Solving time: 32:28
Made rather heavy weather of this. Normally I like a grid with a few long answers to get going. But the butterfly would not yield easily without some checking letters. I have a letter in every square — which I hope are right — and will now see if I can remember all the parsings. So, as George says, off we go …
Across
1. SUBTRACT. SUB (boat, the only one in the Navy to be called a “boat”, I’m told); TRACT (sounds like “tracked”).
5. SOMBRE. MB (doctor) inside SORE.
9. OWL. A dropped-H-type clue: ’OWL. A famous poem by Hallen Ginsberg.
10. PROSPECTIVE. PROSPE{r} (to do well), C{ap}TIVE. The def is “likely”.
12. OBJETS D’ART. Anagram: started job. First French clue. (Another thanks to the ever-observant Ulaca.)
13. MONS{ieur}. Second French clue
15. CRATED. That is C-RATED.
16. MOISTEN. MOIS (French for “month”), TEN. October being the tenth month. Third French clue.
18. HORMONE. A play on the sound of “whore moan”; and a pun I used myself just last Sunday.
20. DEARTH. D (died) next to EARTH (ground). ODO says the specific application to food is archaic.
23. TAIL. Two meanings.
24. BLACK DEATH. LACK (failure), DE (“of” in French) … and they get clean by being in a BATH. Fourth French clue.
26. FROM NOWHERE. HERE (present) with FROM NOW (for the future) in front (signalled by “taking leading role”). Anything of this kind is known chez McT as “a zif”.
27. {r}EEL.
28. TASKED. T{reason} (= without cause), ASKED.
29. HELSINKI. SINK (decline) inside HELI{x}. There’s a different “decline” in 7dn.
Down
1. SPOT ON. S (small), POT{i}ON (drink).
2. BELL JAR. BELL (ring), JAR (knock).
3. RE,PETITION.
4. CLOUDED YELLOW. Two defs, one literal, the other descriptive. Not sure why it’s “irregular”. Perhaps because of its colouring? (“Yellowish wings with black margins” — ODO.) Perhaps because of its flight pattern? Comments welcome.
On edit: now I see it’s an irregular visitor to the UK.
6. {p}OUCH.
7. BAIL OUT. BOUT (fit) including AIL (decline).
8. EVENSONG. EG (say) including VEN (Venerable = an archdeacon’s title) and SON.
11. PYRAMID SCHEME. A double-entendre-type clue. A scheme involving pyramid selling: “a system of selling goods in which agency rights are sold to an increasing number of distributors at successively lower levels” (ODO); hence “unsustainable”.
14. HIS-AND-HERS. Anagram: hid harness.
17. PHOTOFIT. HO (house) inside PT (point); OF, {fac}T including I (“entertaining one”). Liked the def. Thanks to Ulaca for the prompt.
19. RUINOUS. RU (game, rugby union), I, NOUS (sense, the common variety — unless you’re a philosopher).
21. TRADE-IN. Anagram: I daren’t.
22. CHILL,I.
25. KNEE. It bends. Adding an L (£) would give KNEEL.
So, it may just be sour grapes that drives me to point out that a spiral is not a helix (29d), any more than a circle is a sphere, or a square a cube. A spiral is a two-dimensional curve of progressively increasing radius (like a clock spring); a helix is a three-dimensional curve of constant radius (like the spring in a ballpoint pen). The fact that helical staircases are often called “spiral” is no excuse.
Also far too much French for my liking, but c’est la vie.
Fortunately I didn’t think of MOMBLE, but I spent far too long trying to justify BEAR OUT.
oops, just noticed thud’s excellent comment. Sticklers of the world unite!
Edited at 2014-03-27 07:30 am (UTC)
Stickle all you like, but a spiral staircase is not misnamed