FT 12,883/Sleuth
Posted by smiffy on September 26th, 2008
Across
1 WIN,NIP,E.G. - “nip”=arrest is new to me. I guess it’s a tamer version of “nab”
6 GORGON - (no grog)<
9 C[-h]AMBER
10 LOO(S)E,NED
12 SCEPTICISM - (MEP’s critics)* - r
14 GUNSMITH - cryptic def’n
16 [-c]ARGO - first of today’s old chestnuts.
18 JUD[-e],O - ref Jude the Obscure
19 NAVI,GATE - “Russian” is a somewhat presumptive indicator for Ivan. I suspect that Mr Lendl (the tennis playing cyborg from the 1980s) would take issue.
21 FU(LL)N,ELSON - (Noel’s)*. A wrestling “hold”, although I doubt you’d see it much in evidence at a WWE event. Its heyday probably coincided with the World of Sport televisual era.
22 SURF - homophone of “serf”
24 S(LOV)AKI,A - Saki is the “writer” in question
26 AGEN,DA - The town of Agen seems to ring quite familiar with me, but god knows why.
27 OYSTER - hidden
28 E(VICTI)ON
Down
2 IN[-s]ANE
3 NOBODY’S FOOL - (Old boy, son of)*
4 PORT SA(I)D
5 G(OLD)EN H,AND,SHAKE - A phrase that sooooo 20th century. In these days of executive ignominy its all about Golden Parachutes.
6 GI,OTTO - I know him more for his ability to have a space probe named after him than for his original day job.
8 OVER(SIGH)T
13 CHARGE S(HE)ET - HE= His Excellency
15 UN,US,U,ALLY - I’m a little uncomfortable with “NY organisation”=UN, but I suppose it could be argued that the “Based in…” prefix is implied.
17 SVENGALI - (evangelist)* - outer letters. According to the media, Svengalis seem to come only in the form of pop music producers these days.
20 B[-l]EAKER - which also happens to be the name of one of the true unsung heroes of The Muppet Show
23 RODE,O - the second half of today’s harvest of old chestnuts.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
1ac: I was thinking along the lines of ‘nip in the bud’ - and ‘arrest’ in the sense of slowing down or stopping.
September 26th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
1a One of the definitions for ‘nip’ in Chambers is ‘arrest’ (slang).
September 26th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Thanks guys. I suspected I was on slightly the wrong wavelength for that element.
It was only when blogging that I actually read the clue properly and realised that it wasn’t a homophone one (I initially solved it by solely by virtue of having G for the last checking letter).
In the interests of expediency, I didn’t bother with an intro in my initial posting. But, for the record, I found this one quite enjoyable overall. It all seemed to hang together nicely, and the clues seemed to have a coherent tone.
September 26th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
The last sentence of Smiffy’s post at 3 exactly mirrors how I felt about the puzzle. Slightly easier than average for FT, liked SURF and FULL NELSON where ‘jest’ looked for a long time like it was part of an anagram.