I found this a fairly gentle offering from Oink, taking 10:35 on my phone. I’m (this)* at anagrams, so the two long across clues had to wait for most of their crossers before they went in. (Apologies to whoever I stole that joke from.)
My COD award goes to 14d, ANTENNA, because having got the first A, I was trying to put Anne at the wrong end of the clue for ages. Well played Oink.
Definitions underlined, synonyms in round brackets, wordplay in square brackets and deletions in strikethrough. Anagram indicators italicised in the clue, anagram fodder indicated like (this)*.
| Across | |
| 1 | Scoundrel joining mother in Dutch port (9) |
| ROTTERDAM – ROTTER (scoundrel) + DAM (mother). | |
| 6 | What might produce litter in southern town centre? (3) |
| SOW – S for South + middle two letters [centre] of Oink’s signature piggy clue. |
|
| 8 | Special involving battered local seafood (7) |
| SCALLOP – SP for special including [involving] (local)*.
SP for special is one of those Crosswordland abbreviations that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in the wild. Anyone? |
|
| 9 | Track down regularly overlooked Tory expert (5) |
| TRACE – Alternate letters [regularly overlooked] of T |
|
| 10 | Dim English sergeant involved in a squabble (12) |
| DISAGREEMENT – (Dim E sergeant)* | |
| 12 | American newspaper boss is exploited (4) |
| USED – US (American), ED (newspaper boss). | |
| 13 | Son leaving his breakfast? Exactly (2,1,1) |
| TO A T – TOA The question mark indicates that other breakfast foods are also available. |
|
| 17 | Kind to fat fiancée suffering abuse (12) |
| AFFECTIONATE – (to fat fiancee)* | |
| 20 | Provide defence for politician arrested in capital (5) |
| ALIBI – LIB (politician – member of the Liberal Party) in AI (A1 – capital).
“It was A1!” and “It was capital!” are both somewhat dated ways of saying something was good. |
|
| 21 | I dream of introducing new beginnings (7) |
| INFANCY – I FANCY (I dream of), including [introducing] N for new. | |
| 23 | Take in tenant periodically (3) |
| EAT – Alternate letters [periodically] of |
|
| 24 | Frightening experience making German hit out? (9) |
| NIGHTMARE – (German hit)*. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Wine went up (4) |
| ROSE – Double definition, although pronounced differently. | |
| 2 | Hangers-on to wacky ideas (7) |
| TOADIES – TO (from the clue) + (ideas)*. | |
| 3 | Slippery customer having brief look around (3) |
| EEL – LEER (look), minus its last letter [brief], reversed [around].
Not parsed during the solve. |
|
| 4 | Leave poolside partygoers, missing a lot (6) |
| DEPART – Hidden in poolsiDE PARTygoers [missing a lot]. | |
| 5 | Home at ten, horribly worn out (4-5) |
| MOTH-EATEN – (home at ten)* | |
| 6 | Outspoken Arab leader causing upset (5) |
| SHAKE – Homophone [outspoken] of “sheikh” (Arab leader). | |
| 7 | Anger surrounding European floral tribute (6) |
| WREATH – WRATH (anger) surrounding E for European. | |
| 11 | A way of speaking about daughter’s drug habit (9) |
| ADDICTION – A (from the clue) + DICTION (way of speaking) around [about] D for daughter. | |
| 14 | Social worker upset Anne, I sense (7) |
| ANTENNA – ANT (social worker) + ANNE reversed [upset]. | |
| 15 | Is monkey allowed to nibble on this? (6) |
| CANAPE – CAN APE (is monkey allowed?)
Not 100% sure of how to classify this one, but CAN APE is clearly “is monkey allowed”, and one nibbles on CANAPEs, so I’m happy. |
|
| 16 | In poor health, putting to sea without strength at first (6) |
| AILING – sAILING (putting to sea), minus [without] the first letter [at first] of strength.
Beware of “without”: as well as its sense of “minus” as here, it can also mean “surrounding”. |
|
| 18 | Pass out in mock attack, did you say? (5) |
| FAINT – Homophone [did you say?] of “feint” (mock attack). | |
| 19 | Sort to perform secretarial duties? (4) |
| TYPE – A double definition | |
| 22 | Fruitful following a diet, finally (3) |
| FAT – F for following, A from the clue, last letter [finally] of dieT.
F for following as in citations, where 5f means “page 5 and the following page”. Not as common as 5ff which means “page 5 and the following pages” without specifying the number of pages that follow. I had a brief MER at FAT = fruitful, but Collins has “fertile or productive” as one of the definitions, with the example “a fat land”, so while that’s not common, it works. My initial justification was “Mardi Gras” being “Fat Tuesday”, which isn’t quite as good. |
|
It looks as though I’ve got the SCC largely to myself today, with 23:12. Found it hard, but judging from the other comments I can only imagine that I was a long way off the wavelength. That’s OK, it means I get all the biscuits.
Thank you for the blog!
Did the 15 first and other stuff, so only settled down to this around half an hour ago over tea. Enjoyable, but nothing too taxing. I’m with Doofers on anagrams, but I didn’t have to write out the anagrist, just waiting until the crossers made the answers obvious. I had DIVERS (a lot) for 4d initially, before realising there was no indication of old usage and 8a was unlikely to end in V! I completely missed the hidden, but bifd the answer from the other end of the clue!
Over 2 hours on big crossword and I still had 9 answers blank.
Looking at the blog, I would never have got at least 7 of them.
You need to be phenomenally clever to do this and I am way below that level. Just reading the posts for the big crossword makes me realise how ignorant I am .
A thoroughly dismal experience.☹️☹️☹️