Very nice, middling difficulty.
A few bits of trickier vocab if you haven’t encountered them before, but otherwise I think this was Teazel – one of our harder regular setters with an average quitch of 99 – on comparatively gentle form. (Which, I will add, is different from calling this a gentle puzzle!)
I clocked in in 5:18, very welcome after over double that on yesterday’s just before (with a bad bit of breezeblocking on the quit/quietude pair). Much enjoyed – many thanks to Teazel!
| Across | |
|---|---|
| 1 | S for sovereign? (4,2,5) |
| HEAD OF STATE – cryptic hint, with S indeed being the ‘head’ of State | |
| 8 | European finally in charge of stretcher (7) |
| ELASTIC – E(uropean) LAST (finally) IC (in charge). ‘Of stretcher’ strikes me as a bit meaningless, but I suppose ‘of or relating to something that stretches’ does get us to the answer. | |
| 9 | Colour almost ringing black bird (5) |
| GREBE – GREEn (colour ‘almost’) ringing B(lack) | |
| 10 | Expecting not to have been blackballed? (2,3,4) |
| IN THE CLUB – double-ish definition: the first as in pregnant, originally ‘in the pudding club’, and is presumably related to ‘a bun in the oven’; as to the history of the second, Wiki only says the secret voting practice has been around since the 17th century. | |
| 12 | Row, missing last cup game (3) |
| TIE – TIER (row) ‘missing last’ | |
| 13 | Ponder about one’s bad handling (6) |
| MISUSE – MUSE (ponder) about I’S (one’s) | |
| 15 | Root cause of rusty vehicle? (6) |
| CARROT – With a cryptic hint via the terrible blight of car rot (if it existed – hence the question mark). | |
| 17 | Even, so far (3) |
| YET – double definition | |
| 18 | End spell of guard duty: it makes time stand still (9) |
| STOPWATCH – STOP (end) WATCH (spell of guard duty), with a nicely oblique definition. | |
| 20 | Hanging is somewhat embarrassing (5) |
| ARRAS – is ‘somewhat’ embARASSing. Definitely one of those words only known to me from crosswords past. | |
| 22 | Personal assistant runs meeting place briefly for newcomer (7) |
| PARVENU – PA (personal assistant) R(uns) VENUe (meeting place) ‘briefly’. All parvenus are newcomers; not all newcomers are parvenus: the sources describe PARVENU as ‘usually’ derogatory, but I’d like to see a case of it being used neutrally. | |
| 23 | Teaches chap to move emergency exit (6,5) |
| ESCAPE HATCH – anagram (to move) of TEACHES CHAP | |
| Down | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Earth’s molten core (5) |
| HEART – anagram (‘s = is molten) of EARTH | |
| 2 | Players regularly fancy long hair (9) |
| ACTRESSES – f A n C y ‘relularly’, TRESSES (long hair) | |
| 3 | Oscar caught by sinister sect involving magic (6) |
| OCCULT – O(scar) C(aught) by CULT (sinister sect) | |
| 4 | Air for example to rise and fall (3) |
| SAG – GAS (air, for example) ‘to rise’ in a down clue means to reverse. | |
| 5 | A more suitable accomplice (7) |
| ABETTER – A, BETTER (more suitable) | |
| 6 | Footballers on trip securing two hotels, last-minute (8-4) |
| ELEVENTH-HOUR – ELEVEN (a term for a football team) on TOUR (trip) securing two H(otels) | |
| 7 | Reckless, putting wicked Mike into welfare supervision (5-3-4) |
| DEVIL-MAY-CARE – put EVIL (wicked) M(ike) into DAYCARE (welfare supervision) | |
| 11 | Sausage exploded covering nasty wart (9) |
| BRATWURST – BURST (exploded) covering an anagram (nasty) of WART | |
| 14 | Ridiculing racist, I broadcast (7) |
| SATIRIC – anagram (broadcast) of RACIST I | |
| 16 | Sound of military band low, needing to rise? I’m disgusted (6) |
| OOMPAH – to MOO = to low, as in a cow, rise = reverse, and UGH (I’m disgusted). A ‘repetitive rhythmical sound in a band’, previously only half-known to me from Oompa-Loompas. | |
| 19 | Saw points in power to produce desired effect (5) |
| TEETH – double definition | |
| 21 | Small drink is tipped over piano (3) |
| SIP – IS ‘tipped’ = SI, goes above P(iano) | |
8.37. I found this tricky and was slow to get going, but when I switched to the downs I made better progress. HEAD OF STATE (ho ho) was my LOI and only appeared with all the crossers. Thanks Teazel and Roly. (Roly at 16dn OOMPAH I think Pah! is I’m disgusted, not sure where the ugh comes from…)
Nothing too hard here. I’m surprised we haven’t seen car rot before. Everyone should know arras from Hamlet, but I’m not sure how much bratwurst comes up in the UK – I would associate with with Wisconsin.
Time: 6:32