Toughie No 2883 by Firefly
Hints and tips by Gazza
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BD Rating – Difficulty *** – Enjoyment ***
Firefly has signed his puzzle on the top line (which did help me get 7d). I wondered if there were more to the Nina than just the top line – perhaps you can see something more?
Thanks to Firefly for the puzzle.
Please leave a comment telling us how you fared and what you thought of the puzzle.
Across Clues
8a Comparatively pathetic, the setter playing a character “at rest” (8)
MEASLIER: a pronoun identifying the setter, a preposition meaning playing or ‘in the role of’ and someone resting in a horizontal position.
9a From within, Paris enclave originated … (6)
ARISEN: hidden word.
10a … every Adamic convention (3)
ALL: Adam was the very first naturist so we need a convention or jamboree without its clothing letters.
11a Fanciful banshees? They’re so passe! (3-5)
HAS-BEENS: an anagram (fanciful) of BANSHEES.
12a Unaware of son entering game (4,2)
LOST TO: insert the genealogical abbreviation for son into a game similar to bingo.
13a Left-winger‘s jumping well over tall ref (6,9)
FELLOW TRAVELLER: an anagram (jumping) of WELL OVER TALL REF.
15a Bobby’s coming back strongly — duck! (7)
POCHARD: reverse another informal word for a bobby and append an adverb meaning strongly.
18a Oscar runs banks in part of France (7)
ORLEANS: string together the letter that Oscar is used for in the Nato Phonetic Alphabet, the cricket abbreviation for runs and a verb meaning banks or tilts.
21a Behave tediously in Brent teashop, perhaps? (4,3,5,3)
BORE THE PANTS OFF: this is a reverse anagram with the indicator being the last word and an anagram of BRENT TEASHOP being the first three words.
24a Wizard engine (6)
MERLIN: double definition – the second being a Rolls-Royce engine.
25a Recording unit reconnoitre around burrow (8)
CASSETTE: a verb to reconnoitre (a joint, perhaps) contains a badger’s burrow.
26a Butcher regularly flipped old coin (3)
ECU: take regular letters of ‘butcher’ and reverse them.
27a Instead of poetry, university goes in for the more recent English (6)
VERSUS: a word for poetry with the single-letter abbreviation for university replacing the second (more recent) occurrence of an abbreviation for English.
28a Train dramatically let off steam after rumble heard (4-4)
ROLE-PLAY: a verb to let off steam or entertain oneself after a homophone of a word meaning rumble (of thunder, perhaps).
Down Clues
1d Material written about stopping Iron Lady (6)
FEMALE: reverse a type of material with interwoven threads inside the chemical symbol for iron.
2d Girl from island a beauty in recital (6)
ISABEL: concatenate an abbreviation for island, A and what sounds like a beautiful woman.
3d Fit condition to sail? In short, views err at sea (15)
RIVERWORTHINESS: an anagram (at sea) of IN SHORT VIEWS ERR.
4d Scrubbing of Times inevitable (7)
ERASURE: stick together a word for a period of years or times and an adjective meaning inevitable or certain.
5d Take immense trouble with sell-off — reveal no shilly-shallying (4,4,7)
FALL OVER ONESELF: an anagram (shilly-shallying) of SELL OFF REVEAL NO.
6d Emollient sauce on market outside Crown in Ventnor (8)
LIPSALVE: start with an informal word for sauce or cheek and add a verb to market containing the top letter (crown) of Ventnor.
7d Rather wooden last night in Edinburgh? (8)
YESTREEN: a response meaning ‘rather!’ and an adjective meaning wooden. The answer is a Scottish word for yesterday evening.
14d Perhaps Leman‘s a non-com at Coningsby? (3)
LAC: double definition. The first involves the French term (*** Leman) for the body of water we call Lake Geneva, the second is the abbreviation for someone (not an officer) who might be working at RAF Coningsby.
16d Set in concrete, MOD office backing measure (8)
ODOMETER: hidden in reverse.
