words leading up to it, as it does anywhere else (when not simply the end of a question), it seems the opposite.
Just under 20 minutes.
– Sorry if I’m being dim, but I still don’t quite get how IDEALIST works, specifically the ‘list’ part – how do you get from the past tense ‘leant’ to ‘list’?
– Didn’t parse RISQUE as I’d forgotten recipe=R
– Keep forgetting EN as one of the abbreviations which ‘nurse’ can indicate in a clue, but eventually I got ENGELS
Thanks Guy and David.
FOI Inoperative
LOI Engels
COD Not a sausage
“List” meaning to tilt to one side, as a ship
I appreciate that – I mean the past tense thing. Is it meant to be “I leant on” giving “I list”? If so, how do we get from the past tense of “leant” to the present tense of “list”?
The person “leant on” says, “I list.”
Oh OK, I get it now. Someone can be leant on without themselves listing, but that makes sense. Thanks!
I for one still don’t get this. A person ‘leant on’ isn’t leaning!
They might be, though, and the one here confessed.
A person leant on might list… accomplices in a crime or suspected enemies of the ruling regime. Haha
I mean yes sure they might be, just as they might be dancing the Macarena. It’s not at all implied by the fact that they’re being leant on.
Chris gets the synonym. He objects to the converted tense. It’s a sloppy move.
17.02
Gentle Sunday here, getting the MISS thing and a few others that might have caused greater head scratching. EYER went in and came out as surely not a word but as LOI went back in.
I’ve always thought that if a QM was needed for any part of a sentence, it should be added FWIW.
Thanks Guy/setter
Really enjoyed this, mainly because the first few , after DIWALI, practically flew in. That boost of confidence caused me to make positive stabs at the answers, rather than waiting until they could be verified, or worse, looked up. The definitions were less obscured than usual for a DM, so the whole puzzle took me a fraction of my usual time. Had to play around with the orders of the letters in the unknown DIWALI, and both MISS and EYER gave pause, but all good ( except OATH, which I didn’t get!)
Could somebody please explain 16 across?
Really dislike, “loathe” stripping off it’s outer bits leaves “oath” which whilst sometimes a solemn vow, is also a swear word.
Thank you. I had worked out the word play when doing the puzzle, and thought that oath must be the answer the setter was intending, but couldn’t see how oath could be the definition. I’ve never heard of ‘oath’ as a swear word, that is, in the sense of obscene. I find that surprising. (In Australia there was a time when one would often enough have heard “bloody oath” as a kind of ‘swear-expression’ , though only because of the inclusion of the word “bloody”.)
Thanks David and Guy
Have been up the country away from a printer so playing catch up with a few puzzles. Found this one slightly challenging, taking a little under the hour to complete and found it an interesting solve. Did pause over EYER, but it had to be and found it in a dictionary, so just moved on. There seemed to be a lot of clues that looked impenetrable early but once solved, one wondered why it was.
Finished in the SE corner with LEARNERS, SABLE and STEREO (taking way longer than it should to solve the anagram).