Toughie 256

Toughie No 256 by Citrus

A View From the Bridge

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BD Rating – Difficulty ** – Enjoyment ***

Another Tuesday Toughie that’s worth having a go at. There are several anagrams, and some easy cryptic definitions and other clues to get you going. Then you can take a bit more time with some of the more difficult clues. All in all it should prove to be an enjoyable adventure. Especially if you tried to tackle last Friday’s Toughie equivalent of Everest.

If you want to leave comments, please do. You can the answers directly by highlighting the letters inside the curly brackets.

Across

1. Note, evangelist’s brag! (4,2,5)
{MARK MY WORDS} – A double definition, an allusion to what a bragging apostle might have said is also a phrase typically used when you want people to pay attention to what you are saying because it is true and important.

8. HMS Belfast? (7,4)
{CAPITAL SHIP} – A warship of the largest and most heavily armoured class in a fleet is literally this. Unlike the type 42 destroyers.

11. A service returned from a distance (4)
{AFAR} – A and RAF (service) reversed (returned).

12. Material from Luxembourg’s excellent (4)
{LACE} – L (Luxembourg) and ACE (excellent).

13. Girl leaves before rain spreads (7)
{KATRINA} – KAT (or more commonly spelt as khat) is a shrub whose leaves are chewed or taken as tea for their stimulant effect, followed by an anagram (spreads) of RAIN gives you a girls name or the name of one of the deadliest hurricanes to hit the USA.

15. Endlessly embroider strange platitude (7)
{BROMIDE} – First, remove the first and last letters (endlessly) of embroider, E and R, then make an anagram (strange) of EMBROID and you have a salt of hydrobromic acid or another word for a platitude.

16. A cook’s beginning to keep almost all fruit (5)
{ACKEE} – The first letters of (beginning) A C(ooks) followed by almost all of KEE(p) is an edible fruit, often used in Caribbean cookery.

17. Arkwright’s active in Japanese drama (4)
{NOAH} – A (active) is placed inside NOH (a form of classical Japanese musical drama) for a builder of an ark.

18. Robe tailored for bishop (4)
{EBOR} – An anagram of ROBE (tailored) is the Archbishop of York. Why you ask – because “It is customary for a Church of England Bishop or Archbishop to sign himself with his given name and the (usually abbreviated) Latin name of his See – in the case the see of York which is “Ebor”, short for Eboracum”.

19. No lad flies like a knot (5)
{NODAL} – Another anagram (flies?), this time of NO LAD for another word for knotty. Interesting surface reading, or rather what surface reading?

21. Kitchen ordered to give more substance to soup (7)
{THICKEN} – Yet another anagram (ordered) of KITCHEN is to make or become thick or thicker, something you might do to watery soup.

22. No energy to instruct year about theoretical particle (7)
{TACHYON} – A more convoluted clue. With T(e)ACH (instruct – minus the E, energy) , and Y (year) plus ON (about) is believe it or not, a theoretical elementary particle that moves faster than light.

23. Sediment from river with a bit of sludge (4)
{LEES} – Another word for sediment is made up of LEE (river) and a bit of S(ludge).

26. Keen to roll joint (4)
{KNEE} – An anagram (roll) of KEEN.

27. Camp bed? (8,3)
{SLEEPING BAG} – A cryptic reference to what you might sleep in if you were camping.

28. Lurid reading. Hardly! (6,5)
{YELLOW PAGES} – Colourful reading, sort of – this is a cryptic reference to a telephone directory.

Down

2. Partly open a small bottle (4)
{AJAR} – A JAR (bottle).

3. Deity has rink altered (7)
{KRISHNA} – An anagram (altered) of HAS RINK is a Hindu deity.

4. Period in which any earnings are declared (4)
{YEAR} – Hidden in the clue is a word used to describe a period of 12 months.

5. Objection to son’s treatment is not easily understood (7)
{OBSCURE} – OB (objection), S (son), and CURE (treatment).

6. Boy climbed around Island house (4)
{DAIL} – The lower house of the legislature of the Republic of Ireland is made by putting LAD (boy) reversed (climbed) around I (island).

7. Proud as one on stilts (7,4)
{WALKING TALL} – Yes you would be wouldn’t you.

8. Catharine’s chewed about five hundred Spanish flies (11)
{CANTHARIDES} – An anagram of CATHERINES and D (roman for five hundred) are blister beetles or a medical preparation originally used to to produce blisters and also an aphrodisiac.

9. Rush to purchase grass! (5,6)
{PANIC BUYING} – Panicum or Panic is a large genus of grasses having one or two-flowered spikelets in spikes, racemes or panicles. You can work the rest of this out for yourself.

10. The Spanish interpret curious creed as an example (11)
{TELEPRINTER} – An anagram (curious) of EL (Spanish for the) and INTERPRET is a type of telegraph transmitter with typewriter keyboard.

14. Operation to remove one stuffed jacket (5)
{ACTON} – A stuffed jacket worn under a coat of mail, is found by removing I from ACTION (operation).

15. Gideon’s first in defeat, as Enoch did for Methuselah (5)
{BEGAT} – The first letter of Gideon, is placed inside BEAT (defeat) for an old word (usually biblical) for producing offspring.

19. Fresh arrangement that begins when contract’s made (3,4)
{NEW DEAL} – New arrangements or conditions considered better than previous ones could also be a reference to bridge, where you deal afresh after a contract has been made.

20. The French decline North American dish (7)
{LASAGNA} – LA (the French) SAG (decline) NA (North American).

24. Bush is pronounced to be boring (4)
{SLOE} – The blackthorn bush sounds like (pronounced) SLOW.

25. Opportunity of seeing stake won (4)
{VIEW} – VIE (stake) and W (won).

26 Cabbage broth is starter in Kinross feast (4)
{KALE} – A scottish cabbage soup (also a variety of cabbage with open curled leaves), is formed from the first letter of Kinross and then an archaic word for feast, ALE.