My first time blogging a puzzle by Beck, and I enjoyed it very much. I think it will be on the easier side of medium: it took me 10:16, giving me the heady sensation of briefly being at the top of the solver list on The Times’ website. Normally, by the time I’ve finished, two or three of the speedsters have snagged the top spots.
I started with AL CAPONE and finished with BASELINE, which gets my COD nod for the misdirection. If you don’t like hiddens, this one probably won’t be your favourite, as it has three, definitely more than normal.
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 | |
| 3 | American gangster turning on palace (2,6) |
| AL CAPONE – (ON PALACE)*
An American gangster with the enumeration (2,6)? That’s your starter for 10. |
|
| 7 | Beat habitué of gambling hall (6) |
| BETTER – Double definition | |
| 8 | Where one finds studs and peer with multiple awards (8) |
| EARLOBES – EARL (peer) with OBEs (multiple awards).
OBE = Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. |
|
| 9 | Golden California marine menace (4) |
| ORCA – OR (gold, from heraldry), CA (official postal abbreviation for California, where I live). | |
| 10 | Function of some museums (3) |
| USE – hidden in [some] mUSEums.
That’s the noun sense of “use”. |
|
| 11 | Poisons ruined nice days (8) |
| CYANIDES – (NICE DAYS)*
I’d never thought of there being more than one cyanide, but a little research (err, asking my wife) tells me that the common poison is hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and that the C≡N group can bond to many other atoms and groups of atoms, forming other types of cyanides. They all seem to be pretty unpleasant. |
|
| 13 | Ahead of time, king or queen possibly returned money owed (4) |
| DEBT – BED (king or queen possibly), reversed [returned] ahead of T for time. | |
| 15 | Raised moolah according to hearsay (4) |
| BRED – homonym [according to hearsay] for ‘bread’ (moolah). | |
| 17 | Most entertaining stories found in jar (8) |
| JOLLIEST – LIES (stories) found in JOLT (jar) | |
| 19 | Impersonator failing to start cassette (3) |
| APE – I presume the origin of the verb “to ape” must have been that apes were copying human behavior, therefore ape = impersonator seems OK to me. |
|
| 22 | Depraved French town lacks heart (4) |
| VILE – The French word for “town” is “ville”. Remove the middle letter [lacks heart].
And there was me trying to think of specific 5-letter French towns beginning with V. I even found one – Vichy – but VIHY isn’t a word. |
|
| 23 | Cheer up English resort town, I say (8) |
| BRIGHTEN – Sounds like [I say] the English resort town of Brighton. | |
| 24 | Empty lockers holding nine torn sheets? (6) |
| LINENS – First and last letters [empty] of L Let’s agree not to be persnickety about empty lockers holding something. |
|
| 25 | Remove wet Conservative accommodating metalworking union (5-3) |
| TOWEL-DRY – TORY (Conservative) holding [accommodating] WELD (metalworking union). | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Traitor bitter perhaps about carrying board (8) |
| BETRAYER – BEER (bitter perhaps) around [about] TRAY (carrying board). | |
| 2 | Stretch melody (6) |
| STRAIN – A double definition.
The first is slightly loose, a strain is often the result of not stretching. |
|
| 3 | Region situated in Far East (4) |
| AREA – Hidden [situated] in fAR EAst | |
| 4 | Drink freely on lake ride in US (8) |
| CAROUSEL – CAROUSE (drink freely) on L for lake.
We have an excellent one of these here in Santa Cruz, California. You should visit. |
|
| 5 | Called up somebody to interrupt Doctor of Philosophy (6) |
| PHONED – ONE (somebody) in PHD (Ph.D. – Doctor of Philosophy). | |
| 6 | Require newspaper man to go after leaders of Nigeria and Egypt (4) |
| NEED – ED[itor] (newspaper man) after the first letters of Nigeria and Egypt. | |
| 12 | Sad democrat kicked out (8) |
| DEJECTED – D for democrat, EJECTED (kicked out).
Until JOLLIEST came along, I thought this was going to be an anagram of ‘democrat’. |
|
| 14 | Hacked Balinese server location? (8) |
| BASELINE – (BALINESE)*
Oh, the tennis meaning of server! |
|
| 16 | Hang loosely some letters from Brendan Gleeson (6) |
| DANGLE – Hidden in [some letters from] BrenDAN GLEeson.
Our third hidden-word clue of the day. |
|
| 18 | Create popular outlet (6) |
| INVENT – IN (popular), VENT (outlet) | |
| 20 | Group temperature raised in free-for-all (4) |
| TRIO – RIOT (free-for-all), with the T (for temperature) raised. | |
| 21 | Just covering large yard (4) |
| ONLY – ON (covering), L (large), Y (yard) | |
Well this is odd. I wrote a comment at about 9.00 am, have just revisited the site to read comments by later posters, and it’s gone! So you will all just have to take my word for it that it was long, witty and erudite, a real gem, and make do instead with this brief post in its place.
10:19 for the solve, and I agree with those who found this pleasant, enjoyable but not particularly taxing. AL CAPONE an excellent starter and pretty plain sailing from then on. Many thanks Doofers for the blog and brickbats to whichever IT gremlin did for my earlier comment.