Toughie 404

Toughie No 404 by Petitjean

Read My Lips

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

I can’t say that I enjoyed this puzzle a great deal. You have to admire the ingenuity and some of the surface readings are really amusing, but 14 of the 30 clues involve anagrams (with some weird indicators), including two-thirds of the down clues. There’s one clue (7d/8d) where I can’t work out the wordplay, so I hope that someone will be able to explain that one.
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Across Clues

1a  Short and deceptively healthy hair taking seconds to train? (3,3,5)
{BOB AND WEAVE} – a combination of a short haircut and artificial (deceptively healthy) hair produces a boxing move, with seconds being the assistants in the fighter’s corner.

9a  Bird found in central Argentina and west of Uruguay (5)
{NANDU} – the bird is a rhea or South American ostrich so this qualifies as a semi-all-in-one clue. It’s formed from the central letter of ArgeNtina, AND (in the clue) and leftmost (west, in an across clue) letter of Uruguay.

10a  Island society of new and old money (3,6)
{NEW GUINEA} – this island in the South Pacific is an aggregation (society) of NEW (given in the clue) and an old amount of money worth £1-05.

11a  Peruse volume mistakenly put on table (5,2)
{SERVE UP} – an anagram (mistakenly) of PERUSE and V(olume).

12a  The Alarm’s live album still in circulation (4-4)
{BELL-PULL} – The Alarm (apparently) was a North Wales band of the 1980s, but the alarm we want here is a way of summoning assistance. Start with BE (live) and add a record format which is surrounded by (in circulation) a verb meaning to quieten, calm down or send to sleep (still).

14a  An Orwellian conclusion to plot set in US college town (3,5)
{ANN ARBOR} – this is the name of a college town in Michigan. Start with AN (in the clue) and add the last letter (conclusion) of OrwelliaN and the American spelling (set in US) of a shady garden alcove.

15a  Journalists’ fees (4)
{SUBS} – double definition.

17a  Without Ray’s lead or the backing of Matta and Mesens, Surrealism would have fallen into disorder (7)
{MISRULE} – I have heard of Man Ray but not of the Chilean Roberto Matta or the Belgian Edouard Mesens. All were surrealist artists. Remove the first letter (lead) of Ray and the last letters of MattA and MesenS from (s)U(r)RE(a)LISM and make an anagram of what remains to make a synonym of disorder. The anagram indicator appears to be “fallen into disorder” so disorder is doing double duty.

19a  Setback for Brazil meeting Sweden in knock-out (4)
{STUN} – the definition is knock-out and we have to reverse (setback) the most famous product of Brazil and the IVR code for Sweden.

20a  A verse so unfathomable it could be Greek (8)
{OVERSEAS} – an anagram (unfathomable) of A VERSE SO.

21a  This beats, say, good Scotch, but – it has to be said – why? (3,5)
{EGG WHISK} – we want something that beats. Start with the abbreviation for say and add G(ood) and a synonym for scotch without (but, as in the phrase “it never rains but it pours”) the letter that sounds like (it has to be said) why.

23a  Tailoring features retro-cut uniform pattern (4-3)
{TURN-UPS} – these tailoring features may (or may not, depending on the prevailing fashion) be seen at the bottom of trousers. We want a past participle meaning cut (as used in sports to mean imparted rotation to) followed by a uniform, often tedious, pattern. Then we need to reverse (retro) it all.

25a  Nice part of France (4,5)
{CÔTE D’AZUR} – cryptic definition of part of France.

26a  Retirement account is something worth having (5)
{ASSET} – reverse (retirement) a tax-free savings account introduced by John Major (his other big idea to go with the motorway cones hotline) to get something worth owning.

27a  Prosciutto starter and minestrone soup are never off the menu (11)
{OMNIPRESENT} – the definition is never off the menu or always around. It’s an anagram (soup) of P(rosciutto) and MINESTRONE.

Down Clues

2d  Fat-free bolognese does not require lengthy preparation (5)
{OBESE} – the definition is fat and the distinctly un-Ximenean wordplay requires an anagram (free) of BO(logn)ESE from which the jumbled (preparation) letters of a synonym of lengthy have been removed (does not require). Unless there’s a different explanation out there, I’m not at all keen on this one.

