ST 2888

Sunday Telegraph Cryptic No 2888

A full review by crypticsue

+ – + – + – + – + – + – + – +

This puzzle was published on Sunday 26th February

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

Another lovely Sunday crossword – thank you Virgilius

Please leave a comment telling us what you thought.  You can also add your assessment by selecting from one to five stars at the bottom of the post.

Across

1a           Gather outside front of restaurant for meal (6)
BRUNCH – BUNCH (gather) outside R (the front of Restaurant)

4a           Composer getting constant offer of a lift (6)
CHOPIN – C (constant) HOP IN (offer of a lift)

8a           Most tragic thing missing in defeat (8)
BLACKEST – LACK (thing missing) in BEST (defeat)

10a         Engaged in change of course at sea in storm (6)
ATTACK – AT (engaged in) TACK (change of course at sea)

11a         Difficulty or complexity that’s not pronounced (4)
KNOT –  could there be a clearer homophone indicator in this clue??

12a         Imposed punishment of a kind that’s permitted (10)
SANCTIONED – Penalised or permitted

13a         Relating to hope, since religious and sensible (12)
ASPIRATIONAL – AS (since) PI (religious) RATIONAL (sensible)

16a         Peer‘s perverse, penning funny poem (12)
CONTEMPORARY – CONTRARY (perverse) ‘penning’ an anagram (funny) of POEM

20a         Weak new piece of furniture, very bad (10)
LAMENTABLE – LAME (weak) N (new) TABLE (piece of furniture)

21a         Audible expression of sadness, in a sense, cut short (4)
SIGH – SIGHt (sense) ‘cut short’

22a         Taxonomic groups in Information Age (6) (online clue)
Subgroups of families in Information Age (6) (newspaper clue)
Either way the clue is parsed as: GENERA – GEN (information) ERA (age)

23a         Providing cover for present ringleader in East End area (8)
WRAPPING – the ‘leader’ of Ring in WAPPING (East End area)

24a         Inform somebody else finally, being extremely selective (6)
NOTIFY – NOT I (someone else) and the ‘extreme’ letters of FinallY

25a         Lament, i.e. bawl, when upset (6)
BEWAIL – an anagram (when upset) of IE BAWL

Down

1d           HQ receiving short message from Asian island (8)
BALINESE – BASE (HQ) ‘receiving’ LINE (short message)

2d           Like diamonds, initially, or a complete pack of cards (5)
UNCUT – An obvious double definition

3d           Part of our capital otherwise invested in tea (7)
CHELSEA – ELSE (otherwise) invested in CHA (tea)

5d           Catch bit of PM’s address and cheer up (7)
HEARTEN – HEAR (catch) TEN (Downing Street!)

6d           Be pro, toil frantically to produce this lucrative work (9)
POTBOILER – An anagram (frantically) of BE PRO TOIL

7d           Slightly damaged   stole (6)
NICKED – Damaged by a small cut or a slang term meaning stole

9d           Sporting injury resulting from unusually intense blow (6,5)
TENNIS ELBOW – An anagram (unusually) of INTENSE BLOW

14d         Something added in court about people being put inside (9)
INCREMENT – IN (from the clue) and CT (court) with RE (about) and MEN (people) being put inside

15d         One drink in middle of exam makes us creative (8)
ORIGINAL – I (one) and GIN (drink) in the middle of ORAL (exam)

17d         Very much like number of Down clues here (3,4)
NOT HALF – There are 14 Across clues and so half of them would be 7.  However, there are 13 Down clues so not half of the Acrosses

18d         Happen before red tape changed or tapered off (7)
PREDATE – A Virgilius special – you can choose to make an anagram (changed) of RED TAPE or (off) of TAPERED

19d         In eastern parts of desert terrain, claim watering-hole (6)
TAVERN – AVER (claim) goes inside the eastern parts of deserT and terraiN

21d         Like an old picture showing Greek character in Aegean, say (5)
SEPIA – PI (Greek character) in SEA (Aegean, say)

I’m going to sneak the fact that I have five favourites in at the end of this review and hope Kath doesn’t read this far as I can’t decide between 4a, 11a, 24a, 17d and 18d – as to which should have top spot, although if pushed, I’d probably go for 18d

S2