VELIA kicks off the week…
Firstly, I apologise if I’ve got 20d wrong. It was the last one in, and I couldn’t justify SPIN (or anything else for that matter). *** 20d is still wrong in the grid, but I’ve corrected it in the text. Thanks to Eurobodalla@1 ***
Apart from that, there were some lovely clues here, with some not so straightforward parsing (at least not for a Monday).7d, 21a and 28a were particular favorites.
Also, a pangram!
Thanks VELIA!
IN CASE (as a precaution) taking RE (note)
N[ot] A[vailable] S[o] D[on’t] A[sk] Q[uestions]
[l]OV[e] (uncovering) with ERG (a little work) and ROW (noise)
CHI (vital energy) + (ILL)< (poor, <recycling)
[d]AFTER (more wacky, lose head)
Double definition (referring to the alleged hamster-eating funny man Freddie Starr)
(TIRED with O (love))* (*trouble)
(CHEE[r]L[ea]DE[r] (lacking REAR))* (*action)
HANG (put up) + A R[enovation] S[chedule] (beginnings of)
FI[s]TFUL (Western dollar amount (A Fistful of Dollars), missing one $)
(SEX LIFE)* (*awful) + LE (the, French)
HA (laugh) about YEN (currency)
“Laugh” is being used twice here
EG (say) + (GONG)< (honour, <returned)
(FUN FLICK)* (*may be)
S, H AND Y (shy)
Double definition
I (Velia) + SO (therefore) + BAR (block)
I think we have to assume an apostrophe in “blocks”
(ONCE with DEATH)* (*diced)
[lik]E A GER[bil] (somewhat)
(SOPR[a]NOS (without A))* (*lost)
(BROTHER AN)* (*abomination)
C[igarett]E (ends) under DOL[lar] (50 cents = half a dollar)
[f]I[t]T[e]D (evenly) separately in QUEUE (line)
LEAR (King, top to bottom – i.e., move the “L” from the beginning to the end)
(ZAP EDITOR (14))* (*broken)
(OUCH I SEEM)* (*perturbed)
[kno]W HIS PERS[onality] (welcomes)
S[n]AIL (round snail?)
Apologies if this is wrong!
20. Go round snail? (4)
S + PIN (nail)
Thanks to Eurobodalla@1 for correcting me on this!
FLEX (cable) over URE (river)
JACK (Jill’s partner) with A + [painfu]L (bottom)
[theo]LOGIA[ns] (accepted by)
HEY (greeting) welcomes FT (us)
Thenks Teacow and Velia. For 20d I had SPIN (go round). S + PIN = S + NAIL
Parsed SPIN as Eurobodalla. Very pleased to get FITFUL, my loi.
Ah! Thankyou Eurobodalla@1 – I’ll make the necessary correction
For ISOBAR, I took it that the grammar goes, ‘I so bar’ = ‘Velia so blocks’, and thus the ‘missing’. apostrophe is unnecessary.
Elegant puzzle as ever from Velia, although I got a bit itchy about ‘logia’, since the ‘logos’ bit of ‘theology’ has the identical root (= literally ‘talking about God’), so a bit close to my (pedantic) mind. I know, picky, picky.
Thanks to both.
Nicely testing for a Monday — thanks, Velia. 20dn SPIN was infuriating, and don’t you have to be as ancient as me to remember Freddie Starr and the hamster? Thanks, Teacow, for your candid commentary.
For me, difficult but with some very good clues. Thanks for explaining 20d. I won’t say how long it took me to see the ‘Western dollar amount’, and the DVD is on a shelf about ten feet away!
Thanks Velia for the Monday challenge. Despite failing with FITFUL (and I know the film) there was fun enough with clues like INCREASE, JACKAL, and especially LEECHED with its amusing surface. Thanks Teacow for the write-up.
Thanks Velia and Teacow
A great start to the week with a puzzle that had quite a bit of spice in it. Some really clever wordplay that needed to be unravelled along the way. Always like the s-nail = S-PIN trick and was pleased to have spotted it quicker than normal this time. Did take longer than it should have to see the acrostic NASDAQ though.
Got an inkling of a pangram when JACKAL went in quite early, but promptly forgot about it.
Finished in the SW corner with HEFTY, the very cunning FITFUL and FLEXURE as the last few in.
Apart from 20dn which we just couldn’t fathom this was straightforward enough, though with several challenges. We liked NASDAQ, FITFUL and QUIETUDE, and we parsed ISOBAR in the same way as Grant@4.
Thanks, Velia and Teacow.
re:logos in #4–i have always known logos to be the word of God, i.e. Jesus as in John, ch.1