Quite an interesting one today, with a mix of classic clues along with some more more idiomatic answers (not much cop, on the money, neat for awesome, for example). I had to guess the protein food but everything else was fair dinkum. I liked ‘botheration’ and ‘burp’.
Definitions underlined in bold, (ABC)* indicating anagram of ABC, anagrinds in italics, DD = double definition, [deleted letters in square brackets].
| Across | |
| 1 | Cleaner thus hoovers up half of village post office (7) |
| SHAMPOO – SO (thus) has HAM[let] and PO inserted. | |
| 5 | Slavic rider’s bag of lettuce? (7) |
| COSSACK – COS lettuce, SACK. | |
| 9 | Opening of olfactory organ a lot (3) |
| OFT – O[lfactory], FT an organ, the pink paper. | |
| 10 | Scotsman of power has Queen shut in throne room! (5,6) |
| WATER CLOSET – WATT (Scot who worked on steam power) with ER, CLOSE inserted. | |
| 11 | Sanction for use in cigarette lighter (3,5) |
| GAS POKER – OK (sanction) inside GASPER, old slang for a fag. | |
| 12 | Supply worker with what high-protein food (6) |
| TEMPEH – TEMP a supply worker, EH? = what? Apparently tempeh is one of those foods made from fermented soya beans, as all you vegetarians will doubtless know. I guessed it. | |
| 15 | Awesome as it is, landlord! (4) |
| NEAT – DD, neat meaning pretty good, neat without water added. | |
| 16 | Lousy Constable miniature? (3,4,3) |
| NOT MUCH COP – DD, one amusingly cryptic. | |
| 18 | Could one be in flat — here? (10) |
| MAISONETTE – took me a minute’s thought to see how this works, although the answer was clear from the checkers. FLAT is MATTE, you insert IS ONE (?) which = COULD ONE BE (?). | |
| 19 | Result of knocking back last of lager in bar? (4) |
| BURP – PUB with [lage]R in it, reversed, &lit. | |
| 22 | Stake between poles in French city (6) |
| NANTES – ANTE = stake, inside N, S. One of the nicest French cities. | |
| 23 | Blue cheese finally introduced to producer of wine list (8) |
| CERULEAN – CRU (wine producer) with E (end of cheese) inserted, then list = LEAN. | |
| 25 | Fuelled by oxygen, another bit exploding in blast! (11) |
| BOTHERATION – (O ANOTHER BIT)*. | |
| 27 | Discharge extremists ejected from demonstration (3) |
| ARC – [m[ARC[h]. | |
| 28 | Left, with flag in appropriate colour? (7) |
| RETIRED – TIRE (flag) inside RED (right colour for left). | |
| 29 | VIP well stocked with foreign cash? (7) |
| GRANDEE – GEE ! (well!) with RAND = foreign cash, inserted. Is gee! really an English expression, or is this another Americanism? | |
| Down | |
| 1 | What might have pumped bullet ultimately into military leader? (7) |
| SHOTGUN – [bulle]T inside SHOGUN a Japanese military leader. Dodgy &lit., as shotguns don’t fire bullets? | |
| 2 | Evidence when waiting for the train, hours slipping away (11) |
| ATTESTATION – AT THE STATION loses its H. | |
| 3 | Captive to arouse great enthusiasm in discussion (6) |
| POWWOW – POW (captive) WOW! = great enthusiasm. | |
| 4 | Exact location of the King’s Head? (2,3,5) |
| ON THE MONEY – Well, the King’s head is on banknotes these days, I think. And new coins. | |
| 5 | County seal (4) |
| CORK – DD. Ireland’s largest county. | |
| 6 | Prominence of unusual case circumventing legal right (8) |
| SALIENCE – (CASE)* with LIEN inserted. | |
| 7 | Idiot equally soft in the head (3) |
| ASS – AS = equally, S[oft]. | |
| 8 | Sauce finished at bottom of vessel (7) |
| KETCHUP – KETCH a vessel, UP = finished. | |
| 13 | Romeo incarcerated by movie villain — King, say? (7,4) |
| PICTURE CARD – This was easier than I’d feared at first, as I know of few movie villains; but it’s simply R inside a PICTURE CAD. | |
