Clue Review: LC2 (Down)

"In the next couple of days months"

This post is part two of the clue review for my most recent crossword. You can read part one here.

DOWN CLUES

1 Male with vocal following gives the lesson (5) 
lesson = MORAL ~ M (for male) + ORAL (vocal)
I'm not really a big fan of the way that many crosswords tend to rely very heavily on the one-letter shortenings of seemingly any word, but I feel like male and female are shortened to M and F on forms or toilet doors and the like that they're probably fine. They're so common that they make for very easy to solve clues. I liked the 'following' here, which doesn't strictly do anything in the clue since oral was naturally going to follow the M anyway, but it just makes the surface reading of the clue so must nicer.

2 Digital scanner hitch (5) 
THUMB ~ Double definition (Digital scanner / hitch)
Ha! Digital. I crack myself up.

3 British PM to shout out loud (5)
 British PM = BLAIR ~ blare (shout) homophone (out loud)
I toyed with a bunch of options to avoid using yet another homophone for this one, but in the end none of the things that I could come up with worked as well. With the combination of a very obvious straight clue and a simple homophone like this, I'd be surprised if this wasn't the very first entry in most solver's grids.

4 Degenerates fire ultimate projectiles (4)
Degenerates = EBBS ~ last letter (ultimate) of fir(E) + BBS (projectiles)
I feel like ebbs is one of those answers that you just see in crosswords a lot, but that could just be my overexposure to American-style crosswords, where that sweet E _ _ S shape is so very useful. I really enjoy when a definition has an utterly different alternative that you can meld with the wordplay so nicely to so effectively misdirect the solver. I wasn't completely confident that one spells the projectiles from a BB gun like this, half expecting beebees, which wouldn't have worked, but apparently this is fine.

5 Capital built out of parts of its predecessor (5)
TOKYO ~ Anagram of KYOTO.
Another not very cryptic clue, in that you have to effectively know the answer in order to reverse engineer it. It's a nice little piece of trivia, I suppose, but I'm not very happy with it in my crossword.

6 Cabin with energy load (5) 
load = CARGO ~ charade of CAR (cabin #for a ferris wheel, maybe?) + GO (energy)
Frankly a little disappointed that I couldn't come up with a classical reference to Jason and the Argonaut's here, but there'll be another opportunity some time. I also would have liked to have the surface hint towards load as a verb rather than the noun definition for an extra little bit of misdirection.

7 Abuse slandering take-out diner (5) 
abuse = SLANG ~ subtraction (take-out) of DINER from SLA(-nderi)NG
So you take out the letters of diner from slandering to get slang. Simple enough, but since there's not an indicator to say that you take out the constituent parts and not just some synonym for diner it just feels a little sloppy.

12 No news about known town brownnose (6) 
brownnose = KOWTOW ~ subtraction of Ns (abbr. of news) from K(-n)OW(-n) TOW(-n)
As soon as I'd written the words 'known town brown' on my page I knew that I had to make them work together somehow, and the joy of doing so was enough for me to get over my dislike of using words to clue single letters like I've used 'news' here.

14 Bar from exploring otherwise (5) 
Bar = INGOT ~ hidden in (from) explorING OTherwise
Gotta have a hidden clue or two in there, if only for how frustrating it is to stare at a clue for ages only to realise the answer has literally been staring you in the face the whole time. Never gets old.

15 Boredom regarding Nintendo console announcement (5) 
Boredom = ENNUI ~ homophone (announcement) of 'on' (regarding) and 'wii' (Nintendo console)
I will never get sick of using 'wii' in crossword clues. I think this is the third time that I've done it, but it's the first time that I've used it as a homephone and I'm really pleased at how this one turned out.

16 Orange, bumbling ass... (6) 
ass = ONAGER ~ ORANGE anagram (bumbling)
I was going to use the siege engine rather than the equine for this one, but when I realised the orange connection there was only ever one way this one was going to go.

18 ...moons First Lady unrepentantly, necessarily arousing ridicule (5) 
moons = LUNAR ~ Heads (first) of (L)ady (U)nrepentantly (N)ecessarily (A)rousing and (R)idicule
Another example of  a case where the surface reading of the clue drew an interesting enough picture that I was okay with the definition being a little unorthodox, especially given that it's an easy clue. One can't really have 'moons' for 'lunar', or 'first' instead of 'firsts', but I'm happy to give myself a pass here.

19 Now following up a German relative (5) 
relative = NIECE ~ EIN ('a' in German) vertically (up) + CE (now #abb. common era)
Always a bit wary of using things like ein/eine and le/de given that there's multiple options for them, but finding new ways to clue the exceeding common crossword clue of 'niece' is never easy. I wouldn't be surprised to find that multiple constructors have already used this exact clue.

24 Paperback skirting father's paroxysm (5) 
paroxym = SPASM ~ reversal of MS ('paper' back) containing (skirting) PA'S (father's)
Does anyone actually call their dad 'pa'? It's one of those crosswords things that we all pretty much accept, but it feels like a usage that you just don't hear these days. Papa, sure. Pa? Anyways, I liked using 'paperback' like this, even if it's yet another thing that makes the Ximineans frown at me. People who like cryptics like wordplay, what could be wrong about adding MORE wordplay?

25 Steal more work for automaton (5) 
automaton = ROBOT ~ Rob (steal) + OT (more work #OverTime)
I had some objections to using OT for overtime, and I have to admit it's a less common than I thought. Annoying, because I clue construction like this works a lot better than trying to shoehorn the old testament in there.

26 Endemic blatant insiders rise up (5) 
Endemic = NATAL ~ middle (insiders) of b(LATAN)t reversed (rise up)
Natal is a great word that I have always enjoyed wrapping my mouth around since I first met it in a Christmas carol. I generally have a bit of a weak spot for good reversals, so I was glad when I notied this one.

28 Font is in a cave to the north (5) 
font = ARIAL ~ A + LAIR (cave) reversed (to the North)
I know, I know, it's a typeface. You knew what I meant though, right?

29 Tool practice (5) 
DRILL ~ Double definition (Tool / practice)
I was a bit dubious about finishing the crossword with three double-definitions in a row, but hopefully most people don't solve puzzles by running through all the acrosses and then all the downs, so maybe it wasn't so obvious to people actually solving the puzzles. There were probably too many double definitions in this one, but when they work, they work.

30 A fraction of the last Tim Tam (5) 
NINTH ~ Double definition (A fraction / the last Tim Tam)
I was right chastised for this one, given that I'd forgotten that not ALL packets of Tim Tams have nine biscuits, as the plainer flavours still have eleven. I could have gotten away with it too, if I'd only added a 'fancy' into the clue. Gotta have some specific Aussie knowledge in their somewhere but in this case I was hoist on my own petard.

32 Get on the table and blend (4) 
MELD ~ Double definition (Get on the table / blend)
A reference to the game of canasta and similar games here that would have been tricky if you don't speak the specific language of those games. We could all do with a friendly game of cards at the moment, I think. I wonder if there's a decent online canasta server...

Thanks for dropping by. I'm hoping to spend a little more time here in the next few weeks instead of spending it all mindlessly scrolling social media, so hopefully the next post isn't months away again.