Relax, take your time. Sunday’s fun day! We’ve got games, drinks, drugs, a little fooling around…
And as usual with this setter, the clues are as economical as they are deceptive. I finished with 1A, a four-word clue for a word of just four letters.
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Kind turn cheat returned (4) |
| GOOD GO, “turn” + DO<=“returned” |
|
| 3 | Side with cured meat or game (10) |
| BACKGAMMON BACK, “Side with” + GAMMON, “cured meat” |
|
| 10 | A fan of the dentist? (9) |
| EXTRACTOR DD An EXTRACTOR (or “extraction”) fan is “used in kitchens, bathrooms, workshops, etc, to remove stale air or fumes” (Collins). …The dentist I was taken to as a child should have had EXTRACTOR as an official title. I wasn’t a fan! |
|
| 11 | A fit is concerning (5) |
| ABOUT A + BOUT, “fit” |
|
| 12 | Pop hit by Journey (5) |
| TANGO TAN, “hit” + GO, “journey” |
|
| 13 | Sloppy make-up style (8) |
| SLAPDASH SLAP, “make-up” or—more properly in the US—“makeup” (on yer face) + DASH, “style” |
|
| 15 | A layer of ore close to desert (7) |
| ABANDON A + BAND, “layer of ore” + ON, “close to” |
|
| 17 | Son sickening at sea? (7) |
| SAILING S(on) + AILING, “sickening” |
|
| 19 | Lawyer reflecting on groom’s speech (7) |
| ADDRESS D(istrict) A(ttorney)<=“reflecting” + DRESS, “groom” |
|
| 21 | Stash in home counties island (7) |
| SECRETE SE, “home counties” + CRETE, “island” |
|
| 22 | In bars, be up for port (8) |
| BRISBANE (In bars be)* |
|
| 24 | Pockets and collars (5) |
| NICKS DD |
|
| 27 | Pickle a fish (5) |
| ACHAR a spicy pickle made from mango A CHAR, of course, is a fish. |
|
| 28 | A couple on horse, say, for a second (6,3) |
| NUMBER TWO E.g., the vice president of the United States or the tánaiste of the Republic of Ireland In the cryptic hint, TWO, “A couple” are NUMBER because they’re “on horse,” i.e., heroin. …Look, it’s a David McLean Sunday. Don’t say you weren’t warned. |
|
| 29 | Flabby oaf the soup upset (3,2,5) |
| OUT OF SHAPE (oaf the soup)* |
|
| 30 | So en{thus}ed (half of the time) (4) |
| THUS Hidden |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | A star agent breaking America? (5,5) |
| GREAT SATAN (A star agent)* According to the reigning ayatollah… |
|
| 2 | Many times decimal (5) |
| OFTEN OF TEN |
|
| 4 | Craft guerilla powered down! (7) |
| ARTISAN |
|
| 5 | Holy books about English nationals (7) |
| KOREANS KOR(E)ANS |
|
| 6 | A cooler division trophy? (5) |
| AWARD A WARD, division in a prison or “cooler” |
|
| 7 | Spirit of show can be amazing (9) |
| MOONSHINE MOON, “show can” + SHINE, “be amazing” …I love this clue. It’s not sobersided like the one we had for the same word the last time I blogged, when I referred to my own experience with the stuff—which is slight, despite my hailing from West Virginia. |
|
| 8 | A small letter A? (4) |
| NOTE DD, one by example |
|
| 9 | Pet about to sit on head (8) |
| CANOODLE CA, circa or “about” + NOODLE, “head” …Such a cute, funny word! |
|
| 14 | Siren goes off by small exits (10) |
| EGRESSIONS (Siren goes)* + S(mall) |
|
| 16 | Other lads around town (9) |
| ALDERSHOT (Other lads)* …I was pleased to guess the correct spelling—as soon as I had all the checkers. Ha. |
|
| 18 | Perfumes from Angers (8) |
| INCENSES DD |
|
| 20 | Firm stumped by unheaded dispatch (7) |
| STAUNCH ST, “stumped by” in cricket notation + |
|
| 21 | Squad in drink become hazy (5,2) |
| STEAM UP S(TEAM)UP |
|
| 23 | Bit of a character sacks turns (5) |
| SERIF FIRES<=“turns” |
|
| 25 | Guy and companion could be 22? (5) |
| CATCH CAT, “Guy” + CH, “Companion of Honour” A catch-22 is a paradoxical rule that it is impossible to satisfactorily follow, or, by extension, a set of circumstances that there is no way to extricate oneself from. The term originated in the eponymous 1961 novel by Joseph Heller, centered around a US bombardier in World War II. |
|
| 26 | Ring Henry put on Oscar (4) |
| HALO HAL, “Henry” + O, “Oscar” in communications code |
|
I had ‘NICKS’ for 24a, thinking steals and arrests. I thought this was a great Sunday offering. Thanks Guy, your intro says everything I thought about it.
