ACROSS
1. THOROUGH+FARE
9. ABHOR – A BOR[e] around H
10. RED CARPET – or REDCAR PET? Quirky cryptickish definition, with Redcar being a town in NE England famous for its racecourse and for once belonging to the benighted “county” of Cleveland.
11. COHESION – COHES + I + ON. (HE, His Excellency, is an ambassador, and CO a fellow, um, ambassador, here.)
12. CHALET – CH + A + LET
13. RELEGATE – E + LEG in RATE
15. TUS+CAN
17. STOLID – reversal of LOT in SID
18. LUKEWARM – U + KEW in L + ARM
20. IN CASE – double definition with an exclamation mark thrown in for good measure
21. BEFALLEN – neo-Biblical allusion to harlotry. Chimes with me after two performances of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast over the weekend.
24. POPPY-HEAD – POP + anagram* of HE’D PAY
25. OCTET – first letters of the five middle words
26. GRAHAM GREENE – GERMAN HER[it]AGE*
DOWN
1. TRAMCAR – RAMC in RAT reversed
2. OPHTHALMOSCOPE – OP + THE SCHOOL MAP*
3. ORRIS – sounds like ‘orace, as it goes
4. GARROTTE – GOT + TE around A + RR (Right Reverend)
5. FAD+E
6. ROADHOUSE – ROUSE around O + AD + H
7. APPLE CHARLOTTE – APP (download) + L + LOT (group) in TEACHER*; the anagrind is “‘s assembly”, i.e. ‘assembly of’ [the foregoing], which I think is rather neat.
8. STATIN – STATI[o]N
14. GAINSAYER – GAS around IN + AYER
16. QUEENDOM – QUEEN + DOM ( as in Bede Griffiths)
17. SKIMPY – KIM in SPY, and not SPY in ???
19. MANATEE – AN in MATE + E
22. AMOUR – sounds like ‘a Moor’
23. MESH – S in HEM reversed
Without these three holdups, my time would have been much better, kind of like EBITDA.
Edited at 2016-05-02 09:45 am (UTC)
Incidentally, U, there’s no S in the answer so the anagrist stops before the apostrophe.
The whole clue is a bit quirky, especially the order in which the words need to be encrypted, but I like it. The insertion of the single element in the anagrist is another aspect of the quirkiness, and perhaps something you’ll see more frequently in the Guardian.
Edited at 2016-05-02 05:38 am (UTC)
Forunately I was put right last week by the spelling of OPHALMOLOGY so 2dn was FOI
Nice to see 17dn KIM PHILBY is still with us!
17ac appeared to be STAID but STOLID it was.
COD 8dn STATIN
I thought the cluing of 11ac COHESION was very poor.
3dn ‘ORRICE RUMPOLE was just fine. 50 mins.
Tomorrow I head to London with ‘her indoors’ for the merry month of May, so it’ll be to pen to newsprint (rather than print-out).
Lovely jubbly!
horryd Shanghai
Have a good time.
I spent a lot longer on my last two, LUKEWARM and QUEENDOM, looking for a Liberal with half a heart to produce gardens in the former, and wondering what “looking down on” was doing in the latter. Just because it’s a down clue?
“Fellow ambassador” has to be COHE something, doesn’t it? It was the “something” that gave me pause.
Happy Labour Day everyone, relabelled over here Early May Bank Holiday to avoid any unpleasant political associations. That would never do. Dear me, no.
As for H.A.R.Philby – ‘Kim’ to his mates – he makes a nice change from Kipling!I’m sure those two never met – intellectually speaking.
Keep up the good work!
horryd Shanghai
nstructions. It works absolutely perfectly… apart from the fact that the insertion is the wrong way round. But it was sufficiently convincing that I wasted ages with G_R_V_T_ at 4dn. I considered GAREVOTE, but that is obviously the French for ‘polling station’.I had no idea about 10ac. Cleveland for me is only a place in Ohio, and I always get Redcar and Redruth mixed up so I was in the wrong part of the country anyway.
Edited at 2016-05-02 09:56 am (UTC)
Garevote! Merveillous!
I’m another who originally (sic) had ADHESION which made TRAMCAR my LOI.
On RAMC, my grandad was in the Corps during WW1, with Allenby through the Middle East. Yet I didn’t spot the acronym, preferring to split RA and MC for the doctors, which of course it is’nt.
What’s going on, are they running out of words?
Not that it matters, it was another good puzzle. Thanks setter and thanks U, you reminded me that our dim sum group at work is overdue for a catch-up.
I was surprised to see GARROTTE appear, after the recent garrotting (if memory serves) on these same pages. Why do uncommon words so often recur here? Is it some sub-conscious act on the part of the setters? Or do they have a discounted word-of-the-month?
On coming to this site this evening, I was briefly alarmed to see that none of the answers seemed to match mine. Then I realized that I was looking at the answers for 26,402, which I have not yet tackled and now cannot, in good faith. Therefore, I have the rest of the evening off, and will catch up on some overdue port-drinking before it goes off.