17d Indifferent hypodermics (new) replaced by hospital on basis of infectiousness (8)
HEEDLESS: start with another word for hypodermics, replace the abbreviation of new with that of hospital, then append the bottom letter of infectiousness.
19d Since losing exceptional singer Georgians falter (3)
AGO: remove the jumbled letters of SINGER from the word GEORGIANS and make a 3-letter anagram of what’s left.
20d Foodie‘s impressive puree — with nothing superficial (7)
EPICURE: weld together an adjective meaning impressive or heroic and the word ‘puree’ with neither of its outer letters.
22d Leak on board spreads swiftly (6)
SWEEPS: insert a verb to leak or ooze into our usual abbreviated steamship.
23d Loaded vans of food and tackle, checking all tyres (3-3)
FAT-CAT: the initial letters (vans) of the last six words. Loaded here means filthy rich.
For my podium I’ve selected 21a, 1d and 6d. Which clue(s) gained your approval?
One of those crosswords solved corner by corner – SW, SE, NE and then NW
I did spot the Firefly at the top which confirmed my thoughts on 7d. It was also nice to see the return of the duck in 15a which was a regular feature of DT cryptics back when I started solving them
Thanks to Firefly and Gazza
Me too! I only twigged 7d when I spotted the NINA. 14d took some teasing out as well – I wasn’t familiar with either def but Chambers eventually helped with the service abbreviation. I thought 23d [vans of…] was the best of the bunch.
Thanks to Firefly and thanks for the blog Gazza.
An enjoyable puzzle, many thanks Firefly and Gazza. The long anagrams, Nina and crossers all helped sort out a few tricky ones – 7d unknown needing BRB, 14d the abbreviation unknown (though bunged in anyway), 10a “Adamic” needed Gazza’s expert parsing, and the “more recent” in 27a had me confused for a while. Favourite 21a. (By the way, hint for 8a needs a word for “playing” rather than just a letter A.) Thanks again!
Thanks, Fez – 8a hint now fixed.
A curate’s egg, in which the good (pretty much everything) was tainted by what was to me the off (7d & 14d). My lack of interest in obscure Scottish dialect is undiminished. Otherwise despite a few odd surfaces an enjoyable and pretty straightforward Toughie. The four long clues fell swiftly and gave the entry points for each corner. Unused to seeing 6d as a single word, as is Chambers.
Hon Mentions to 1d and 16d; COTD 21a.
Thank you to Firefly and to Gazza .
My BRB (13th edition) has 6d as a single word.
Thanks Gazza, I sit corrected – without my reading glasses I had seen the gap but not the ‘. I’m still more familiar with it as two words, though!
re 8a. Is it not, the setter acting the part of i.e. “as”, someone lying down.
Thanks Firefly, very enjoyable and Gazza.
Lots of twists and turns for me last night in this quite tough but quite fair Firefly poser, though–with the help of 5 online letters, not exactly ‘freebies’ but available–I did manage to finish the grid before retiring for the evening. Still, I needed Gazza’s aid parsing several that were partly bung-ins. I really liked 7d, by the way, once my first choice (‘leathern’ for ‘rather wooden’) was completely unparsable, and then the right and quite wonderful Scottish word came to me. I also liked the unusual but quite acceptable definitions in 12a and 27a. But best of all? Those ‘loaded vans’ at 27d! So, even though it was not an unaided finish, I really enjoyed this one. Thanks as always to Gazza and to Firefly.
Not particularly keen on this. 23d was obscure and I felt 3d was contrived.
I’ll settle for 24a for COTD as the sound of that engine always manages to lift my spirits.
Resorted to the hints for 7d and 14d. Very enjoyable. Thanks to Firefly and Gazza.
Don’t think we would ever have got 7d without the help of the signature and the 15a duck was one we did not recall.
Quite a slow solve for us but we did eventually get there.
Thanks Firefly and Gazza.