Plenty to admire in this midweek offering, a far cry from last Friday’s, which had me stumped. I don’t remember using my digital “red pen” so often as here below. I suppose 20d wins the clue of the day, for being topical, sort of. 20 minutes and no problems.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, DD = double definition, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Great admirer I finish with in due course (8) |
| IDOLATER – if I DO, LATER, I finish, in due course. | |
| 6 | Spy conceals missile in oil-producing plant (6) |
| SESAME – SEE (spy) with SAM a surface-to-air missile inserted. | |
| 9 | What father is to son stumbling into a bordello? (5,8) |
| BLOOD RELATION – (INTO A BORDELLO). | |
| 10 | Job to follow this husband entering compound (6) |
| ESTHER – well, I couldn’t have told you which book precedes Job in the Bible, I’ve never read it, but faced with an H to put into a compound – an ester being one – I plumped correctly. | |
| 11 | Particular paranormal power periodically perceivable (8) |
| ESPECIAL – ESP (paranormal power), pErCeIvAbLe. | |
| 13 | Oppressed girl lives in city near Sidon with duke (10) |
| TYRANNISED – TYRE being a city near Sidon, insert ANN an girl, IS = lives, add D for duke. | |
| 15 | Poet dispensing with uniform in Arabian port (4) |
| ADEN – W H Auden loses his U. | |
| 16 | Small disagreement — is it over a shoe? (4) |
| SPAT – a cover worn over a shoe as in the spats which the likes of Hercule Poirot wore, and US gangsters in the 1920s. | |
| 18 | Below zero inside so like stormy weather (10) |
| THUNDEROUS – UNDER 0 inside THUS = so. | |
| 21 | Imagination detective attached to objects (5,3) |
| MINDS EYE – MINDS = objects, EYE as in Private eye. | |
| 22 | Divine being in form — demand regularly to be recalled (6) |
| DAEMON – reversed alternate letters as above. A minor deity of some kind. | |
| 23 | Star system’s unstable nuclear path captured by artificial intelligence (5,8) |
| ALPHA CENTAURI – (NUCLEAR PATH)* inside A I. As you may know, or not wish to know, Alpha Centauri is called a “star system” because it consists of three stars- two in a binary orbiting each other and a third, a red dwarf closer to Earth but appearing to be part of the same system as it’s in line of sight. | |
| 25 | Plant all borders in magically radiant landscape (6) |
| MYRTLE – outer letters as above. | |
| 26 | NCO awfully strange when ingesting Ecstasy (8) |
| SERGEANT – (STRANGE)* with E inserted. | |
| Down | |
| 2 | Musician to alight, safely evacuated (7) |
| DEBUSSY – When I had D****SY, the SY from safety, I wrote in Claude’s name and then saw DE-BUS = alight. | |
| 3 | Man dancing in leotard encapsulates daring (4-7) |
| LION-HEARTED – HE (man) inside (IN LEOTARD)*. | |
| 4 | Thrash grasping daughter raised in royal house (5) |
| TUDOR – ROUT (thrash) reversed with D inside. | |
| 5 | Hemp needed to make these jackets (7) |
| REEFERS – double definition, one a dodgy roll-up, one a jacket. | |
| 6 | Authorised edition dashed off in panic (9) |
| STAMPEDED – STAMPED = authorised, ED[ition]. | |
| 7 | Long blade this killer hides (3) |
| SKI – hidden, slightly. | |
| 8 | Romeo possibly rejecting United’s image (7) |
| MONTAGE – Romeo belonged to the Montague family, so drop the U. | |
| 12 | 2’s work, used originally in adaptation of Cinderella (5,2,4) |
| CLAIR DE LUNE – U inside (CINDERELLA)*. | |
| 14 | Church wine consumed by wild Scots? (5,4) |
| NOTRE DAME – RED = wine, inside NO TAME. As a Scot may say, if ye’re wild, ye’re NO TAME. Or so I imagine. | |
| 17 | Quick securing border for dominance (7) |
| PRIMACY – PACY = quick, insert RIM = border. | |
| 19 | Really poor mandate for saving the planet? (7) |
| USELESS – save the planet by using less. Too late, methinks. | |
| 20 | With ego Trump nearly upset an idealist (7) |
| UTOPIAN – I (ego) POTU[s] = Trump nearly, all reversed = UTOPI, add AN. | |
| 22 | Dorothy Parker leaving land for admirer (5) |
| DOTER – DOT (Dorothy) [park]ER. Where park = land. | |
| 24 | Set down, winning over time (3) |
| PUT – UP = winning, reverse it, add T for time. | |
Another proof, if we needed it, that a puzzle doesn’t need to be mindbendingly tricky to be a very nice. Thanks Pip.
Did this one at 2 am today (Friday), as I was having trouble getting to sleep and find that the crossword works wonders in this respect as it breaks any chains of thought that were keeping me awake – in fact it’s why I first started attempting them a couple of years ago.
No troubles here as there were a fair scattering of “easy” ones to get me going and everything pretty much fell into place from there on.
Hesitated a bit over IDOLATER as I have always spelt it ‘idolatOr’, but decided that idolater must be an alternative spelling given the wordplay – I never check these things, sometimes to my cost.
MER on ‘daring’ as a synonym for ‘lion-hearted’; doesn’t ‘lion-hearted’ refer to courage rather than daring? The two are not mutually exclusive, but they are not the same thing.
After the necessary leg-up of revealing a couple of answers, I was off and running. ( I know, I know). Had all the GK apart from what city was near Sidon (NHO), and thoroughly enjoyed the parsing of such beauties as CLAIR DE LUNE ( which as a child I struggled to play correctly ), DAEMON and ALPHA CENTAURI. Nice puzzle.
Two straight solves in a row! No need to check any entrant all. Definitely a PB. I wish I’d timed it but thought I would have to come back to it after a doctor’s appointment.
Thanks to setters of each, and to bloggers for affirming my reasoning.