3d  First strike a wild lunge before the bell (7)
{ANGELUS} – the first letter of S(trike) is preceded (before) by A and an anagram (wild) of LUNGE to get the sounding of church bells to announce a Roman Catholic devotion of the same name.

4d  Spent a quid on unlimited rice wine cocktail (8)
{DAIQUIRI} – we want a cocktail containing rum and lime juice. It’s an anagram (spent?) of A QUID preceding (m)IRI(n) (a type of rice wine without its end letters – unlimited).

5d  Woefully gaunt bottom lost by weakling turned body-builder (4)
{ALAS} – when I was growing up there were countless newspaper adverts in the form of a cartoon strip depicting a weedy bloke having sand kicked in his face by a macho type. By the end of the strip he’d taken a 7-day body-building course and looked like Sylvester Stallone on steroids. The bloke selling this course was called Charles Atlas (who was, himself, a bodybuilder) – remove the last letter (bottom) of gaunT from his surname to leave an interjection meaning sadly or woefully. The surface reading is amusing!

6d  Make weak brew of tea? Never! (8)
{ENERVATE}  – we want a verb meaning to make weak and it’s an anagram (brew) of TEA NEVER.

7d/8d  Knee-trembler with less than wholeheartedly demure Max Clifford-type excited promiscuous nightclub singer (9,11)
{ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK} – the answer is the stage name of a nightclub singer born as Arnold Dorsey. The wordplay, however, has defeated me (I do note that all the letters of knee-trembler are present in the answer, so I presume that an anagram is involved). I’ve no idea how the Max-Clifford type fits. So, I’m relying on someone to explain it, and I’m sure that you won’t disappoint! [Thanks to Anax for sorting out the anagram fodder which is KNEE (indicated by trembler), DEM(u)RE (less than wholeheartedly), PR (Max Clifford-type) and NIGHTCLUB (promiscuous)]

12d  Home visitor – more than eleven letters! (4,7)
{BUSY POSTMAN} – there’s an old chestnut of a joke that surfaces from time to time about someone asking for help with a crossword clue. It goes something like this:
– overworked deliverer?
– how many letters?
– loads!
(laugh – I thought I’d never start)
Anyway, that appears to be what this clue is all about. The “eleven” is a reference (I assume) to the number of letters in the answer.

13d  Rocking, real S.O.B. – like the Stones’ frontman (7)
{LABROSE} – we want an anagram (rocking) of REAL S.O.B. to produce an adjective meaning thick-lipped. The setter appears to be taking the mickey.

16d  Bass sound of Lou Reed’s music (9)
{BLUEGRASS} – start with B(ass) and add a sound-alike of LOU and what reed is a type of to get a simple style of country music.

17d  Old fighter doctor brought round unexpectedly quits ringside (8)
{MOSQUITO} – the answer is an old fighter aircraft that saw service during WWII. Put one of the abbreviations for doctor round an anagram (unexpectedly) of QUITS which has O (a ring) in front of it (ringside – geddit?).

18d  Nothing in helter-skelter luge run equates to tedium (8)
{LONGUEUR} – put O (nothing) inside an anagram (helter-skelter) of LUGE RUN to make a period of tedium.

19d  One side of disc has middling hornpipe jig, which is hard stuff to take (7)
{SCHNAPS} – this strong alcoholic drink (hard stuff to take) is an anagram (jig) of diSC (half, i.e. one side, of disc) HAS and horNPipe (the middling part).

22d  Disregard dregs of humour in appalling puns (5)
{SPURN} – a verb meaning to disregard or ignore is made by putting the last letter (dregs) of humouR inside an anagram (appalling) of PUNS.

24d  Investigate oddly uplifting nuances (4)
{SCAN} – reverse nuances (uplifting – it’s a down clue) and take just the odd letters (oddly).

I liked 9a, 13d and 18d, but my favourite clue is 5d. Let us know what you liked and disliked in a comment!