Tricky enough one today, I found, taking me nearly four minutes over my target ten - as a comparison, I did yesterday's immediately before this and came in two minutes under. Not my finest performance: a series of semi-parsings, and a couple of made-up words bunged in for good measure. There was "codalie" for a while at 15d as a synonym for "wally" - an implausible looking word, although the "cod-" prefix was tempting. Worse was to come at 5d, where I dredged up King Manus the Forgotten from some ill-firing neuron somewhere. (It didn't come close to parsing, but there's bound to have been a King Manus at some point in human history.) This revealed the Unlucky! sign as the clock struck thirteen minutes, which was mildly satisfying. 16d held me up as well: "entice" didn't fit, but it seduced me sufficiently to make it my last correct one in. I also three-acrossed at 3ac, for no good reason whatsoever, and was tricked into using the wrong anagram indicator for a while at 14ac. Some very good clues, now that I look at it more closely, and it was in fact a lovely puzzle. Many thanks to Mara!
| Across | |
| 1 | Risk a second letter (4) |
| BETA - BET (risk) A | |
| 3 | Beginning to skate, took a fall — slipped up (8) |
| STUMBLED - S (beginning of Skate) TUMBLED (took a fall) | |
| 9 | Infoat the bottom? (3-4) |
| LOW-DOWN - double definition-ish | |
| 10 | Rover has no crackers (5) |
| NOMAD - NO, MAD (crackers) | |
| 11 | Ostentation comes initially in story, looking back (5) |
| ECLAT - C (Comes, initially) in TALE (story), reversed/looking back. Nice word, from the Old French esclater, to burst out - the OED gives a secondary sense of notoriety or scandal that I was unaware of, although a showy display is on the same spectrum. There's also the verb, to eclat: "to make notorious, bring into publicity", but expect a perplexed look if you shove that into a conversation. | |
| 12 | Throw Austen out (6) |
| UNSEAT - a nice anagram (out) of AUSTEN | |
| 14 | Unfortunate incident arose, being careless (13) |
| INCONSIDERATE - anagram (unfortunate) of INCIDENT AROSE. "Being careless" is an equally plausible anagram indicator - nice misdirection. | |
| 17 | Curry cold — very cold! (6) |
| BALTIC - BALTI (curry) C(old) | |
| 19 | Watch, maybe, to send back (5) |
| TIMER - REMIT (to send), back/reversed. Nice again. | |
| 22 | In fact, a long claw (5) |
| TALON - "In" the letters of facT A LONg | |
| 23 | Formerly large case (7) |
| EXAMPLE - EX (formerly) AMPLE (large). And very nice again. | |
| 24 | Muscular men mostly backed fee being revised (8) |
| BEEFCAKE - anagram (being revised) of "mostly" BACKE[d] FEE. The plural "men" threw me a bit, but I see "beefcake" can be singular or plural. It originally referred to the semi-naked photos of men thus equipped, being a play on the earlier "cheesecake", a 1920s term for alluring photos of women. So I've learnt that "cheesecake éclat" can be a lot more than simply a display of good cooking. | |
| 25 | Tolerate a beast (4) |
| BEAR - double definition. | |
| Down | |
| 1 | Fast traveller in news item (8) |
| BULLETIN - BULLET (fast traveller) IN | |
| 2 | Nothing in wet rubbish left drier (5) |
| TOWEL - O (nothing) in an anagram (rubbish) of WET; L (Left) | |
| 4 | Playful language getting not very far — yikes! (6-2-5) |
| TONGUE-IN-CHEEK - TONGUE (language) getting INCH (not very far) and EEK (yikes). Took me a while to separate "playful" and "language" in the (post-puzzle) parsing, not that "tongue-in-cheek" could be clued as "playful language". | |
| 5 | Old king, some person I met on the way up (5) |
| MINOS - "some" of the letters of perSON I Met, reversing/on the way up. | |
| 6 | Greek character embracing a dance (7) |
| LAMBADA - LAMBDA (Greek character) embracing A. This cropped up a couple of weeks ago in the Sunday Times puzzle. | |
| 7 | Remarkably odd, old old bird (4) |
| DODO - anagram (remarkably) of ODD, O (old) | |
| 8 | Cushion frequently seen under bottom of missus (6) |
| SOFTEN - OFTEN (frequently) seen under S (bottom of missuS) | |
| 13 | I agree to try and try again! (4,4) |
| HEAR HEAR - to hear a case = to try a case, repeat. Very nice! | |
| 15 | Fish, a whopper for Wally (7) |
| CHARLIE - CHAR (fish) LIE (whopper) - you should simply ignore the "a" here - take it as a linkword, a bit like 25ac. A Charlie is a wally/fool/simpleton/ass, as in "a right royal Charlie". I was unaware of (or had completely forgotten) this usage until it cropped up as recently as last Friday's 15x crossword. | |
| 16 | Seduce mate almost entirely the wrong way (6) |
| ENTRAP - PARTNER (mate), almost entirely = dock the last letter, the wrong way = reverse. This took a bit of post-puzzle parsing as well. | |
| 18 | Restorativenote (5) |
| TONIC - very nice double definition, as in a restorative, and the first note of a scale. | |
| 20 | Treasure finally found under different palm tree (5) |
| MAPLE - E (treasurE, finally) found under an anagram (different) of PALM. | |
| 21 | Hurt toe, perhaps, first in slippery bath (4) |
| STUB - S (first in Slippery) TUB (bath) | |