D’oh! Thanks! Corrected!
13A “make-up” is the only spelling mentioned for the cosmetics meaning in Collins English Dictionary and ODE , and the main spelling in Chambers, the only one to mention “makeup”. So in the UK, that’s the proper spelling.
25D: I think you mean bombardier with 2 Rs.
Thanks for the typo alert. Hadn’t reread that part yet, added late.
I’ve qualified the “make-up”… gloss.
Good, breezy fun. Definitely seemed as if the setter was trying to make the clues as short as possible as a pre-emptive riposte to any criticism of his previous puzzle’s 40-word clue! (Could 10 across have worked even shorter as ‘Fan of dentist?’?)
36:06
I didn’t get TANGO=Pop, or CAT=guy; still don’t. Or NUMBER TWO. NHO ACHAR. Fortunately, extractor fans came up here a while back, and I actually remembered. COD to MOONSHINE; ‘show can’ is indeed amazing.
TANGO is a soda (“pop”) brand in the UK. Collins has for CAT, “a man; guy.”
Heroin, being a narcotic, would make these TWO NUMBER than other, undrugged, folks. I suppose it could have been worse with this answer.
D’oh! as the poet says. How could I miss ‘guy’? NHO TANGO, but the parsing forced ‘pop’ on me will I, nill I. Thanks.
I split this over two sessions as I was starting to nod off during the first. Time spent in total was 70 minutes. I’m unsure how accurately that reflects my efforts but I certainly found this to be at the harder end of the scale.
ACHAR was unknown and this is its first appearance here other than in a Mephisto in June this year. I don’t do those.
Although ABANDON was obvious I was puzzled by the reference to ‘ore’. ‘Band’ is used widely for a layer of something and I wondered why the clue chose to be so specific. On checking the usual dictionaries the only one that mentions ‘ore’ in this context is Collins, and even then it’s in the 11th and final definition of ‘band’. Apart from ‘layer’ which is in the clue, the synonym that leaps to my mind when thinking of ore is ‘seam’.
I learnt ‘behind / CAN’ for the first time in a puzzle within the past 2-3 weeks, and here it is again!
Thanks for the explanation of 4d ARTISAN. Although I’d roughly worked out what was going on, it’s nice to have it explained so clearly and fully.
I’d wondered if there’d be questions about why TANGO = pop in 12ac. It’s a well known brand of fizzy orange in the UK. Mostly thanks to some memorable advertising campaigns in the 1990s – “You know when you’ve been Tango’d”. But I don’t think it’s available in the rest of the world: where I believe it’s mainly Fanta and Sunkist.
The clue is fair, with crossers. Even so it is a NHO for me despite several visits to the UK.
The same comments apply to achar…mangoes abound here but I hate them.
I’m ashamed to have missed the anagram of our state capital, trying to find a catch named -r-sgame. I plead guilty to impatience m’lud, came here too soon.
Nick Jenkins (or Anthony Powell) refers to Aldershot as ‘that uniquely detestable town’.
I don’t know what was going on with me last week but I somehow managed to submit with two typos in crossing letters, giving me 4 errors! Clearly I didn’t check my answers as usual because it seems unlikely I would have missed NUMBRE TWO, INCENSRS, ALDERSHOO and OUO OF SHAPE.
I nho ACHAR like everyone else. I did know Tango as a fizzy orange drink from growing up in UK. The Catch-22 reference was clever (and a great book). My LOI was NOTE, one of those clues that you need to squint at just right to see how it works.
Late entry which was a DNF in 30 as I broke Rule 1 in the Dvynys Code of Crosswords (Is it an anagram?) with BRISBANE unparsed and unsolved
1ac and 1d were v good.
Yes this was very 1a. But I failed on that clue – was looking for a triple definition – D’Oh! and didn’t know what GREAT SATAN alluded to; thanks for that explanation. Otherwise, I think I did slightly better than my usual Sunday effort…any improvement is a step in the right direction . Had to look up the port, even though it’s right here in Australia; and NHO ACHAR, but it had to be. Enjoyed the PDMs of BACKGAMMON, OFTEN and SLAPDASH, but my COD goes to NUMBER TWO.
Thanks David and guy
Found this one quite tough taking a combined 78 minutes across five sittings – the last one involving sorting out why NUMBER TWO was right, finally twigging to NICKS as the double definition and ending up with CATCH (and head-slapped when seeing Catch-22). Was another Aussie that didn’t see BRISBANE (used an anagram finder) – just never think of it as a port with the CBD quite a long way inland up the river from the coast.
Two not fully parsed – TANGO as ‘pop’ was not known or forgotten and missed the ‘horse’= heroin to fit with NUMBER.
Was just pleased to get it all out correctly in the end !