Another super puzzle from our setter, or compiler, indeed, with nice wordplay and nothing very obscure. Provided you know your F1, that is. Mid twenty minutes for me, ending in the NW corner although that wasn’t any harder than the rest really. I liked both of the homophones.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Land in base is becoming a slum? (8) |
| BLIGHTED – LIGHT (land) inside BED (base). | |
| 9 | Beer with a politician? That’s chancy (8) |
| ALEATORY – ALE (beer) A TORY politician. | |
| 10 | Owing money, one might say for sport (4) |
| JUDO – sounds like DUE, DOUGH. | |
| 11 | Livid with waste after team admits shortage (5,3,4) |
| BLACK AND BLUE – BAND (team) has LACK (shortage) inserted then BLUE = waste. | |
| 13 | Armstrong not needing a second to master new little piece of music (6) |
| SNATCH – Louis Armstrong was a.k.a. SATCHMO, delete the MO (second) and insert N for new. | |
| 14 | America backing Europeans and East Africans (8) |
| SUDANESE – US reversed, DANES (Europeans) E (east). | |
| 15 | Great supplies at the front packed by soldiers into two cases for your compiler (7) |
| IMMENSE – I and ME being the subjective and objective cases for the setter, insert MEN (soldiers) and S[upplies]. | |
| 16 | Tango unknown in country dances (7) |
| WALTZES – WALES, a country, has T for tango and Z an unknown inserted. | |
| 20 | History exam such work for priest? (8) |
| PASTORAL – well, a history exam could be an ORAL exam on the PAST, a past oral. | |
| 22 | Short expression wears thin in speech (6) |
| PHRASE – sounds like FRAYS. | |
| 23 | Foreign trips arranged for the ballet (4,2,6) |
| RITE OF SPRING – (FOREIGN TRIPS)*. A piece of Stravinsky I really enjoy, when Mrs P is out and I can play it loudly enough. | |
| 25 | Something to do with seeing taxi in bad weather (4) |
| HAIL – a double definition, I think, when you see a taxi you might hail it. | |
| 26 | Sort of sweater I knitted (2,2,4) |
| AS IT WERE – (SWEATER I)*. | |
| 27 | For one single day turning to face nameless severe misfortune (8) |
| DISASTER – AS I D (for one, single, day, reversed), STER[N] = nameless severe. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Drug has speeding driver almost stupefied (8) |
| LAUDANUM – Nikki LAUDA, once a famous speedy F1 driver, NUM[B] = almost stupefied. | |
| 3 | Where literally all the world’s a stage? (5,7) |
| GLOBE THEATRE – cryptic definition, ha ha. | |
| 4 | Trounces in sporting fixture, having run to eliminate one of the Europeans (8) |
| THRASHES – THE ASHES, the crucial cricket series just begun again last week, loses the first of its E[uropeans]. | |
| 5 | Rather gloomy beauty hugging chest (7) |
| DARKISH – DISH, a beauty, “hugs” ARK a chest. | |
| 6 | Brezhnev seen in the shower (6) |
| LEONID – double definition; first name of the old Russian top man, the one with the eyebrows, and one of the regular meteor showers seen originating in the constellation LEO. | |
| 7 | Distant bird call over lake (4) |
| COOL – COO as in call of a dove, L for lake. | |
| 8 | Fire watched over in the range (8) |
| PYRENEES – PYRE (fire) then SEEN reversed = watched, over. | |
| 12 | Absolutely prevent good men wearing women’s clothing (4,2,6) |
| BANG TO RIGHTS – BAN (prevent) G[ood], then OR (men, ordinary ranks) inside TIGHTS (women’s clothing). | |
| 15 | Hazard accepting a particular size (8) |
| IMPERIAL – IMPERIL with A inserted. Among other things, IMPERIAL is a particular size of paper 30 x 22 inches, in the art world. | |
| 17 | One maybe on the phone comes up and tells (8) |
| APPRISES – you may have an APP on your phone, RISES = comes up. | |
| 18 | Cherish sinner — he needs to reform (8) |
| ENSHRINE – (SINNER HE)*. | |
| 19 | Head of fleet, docked, collapsed into bed (7) |
| FLOPPED – F[leet], LOPPED = docked, cut off. | |
| 21 | Man on small boat is right behind (6) |
| RAFTER – R for right, AFTER = behind. A man on a raft, obviously. | |
| 24 | Consider losing kilos to get slim (4) |
| THIN – THINK (consider) loses K. | |
Had to have a lot of help with this: several allusions by-passed me altogether – the great Satchmo ( only thought of Neil) and the eyebrows of Brezhnev, and Nikki Lauda. IMMENSE far too complex a parsing for me, and I was another ludo fwiw. But did like the ones I got, especially BLACK AND BLUE (after a struggle 😑), RITE OF SPRING (FOI), AS IT WERE (liked the anagrist).
Harder than yesterday’s, and should have had a higher Snitch.