Toughie 369

Toughie No 369 by MynoT

It’s in the air

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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***

Let me first apologise to Big Dave for going away last week and leaving him with an Excalibur puzzle to blog, I did look at it on my return and I doubt that I would have been much more complimentary than he was.  But to be honest I would quite cheerfully have taken last week’s Excalibur puzzle in exchange for this week’s MynoT puzzle.

I filled in all the squares reasonably quickly and then had to resort to the dictionary to check several answers and to work out some wordplay that I hadn’t fully understood. I think I now understand it all but I’m sure someone will tell me of any subtleties I may have missed. Once again MynoT includes three signs of the zodiac as answers.

Across

1a     Scornful response from soldier returning holding broken blade? On the contrary (3,4)
{BIG DEAL} “On the contrary” tells you to treat the clue as “Scornful response from broken blade holding soldier returning”. Reverse the abbreviation for a US soldier and put it inside an anagram (broken) of BLADE to get a scornful response

5a    Covers minced prawn in a couple of quesidillas (7)
{ENWRAPS} An anagram of PRAWN is put inside two consecutive letters of QUESIDILLAS to give a word meaning “covers”

9a    Space at the opera house for tourist in Cornwall (5)
{EMMET} A unit of measurement used in spacing type in printing precedes the abbreviated form of a New York opera house to give a word used for tourists in Cornwall. It also means an ant

10a    Conductor’s weapons? (5,4)
{BATON GUNS} One I didn’t know. Think of something a musical conductor uses. This will lead you to weapons used to fire plastic bullets in riot control.

11a    Fanfares at function with Fern at Finisterre, for example (10)
{TANTARARAS} A word for blasts on a trumpet is made up of a trigonometrical function (sin/cos) + a variety of bracken found in NZ and Tasmania + a fairly obscure word for a headland (or cape)

12a    No season for monthly-paid workers to produce song (4)
{ARIA} The season is SALT. Remove this from a term for the salary-earning class to get an operatic song.

14a    Sun, perhaps, has hot air here (6,6)
{GOSSIP COLUMN} A cryptic definition. The Sun is a newspaper and the answer is a feature of a newspaper where hot air (empty talk) is featured

18a    One to succeed in declaring the invisible visible (4,8)
{HEIR APPARENT} The answer is someone who succeeds (inherits). The first word sounds like something invisible that is all around us.

21a    Distinctive character of volcanic rock covering ancient city (4)
{AURA} This volcanic rock is known by many because it appears first in an alphabetical list of 2-letter words. Put an ancient city (the usual one) inside it to get a distinctive character.

22a    They support diaphragms in healthy chests (10)
{SOUND BOXES} According to Chambers these are parts of a gramophone that support the diaphragm. The answer is made up of “healthy” + “chests”

25a    Faulty drive produced this 16 piece with more than one 12 (9)
{RIGOLETTO} You need the answers to 16 down and 12 across to complete this clue. The answer is a work of somebody whose name is an anagram (faulty) of DRIVE

26a    Old Spanish kingdom without active element (5)
{ARGON} Take an old Spanish kingdom and remove an A (active) to give a chemical element (an inert gas)

27a    Objective after continued struggle (7)
{CONTEND} An abbreviation for “continued” is followed by a word meaning “objective” to give a word meaning “struggle”

28a    Extract gas for American in France (7)
{ESSENCE} We call it petrol, the Americans call it gas(oline), the French call it *******. It also means “extract” as a noun

Down

1d    Slight suspicion of engineers in spa town (6)
{BREATH} As usual the engineers are the Royal Engineers. Put the abbreviation inside a well-known spa town

2d    Identical siblings are small on Earth (6)
{GEMINI} The first of the thematic answers. A two-letter for of Gaea or Gaia (the personification of Earth) is followed by an informal word for small.

3d    Actor has solution: one right out of this world (5-5)
{EXTRA-SOLAR} I struggled with this one. The actor is one temporarily engaged for a minor part. This is followed by an abbreviation for solution + A (one) + R (right)

4d    Pound’s collection of books a couple short (5)
{LIBRA} The second thematic answer. Remove the last two letters from somewhere books are found.

5d    Sting’s creator is department singer (9)
{ENTRAPPER} Our old favourite hospital department (3-letter abbreviation) is followed by a type of singer (e.g. Snoop Dogg, Eminem; but is it really singing?). The answer is someone who stings (catches out)

6d    Turn to gain a bit of dough (4)
{WIND} A word meaning “gain” is followed by the first letter of dough

7d    Sign of holder of water storage tanks losing money (8)
{AQUARIUS} The third thematic answer. Remove M (money) from tanks where fish are kept to give the sign

8d    Provides for American returning with marks (8)
{SUSTAINS} Reverse US (American) and add a word meaning “marks”

13d    Bone and mangos cultivated as source of forage (5,5)
{MOONG BEANS} An anagram (cultivated) of BONE MANGOS gives some leguminous Asian plants used as forage. I was not aware of this spelling.

15d    ‘Drink fortified wine,’ journalist maintained (9)
{SUPPORTED} Drink (verb) + fortified wine + journalist (the chief one) give a word meaning “maintained”

16d    Struggling architect having left one college behind exaggerated (8)
{THEATRIC} An anagram (struggling) of ARCHITECT without one of the C’s (having left one college behind) gives a rare form of word for exaggerated (or stagy)

17d    Turning back negotiable gold to money could be quite a bit of inspiration (8)
{NITROGEN} Reverse an abbreviation of negotiable + a word for gold (the colour) + a word for money to get a constituent of the air that you breathe in (inspire)

19d    Gas of old soldier about unknown unknown (6)
{OXYGEN} Another constituent of the air is made up of O (old) GEN (General = soldier) around 2 letters that denote unknown quantities

20d    Old interest in cooking new sauce (6)
{USANCE} An anagram (cooking) of N (new) SAUCE gives an obsolete term for interest (in a financial sense)

23d    Nobody in Orient is seen after midday (2,3)
{NO ONE} E (East = Orient) is put after another word for midday

24d    Joy’s finally going to shelter (4)
{GLEE} The last letter of going is followed by a word meaning “shelter”

Once again a MynoT puzzle that contains too many obscurities for my liking.

[My apologies for the late posting.  On top of all the CluedUp problems, I took advantage of a lift to Birmingham to restock my spice cupboard and got back rather later than I had intended.  Bufo had emailed this to me over 3 hours earlier!]