Only three anagrams this time, but hey, I’m not complaining, with such a tasty puzzle! (And I’m not big on fish either!)
My second one in (after SUN) was DISPLACED PERSON. In other news, I can report that the definition for TARIFF is accurate. (All together now: a tax on whom? Ha)
I indicate (Ars Magna)* like this, and words flagging such rearrangements are italicized in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | Fish taken in to harbour (7) |
| HADDOCK HAD, “taken in” + DOCK, “harbour” |
|
| 5 | Food, wine, rolls, soup (7) |
| CHOWDER CHOW, “Food” + RED<=“rolls” |
|
| 9 | Fish could be present after leaving port (3) |
| RAY |
|
| 10 | In the past, wife once sat uncovered too long (11) |
| OVEREXPOSED OVER, “In the past” + EX, “wife once” + POSED, “sat” |
|
| 11 | Force head cook to keep current and busy (5,9) |
| CHIEF CONSTABLE CH(I)EF + CONSTABLE, a cop, a “busy” in slang I = intensité du courant (électrique) …Had to shake the notion that “head cook” was the chef. |
|
| 13 | Number overall forming a LAN (8) |
| ETHERNET ETHER, anæsthetic or “numb-er” + NET, “overall” Local Area Network |
|
| 15 | Inept cowboy finally going east (6) Hang up your spurs and head home… |
| GAUCHE GAUCHO, cowboy of the South American pampas, trades O (his lasso?) for E(ast). |
|
| 17 | Puritan a Nazi unit captures and shoots (6) |
| SPRIGS S(PRIG)S |
|
| 18 | Rod, maybe holding back a shrub (8) |
| LAVENDER LAV(END)ER END is “back” and LAVER is Australian tennis icon Rod L., dontchaknow… …I didn’t. |
|
| 20 | A faraway state’s best actress and comic (14) |
| ABSTRACTEDNESS (best actress and)* |
|
| 23 | Working or retired, are breaks voluntary? (11) |
| OPERATIONAL OP(ARE<=“retired”)TIONAL |
|
| 24 | Star from Eastenders in shows you scorn (3) |
| SUN Last letters |
|
| 25 | Herb primarily found on horse meadow (3,4) |
| BAY LEAF BAY, “horse” + LEA, “meadow” + F |
|
| 26 | Wha{t is an es}sential ingredient for drinks? (7) |
| TISANES Hidden |
|
| DOWN | |
| 1 | No Brie? Unlucky! (4,6) |
| HARD CHEESE Brie, of course, is soft. |
|
| 2 | Taking offence in what The Sun puts out (8,7) |
| DAYLIGHT ROBBERY CD, playing on “taking” and the deceptively capitalized “Sun” |
|
| 3 | Intermittent meeting of cricket sides (2-3) |
| ON-OFF The words joined by the hyphen are also the sides of a cricket pitch. |
|
| 4 | Faint cry curtailed by girlfriend (4,4) |
| KEEL OVER KEE |
|
| 5 | Stop pinching Romeo’s line (6) |
| CREASE C(R)EASE |
|
| 6 | One graph distributed round a care home (9) |
| ORPHANAGE (One graph, a)* |
|
| 7 | Detectives found work for a child refugee (9,6) |
| DISPLACED PERSON DIS, “Detectives” + PLACED, “[found] a home or job for (someone)” (Collins) + PER, “a” + CHILD, “son” |
|
| 8 | Sounding cross and abusive (4) |
| RUDE “rood” |
|
| 12 | Begrudge appearing in theatre troop’s shows (10) |
| REPRESENTS REP(RESENT)S |
|
| 14 | Fit, brave drill sergeant’s order (5,4) |
| RIGHT FACE RIGHT, “Fit” + FACE, “brave” |
|
| 16 | Authoritarian trait men disguised (8) |
| MARTINET (trait men)* |
|
| 19 | Salt and fluorine imports providing tax (6) |
| TARIFF TAR, “salt” (sailor) + IF, “providing” + F(lourine) |
|
| 21 | Dons on vacation drinking beer somewhere in Yorkshire (5) |
| DALES D(ALE)S “The Yorkshire Dales are a series of valleys, or dales, in the Pennines, an upland range in England.… The majority of the dales are within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, created in 1954.” (Wikipedia) …You learn something new every day! |
|
| 22 | Mistake whichever way you look at it (4) |
| BOOB Palindromic word |
|
7D “place” = “find a ‘place’ (usually work or a home) for” in 4 dictionaries (one US), leaving “a” as the “per” indication
Ta!