| 14 | Little stuff in grass (10) |
| SMATTERING – MATTER (stuff) inside SING = grass. | |
| 17 | Approach sign on end of avenue while driving, seemingly? (4,4) |
| COME NEAR – OMEN (sign) E (end of avenue) all inside CAR. I supposed ‘inside car’ means while driving, at a stretch. | |
| 18 | Cooler call from little lamb, by the sound of it? (7) |
| MINIBAR – well, a mini-baa could be a little cry from a lamb? Most minibars I find in hotels aren’t switched on to cool, they’re just there to offer you ridiculously overpriced warm beer or tonic. | |
| 20 | Roast a cook cut in style (7) |
| PANACHE – PAN (roast) A CHE[f]. | |
| 21 | Pound plus shilling where the franc is currency (6) |
| GUINEA – 21 shillings in a guinea, I was once taught, and the currency in Guinea is indeed the Guinean franc. | |
| 24 | Housekeeper cooked for the auditor? (4) |
| MAID – sounds like MADE = cooked, as in “I made breakfast”. I’m not sure proper housekeepers would appreciate being called maids, but so be it. | |
| 26 | Drop of the hard stuff, little one (3) |
| TOT – DD. | |
Loved this today, so much to enjoy. Botheration, cerulean, even loved Cossack. Missed the as it is, landlord part of neat and had been confused until I came here.
Very pleased to finish in 38 minutes plus change.
Thanks Pip and setter
Unlike others, I didn’t find this too difficult. I knew (and have eaten) TEMPEH so that was a writein. I knew CERULEAN. My LOI was MAISONETTE which I didn’t bother parsing (and having seen the parsing I’m glad I didn’t bother). In a grid like this, my usual approach is to get all the 3-letter ones to get a few useful checkers…but today they were all surprisingly difficult, with only ASS going in from a quick glance.
Gave it my standard hour and had 8-9 outstanding. Did a Check and the removal of some letters got me to MINIBAR, MAISONETTE, GAS-POKER (NHO). Needed more reveals to get the remaining 4 or 5 which were hanging off SMATTERING. Overall fairly pleased to get 75%. Couldn’t parse ASS, MAISONETTE or COME-NEAR (bifd it).
I was born six months after decimalisation, the GUINEA clue meant nothing to me and I’d assume to anyone under 60 now. The conversion between LSD components i.e. 240p = £1 is about all I know and not the sort of trivia I’ve ever seen to be learned
Yes I‘m 70 and in my childhood prices were still quite often quoted in guineas, rather than pounds-shillings-pence, especially for „luxury“ items.
A guinea was 1pound 1shilling by the way. Another trivia from those days is that scottish pounds were worth 19s6d back in england.
Thanks for the reply. There’s a whole world of crowns, farthings and guineas that I know nothing about!
Unless you tried to give a Scottish pound to a black cab driver, in which case they were worth exactly zero, plus an earful.
Very good puzzle which I dnf in 43 minutes, because i put (in desperation) GAS POWER at 11ac. NHO a gas poker, but gasper, yes I should have got that for sure.
I also held myself up for a good while by being absolutely sure that the first word of 13dn was going to be penguin, being a movie villain and there being king penguins, having the p and the u seemed to make it a dead cert. Wrong!!!
Thanks to the setter for imo one of the best puzzles in a while. Thanks blogger too!!
No time as was porlocked, but I think it would have been at least an hour! All parsed, but I too was temporarily distracted by penguins for the reasons given above. Very clever puzzle.
I was looking for Disney villains and thought ‘scar’ might be part of the answer. A tricky crossword that was a DNF.