Plenty of plant and animal life in this amusing but gentle puzzle today, with a couple of more obscure trees or flowers guessable if you didn’t know them. I was a bit surprised to see the chap at 10a appearing, I hadn’t realised he had died in 2012. Or I’d just forgotten.
Just a reminder, as a few commenters last week seemed to miss spotting some anagrams: a word I’ve marked in italics is the anagrind, or anagram indicator; the anagram fodder or anagrist is shown (IN BRACKETS)*.
| Across | |
| 1 | Barking individual, East End success? (3-3) |
| BOW-WOW – A WOW from BOW being an East End success. | |
| 4 | Opera produced by crew on river (8) |
| FALSTAFF – STAFF (crew) on the River FAL as in Falmouth, Cornwall. | |
| 10 | Astronaut packing some punch, it’s implied? (9) |
| ARMSTRONG – If my ARM is STRONG I may be packing a punch. | |
| 11 | Brilliant silver-blue combo? (5) |
| AGLOW – AG (Ag, silver), LOW (blue, down). | |
| 12 | Activity of browser in operating system, so mad? (6,8) |
| WINDOW SHOPPING – WINDOWS (op system) HOPPING (mad). This tastes of chestnut for me. | |
| 14 | Pack zero pastry cases (5) |
| TAROT – TART (pastry) has O (zero) in. | |
| 16 | Tiny brain? Reptile with it going after half of mine! (9) |
| MICROCHIP – MI(ne), CROC (reptile), HIP (with it). | |
| 18 | Part of flower trimmed, as going to seed (9) |
| MIDSTREAM – here flower = river. (TRIMMED AS)*. | |
| 20 | Relish stripping gold from Pinochet, say? (5) |
| GUSTO – AUGUSTO Pinochet, Chilean dictator d. 2006, has AU (Au, gold) removed. | |
| 21 | Aquatic game birds (5,3,6) |
| DUCKS AND DRAKES – Double definition, the first being a game based on skipping stones across calm water. | |
| 25 | Mark of a writer in community, inconclusive (5) |
| COLON – COLONY is inconclusive. | |
| 26 | Aim to be in Paris, beginning to experience some urban life? (5,4) |
| PLANE TREE – PLAN (aim) ÊTRE (French verb ‘to be’) E (beginning to experience). Plane trees are often found in London and other urban streets and along roadsides especially in France. The Trojan Horse was allegedly made from plane tree wood. | |
| 27 | Drunken employee originally breathalysed, perhaps couldn’t stand (8) |
| DETESTED – D E (original letters of drunken employee) TESTED (breathalysed perhaps). | |
| 28 | What may be diagnosed by doctor initially poking tongue? (6) |
| MALADY – D for doctor inside the MALAY tongue. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Overheard invite to nudist club? Hang on a minute! (4,4,2) |
| BEAR WITH ME – Sounds like BARE WITH ME ha ha. | |
| 2 | Female with place in the Middle East (5) |
| WOMAN – W (with) OMAN (Middle East country). | |
| 3 | Published letters seen as settlement some way off (7) |
| OUTPOST – OUT (published) POST (letters). | |
| 5 | Old king overwhelmed by past trouble (5) |
| AGGRO – GR (King George, any of six) has AGO (past) around it. | |
| 6 | Utensil finally wiped, meat assumed to be cleaner (7) |
| SHAMPOO – SPOO(N) has HAM inserted. | |
| 7 | A nail hammered like that in tree (9) |
| AILANTHUS – (A NAIL)*, THUS (like that). A fast growing tree also known as the Tree of Heaven. | |
| 8 | Turkey perhaps unpalatable, by the sound of it (4) |
| FOWL – Homophone for FOUL = unpalatable. | |
| 9 | Don’t fool everyone fed starter of mulligatawny soup (8) |
| CONSOMME – If you don’t fool everyone you can still CON SOME, then insert M first letter of mulligatawny. | |
| 13 | Padding plus the story, no way necessary for a rewrite? (10) |
| UPHOLSTERY – Anagram of (PLUS THE ORY)*, the ST of story being removed, no ST = no way. | |
| 15 | Swimmer studied, missing a certain style (3,6) |
| RED MULLET – RE(A)D = studied, missing the A; MULLET a certain hairstyle. Delicious when filleted, fried or BBQ. | |
| 17 | Joker entered, having failed grammar, claiming top mark (8) |
| COMEDIAN – A bit weird, this one; I think it is COMED IN as ‘failed grammar’ for CAME IN, with A (top mark) inserted. | |
| 19 | Cash received cheers college (7) |
| TAKINGS – TA (cheers), KINGS (College Cambridge, for example). | |
| 20 | Daisy: elderly relative endlessly swigging beer, embarrassingly (7) |
| GERBERA – GRA(N) = elderly relative endlessly; insert (BEER)*. Gerbera is a genus of plants in the Asteraceae family, with large colourful flowers. It was named afer a German chap Traugott Gerber (1710-1743) who was a pal of Linnaeus. | |
| 22 | Fruit horse possibly ignored at first (5) |
| APPLE – Dapple means having patches of a different colour from a background, often applied to horses and used as a noun for such. So, ‘horse possibly’. DAPPLE ignored at first = APPLE. | |
| 23 | Serving of Dhansak or Madras, Indian dish (5) |
| KORMA – A hidden dish in DHANSA(K OR MA)DRAS, two more spicy Indian dishes. | |
| 24 | Assistance required to cover top of charcoal burner (4) |
| ACID – AID (assistance) has C top of charcol inserted. Some acids can burn, but most don’t. | |
DUCKS AND DRAKES went in with only the K in as a checker – NHO the game.
GERBERA and AILANTHUS were unknown and completely failed to parse SHAMPOO – seems obvious now – and COMEDIAN – less obvious.
Thanks for the blog, Pip – without it I’d still be baffled by FALSTAFF, because I’d got fixated on TAFF as the river and just couldn’t see what FALS had to do with the price of fish.
Templar
I wasn’t exactly blazing through this one anyway, staring at RED _U___T quite unable to think of anything but TURBOT for some reason. Stupid brain!