Another elegant, delightfully devious creation by our fellow Times for The Times regular. He seems to know exactly what we want.
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Best access to the penthouse? (3-6) |
| TOP-FLIGHT With a literal interpretation of the idiom (for which you’d drop the hyphen) |
|
| 6 | Game suddenly moves quickly (5) |
| DARTS DD |
|
| 9 | God wearing two sorts of animal pelt (4,4,3,4) |
| RAIN CATS AND DOGS RA IN CATS AND DOGS |
|
| 10 | Being anci{ent it y}ields hoards (6) |
| ENTITY Hidden |
|
| 11 | Strip of hot jerky mum’s brother eats (8) |
| UNCLOTHE UNCL (HOT)* E …Creative Anagrind Prize! |
|
| 13 | Teacher’s slimy speech about church backing ladies? (10) |
| SCHOOLMARM S(CH)(LOO<=“backing”)MARM |
|
| 14 | Surrounded by a thousand in support (4) |
| AMID A(M)ID |
|
| 16 | One not dressed for digging? (4) |
| INTO I, “One” + (not)* …Two Creative Anagrind Prizes for one puzzle! Can I do that? (Ha) |
|
| 17 | Taxing period from a scary life at sea (6,4) |
| FISCAL YEAR (a scary life)* |
|
| 19 | City businessmen carrying women’s cases (8) |
| LAWSUITS LA, “City” + W(omen) + SUITS, “businessmen” |
|
| 20 | Mission taking soldiers back to African capital (6) |
| ERRAND ER, R(oyal) E(ngineers), “soldiers”<=taken back + RAND, “African capital,” i.e., currency unit of South Africa |
|
| 23 | Spine of clever album torn unfortunately (9,6) |
| VERTEBRAL COLUMN (clever album torn)* |
|
| 24 | Technology that can track both ways (5) |
| RADAR A palindromic word |
|
| 25 | Block a play in part of Syria’s capital (9) |
| DAMASCENE DAM, “Block” + A + SCENE, “play in part” |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | English flag is placed on Scottish island (5) |
| TIREE TIRE, “flag” + E(nglish) |
|
| 2 | Celebrate Luton? Put a rosy gloss on it (5,3,4,3) |
| PAINT THE TOWN RED With a literal interpretation of the idiom …“I won’t tell you / While you paint the town / A bright red to turn it upside down / I’m painting it too / But I’m painting it blue / Call me Mr. Blue” |
|
| 3 | Place where “posh” has replaced a mode of speech (8) |
| LOCUTION LOC(-A, +U or “posh”)TION |
|
| 4 | Sacks of grit (4) |
| GUTS DD |
|
| 5 | Disaster as artist in new trick messed up (5,5) |
| TRAIN WRECK R(oyal) A(cademy), “artist” inside (new trick)* |
|
| 6 | Topping of dark rum on the Parisian’s piece of cake (6) |
| DODDLE D |
|
| 7 | Jumper, sensible to trap moderate warmth inside (4,11) |
| ROOM TEMPERATURE ROO, “jumper” + M(TEMPER)ATURE |
|
| 8 | American poet has penned something to hold up (9) |
| SUSPENDER S(US)PENDER |
|
| 12 | Without beer regularly, teams end resentful (10) |
| EMBITTERED tEaMs(BITTER)EnD …Took me a minute to realize, after putting in this answer, that it’s not the alternate letters of “beer” here that are involved. |
|
| 13 | Ultimately this medication left unexpected consequences (9) Not heard among the 36 side effects listed in the TV commercial? |
| SPILLOVER |
|
| 15 | Beautiful rug, so oil damaged (8) |
| GLORIOUS (rug so oil)* |
|
| 18 | Filmmaker’s arrogance casting the lead (6) |
| AUTEUR |
|
| 21 | Poet new in 1265? (5) |
| DANTE DA(N)TE A semi-&lit, taking “new” to mean born in that year, which he (as Kevin reminds me) actually was. |
|
| 22 | Fruit roly-poly has 1p off (4) |
| PLUM PLUM |
|
14:12
Whizzed through this, much to my surprise, biffing RAIN, TRAIN WRECK, & ROOM TEMP, parsing post-submission. LAWSUITS was my LOI; it took me a long time to drop ‘city’=EC and ‘women’s cases’=WN. Some terrific surfaces hiding the need to lift and separate: animal pelts, hot jerky, not dressed, … It only occurred to me now to verify that DANTE was born in 1265.
