Financial Times 16,513 by WANDERER

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I enjoyed this puzzle from Wanderer, thanks to whom for a good Friday joust.

Couple of new words learnt along the way but eminently gettable from the immaculate cluing.

FF: 9 DD: 8

image of grid
ACROSS
1 SATISFIED Met deaf half-sister round about half-time (9)
 

[ DEAF SISter (half of)]* around TIme (half of)
6 BASSO Instrument not acceptable for male singer (5)
 

BASSOon (instrument, without ON – not on, not acceptable)
9 HALIBUT Swimmer initially has the greatest objection (7)
 

H (Has, initially) ALI (greatest) BUT (objection)
10 DEFENCE Backs vindication of French criminal (7)
 

DE (of, french) FENCE (criminal)
11 OMBRE Ring doctor about card game (5)
 

O (ring) MB (doctor) RE (about)
12 RELATIONS Sex? 25 and 5? . . . . (9)
 

cryptic def; 25 and 5 are mum and dad (down clues)
14 NAN . . . . Never! And nor, for starters, has either 5 or 25’s 25 (3)
 

starting letters of "..Never! And Nor.."; 25 of either 5 or 25 is mum of either mum or dad
15 CROWN PRINCE Hit by former musician, an heir to the throne (5,6)
 

CROWN (hit) PRINCE (former musician)
17 PALINDROMES Mate at home with daughter before capital’s Abba gig? (11)
 

PAL (mate) IN (home) D (daughter) ROME'S (capital's) – examples of which are abba and gig
19 POP Drink a shot . . . . (3)
 

double def
20 ROUGH-HEWN . . . . perhaps, when being uncouth? (5-4)
 

cryptic def; reverse cluing – WHEN can be clued as ROUGH HEWN
22 RUN-UP Hurriedly make an approach (3- 2) (5)
 

(not so) cryptic def; also cricket terminology
24 TERBIUM Metallic element, essential component of dustbins (7)
 

chemical name of dusTBins (essentially)
26 GLANCES Good weapons for fine shots? (7)
 

G (good) LANCES (weapons), cricket terminology, a batting shot played with finesse using the pace of the ball to score
27 SISSY Namby-pamby sibling, extremely shy (5)
 

SIS (sibling) SY (ShY, extremely)
28 MERCENARY My career involved penning name for hired gun (9)
 

[MY CAREER]* containing N (name)
DOWN
1 SCHMO Fool school doctor (5)
 

SCH (school) MO (doctor)
2 TALIBAN Function without a liberal fundamentalist (7)
 

TAN (function, trigonometry) around [ A LIB (liberal) ]
3 SUBDEACON Translated odes with Cuban cleric (9)
 

[ ODES CUBAN]*
4 INTERCOURSE Sex as side, starter, main or dessert? (11)
 

cryptic def
5 DAD Lawyer, first to defend 19 across (3)
 

DA (lawyer, District Attorney) D (first to Defend)
6 BEFIT Fellow wearing black tie turned up in suit (5)
 

F (fellow) in [ B (black) EIT (reverse of TIE) ]
7 SANDOWN What’s found on beach? Plastic now, in IOW resort (7)
 

SAND (what's found on beach) [NOW]*
8 OVERSLEEP Past IOM town’s turning, come to later than planned (9)
 

OVER (past) SLEEP (IOM town's = PEEL'S, reversed; a small town in the isle of man)
13 LINE MANAGER Immediate boss has row with a German, when cycling around (4,7)
 

LINE (row) [ A GERMAN]*
14 NEPHRITIS His printer briefly malfunctions, leading to complaint (9)
 

[HIS PRINTEr (briefly)]*
16 RESURFACE New, but not unknown, Surrey cafe? That’s come up again (9)
 

[ SURREy CAFE (without unknown – Y) ]*
18 LOUVRES Gallery’s slatted doors or windows (7)
 

LOUVRE'S (gallery's)
19 PANACEA Heal-all gets spread around a canapé (7)
 

[ A CANAPE]*
21 HAIRY Prince having change of heart, for one that’s high-risk (5)
 

HArRY (prince, with central character {heart} changed from R to I)
23 PASTY Unhealthily pale 5’s first signs of tanning? Yes (5)
 

PA'S (5's; 5d is dad) TY (starting letters of "..Tanning? Yes")
25 MUM Silent letter, eg mnemonic’s first one (3)
 

MU (letter, greek) M (Mnemonic's first letter)

13 comments on “Financial Times 16,513 by WANDERER”

  1. In 4d, I think the blog should explain that INTER is (a) “side” and the rest are all examples of (a) “course”.

    Thanks to S&B.

  3. I took 13 down as the first letters of ‘a German’ i.e A GER, cycling round behind MAN to produce manager.

    Great puzzle as usual from Wanderer, particularly liked 25 down.

    Thanks S & B

  4. Thanks to Turbolegs and Wanderer

    Similar to @3

    13d “a” with “manger” (german cycling) “around” it

    22a DD “hurriedly make”/”an approach”

    25d is saying that the “m” in “mnemonic” is silent

  5. What Muffyword said, even if 17ac raised an eyebrow on first reading. Very clever surfaces, leaving me highly 1ac. Failed to get SCHMO.
    Thanks to Wanderer and Turbolegs.

  7. Enjoyable crossword with the RELATIONS and PALINDROMES theme. The not so simple MUM was good and I liked the non-thematic clever wordplay for INTERCOURSE and the anagram-as-answer ROUGH-HEWN.

    Thanks to Wanderer and Turbolegs

  8. Clever stuff indeed to have worked in the four relatives. Thanks to Turbolegs for fully explaining 20a.

  9. Thanks Wanderer for a great crossword. PALINDROMES was a favorite as were the palindromic relatives symmetrically placed around the grid. Liked HALIBUT and RESURFACE. Got OVERSLEEP by the definition as I’m unfamiliar with Peels as a town. Thanks Turbolegs for the blog.

  10. This took a bit of getting into but once we got the four palindromic relatives things started to fall into place. Very enjoyable.

    After Redshank gave us ‘rare earth’ yesterday we were pleased to see one of the rare earths, TERBIUM, today.  Actually, we thought there might be comments on the lines of “how the **** are solvers expected to know an obscure element in the further recesses of the periodic table?”  FT solvers obviously have a wide GK base.

    Thanks, Wanderer and Turbolegs

  11. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs.
    Very nice. Didn’t know Wanderer is Puck! Will never miss hhim again.

  12. Thanks for the blog, Turbolegs.

    This was much better than usual for Wanderer. I nearly enjoyed it!

  13. Thanks Wanderer and Turbolegs

    Actually thought that I had commented on this … but my had successfully closed down all windows before posting !  :(

    Started off with the four short palindromic relatives – and strangely enough didn’t click to it being a theme.  Because I got onto a roll with leads in every quadrant, didn’t end up finding this as hard as this setter can be and completed the grid-fill in about half the time as normal.  In the end, did not parse BASSO properly – not seeing the BASSOON as the instrument – had BASS and erroneously justified the O from ‘not acceptable’, although it makes no sense now.

    Vaguely remembered TERBIUM but had to check that SANDOWN was a town on the Isle of Wight.  SCHMO was new – could be the spelling of the nickname of our current PM, Scott Morrison – spelt SCOMO here.  It was one of the last in along with TALIBAN, OMBRE and SATISFIED.

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