13:14
Zipped through this in record time for a Myrtilus puzzle, biffing only DAYLIGHT ROBBERY parsing post-submission. I liked ‘taking offence’ and ‘a faraway state’.
Also thrown by ‘head cook’ in CHIEF CONSTABLE so was looking for ‘force’ instead of ‘force head’. Saw HADDOCK pretty quickly as HARD CHEESE was an early get so had the ‘H’ to work with for the fish. Liked DAYLIGHT ROBBERY. Saw GAUCHE pretty quickly after the cowboy/gaucho hint, and Gaucho is still one of my favourite albums from Steely Dan with Mark Knoffler playing guitar on ‘Time Out of Mind’. ABSTRACTEDNESS was a bit tricky to work out from the anagrist but with a few checkers in place it fell. Saw the hidden TISANES but knew not what it was, a tea, apparently. Liked OVEREXPOSED and RIGHT FACE. I’ll give both TARIFF and MARTINET as CODs.
Thanks Guy and setter.
One of Robert’s gentler offerings for which I’m grateful .
Only 9a held me up as I just couldn’t parse it and seeing the answer now, I’m not surprised.
21 minutes must be among my fastest times ever for a Sunday puzzle! That’s fully parsed and with no queries.
36m 01s
Thanks, Guy, especially for RAY, CHIEF CONSTABLE, LAVENDER, SUN and DAYLIGHT ROBBERY.
Don’t fancy what’s on offer in Rows 1 and 15: HADDOCK CHOWDER and BAY LEAF TISANES!
11a Chief Con. Yes, the head cook=chef was very tempting, but knackered the clue.
1d Brie. I was worried about the hardness (not) of Brie and wondered if I was going mad.
14a Right Face. When I was in the CCF in the ’60s the command was “Eyes Right” so I had to confirm this one by looking it up. We even had to do it once, someone with a lot of scrambled egg on his uniform showed up and we had to acknowlege his exalted rank with this manoeuvre.
Thanks to Guy du Sable and Robert Price.
I left no comment on this, unusually, though I didn’t have a lot of difficulty with it. 13a held me up, I remember, with my usual brain freeze over computer related questions, leading me to take the number bait like a rookie. 7d also took ages. Favourite was the simple but clever CHOWDER.
Thanks Guy. Needed your help to parse LAVENDER, CONSTABLE (dimly remember a ‘busy’) and RAY (no chance). Sneaky look at blog for ETHERNET along the way, otherwise rather more my own work than usual! Didn’t know whether RIGHT FACE was correct but what else could it be. Rather liked the clue for CHOWDER. Many thanks setter and Guy.
As others have said, relatively straightforward for a Sunday. TISANES was my only unknown, but the wordplay was clear.
Thanks Guy and Robert.
FOI Hard cheese
LOI Keel over
COD Operational
23.20
Late entry, catching up
Usual enjoyable offering. Particularly liked CHOWDER and TISANES.
Thanks Guy and Robert
Thanks Robert and Guy
Took just under the hour over brunch in a noisy cafe to complete with a few little holdups – the hidden TISANES took way longer than it should have (and had written in ESSENCE as the ‘ingredient for drinks’ until I realised how close to ‘essential’ it was). KEEL OVER was one that I persisted with trying to fit in KEEPER (‘girlfriend’) for too long as well.
Didn’t see the [PORT]RAY word play for the obvious fish and SUN took a long time to understand after vainly looking through ‘Eastender characters’ for a while – it was my last in and favourite clue when the penny finally dropped.
Hi Bruce! ( and a belated thanks for guiding me to this site). Really enjoyed this – with its edible and potable offerings- but mainly because I was able to finish it with only two look-ups ( and REPRESENTS would have gone in had I time to think about it). The other was GAUCHE as I had forgotten the GAUCHO.
But overall an enjoyable experience, and renewed my confidence in solving.