Oh, wait!
It just occurred to me that this makes the clue an &lit!
Thanks
It’s not an &lit as “Poet” is not part of the wordplay – the clue is just definition + wordplay.
Ah, right. A “semi,” as we say. Ta
Are you “our” DA? Of the tortuous Friday puzzle in The Age? If so, I welcome you to this site, fellow Aussie…
Got done by DONNE. With the checkers in place I biffed the wrong poet, and didn’t look back to consider the parsing. Of course John Donne wasn’t born in 1265!
This was really very easy for a Price puzzle – I put in rain cats and dogs immediately, just from the enumeration. Paint the town red was another easy one – and with that many crossing letters, you should make rapid progress. I finished in 22 minutes.
25 minutes. Nice to have an easier but still well-crafted Sunday puzzle for a change. Long multi-word answers tend to be my speciality.
Spent far too long trying to make DONNE work for 21d, finally to realise it was DANTE. Nice puzzle.
Locals can confirm, but I assume Luton Town FC wear red.
Well they are my local team but I have no idea.
Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luton_Town_F.C.
shows that they wear a lot of red at home and a bit of red away.
15 minutes! A record, but I note from the comments that this one was unexpectedly easy. Still, I enjoyed the novel experience of understanding it. I did get one wrong, right at the last, plumping for DONNE at 21d without checking it. Thanks, all.
Another DONNE. I hardly thought about it at all, but it seemed unnecessary: there obviously couldn’t possibly be another poet fitting the patter D_N_E, could there?
I found this quite tricky, with the last two holding out for ages. These were 20a, where I was looking for an African capital (money, city?) and the wordplay being a mission with RO in and 21d, which I hadn’t a clue about until I got the initial letter. Luckily, DANTE came up before DONNE or I might have come a cropper! 18d and 19a also took far too long to appear. But perhaps, reading the above comments, I just wasn’t in the headspace for it. Certainly the long ones didn’t hold me up for long. I liked ‘jerky’ as an anagrind!
Cheated at the end by looking at the blog for last two: LAWSUITS/AUTEUR (thanks Guy). Otherwise all fairly straightforward and very enjoyable. Liked UNCLOTHE.
32 minutes, so rather easy, but still very good. I forgot to go back and check the answers constructed from wordplay where I wasn’t quite sure, such as TIREE and DODDLE, but of course they were right (so the wordplay really was unambiguous). I especially liked the “pelt” in RAIN CATS AND DOGS. My only hold-up was an attempt to make BODY TEMPERATURE work in 7dn, but of course I couldn’t, fortunately, and M…ATURE eventually led me to the correct answer.
COD 13a SCHOOLMARM for the sneaky smuttiness.
23a wasn’t quite sure VERTEBRAL COLUMN is a thing, but happy to accept it.
21d had underestimated the cleverness; I knew DANTE was a long time ago but not that long!
Donne in just over 20. UNCLOTHE my fave.
Loved it! (Mainly because I romped through it mostly without cheating!) As others have said, the long clues were a big help, and having put in TOP FLIGHT straight away, I was off and running – unusual for me on a Sunday.
Reading DA’s book “Rewording the Brain” helped enormously. Renewed confidence – not before time!
Thanks B0b and guy
Got to this one late on our King’s Birthday holiday on Monday night – taking 40 minutes in a tired single session. Got all of the long ones in the first quarter of the grid-fill which helped with later clues. Am another who originally went with DONNE at 21d and it was only in my last parsing pass through that I couldn’t parse it – opted for DANTE and then discovered that he was born in 1265 – made it my favourite of the day.
Finished in the SW corner with LAWSUITS with a neat word play, SPILLOVER and INTO (another clever clue) as the last one in.