This puzzle has four 14-letter phrases, each of which are in two slots in the grid. I generally don’t like this kind of splitting but to the credit of the composer I must say that each of these four phrases are in the same column, the words divided only a single block. Only the parts of a 15-letter phrase are put in an across slot and a down slot.
I have not solved some three clues, answers to which are names. (On edit: These are provided by Persephone in the Comments section.)
Below, phrasal answers are given first.
1, 17 BANANA REPUBLIC – play on “hand” which is the term for a bunch of bananas.
4, 15 BEAT GENERATION – managed to solve with the crossings but I must confess that I have not heard of these personalities.
5, 27 BEHIND ONE’S BACK – CD
6, 14 MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE – anag. of ‘mind is ego’ in ‘mad’ (crazy) and ‘age’ (times) – His = God’s, “His like” being the def. – I am not sure if the def is perfect as the ans. is MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE and not just ‘God’s image’
8, 24 – CHINLESS WONDER – anag. of ‘swindler he cons’
Across
9 AHOY THERE – definitive – I got the first word of the phrase immediately but the second one took time.
10 ABASH – AB, ash (“little hASHish”, this device seems to be original and unusual)
11 AGAINST- Aga, in, st.
12 IBERIAN – I, be, r, Ian
13 ASS – A (very good), SS (bodyguard, short for Secret Service? Or Schutzstaffel, Ger.?)
17 RUING – ruin, G
18 NAN – two def. – short for nanny; Indian bread, also spelt ‘naan’.
19 TIMES – again two def. – X as in 8 x 4 are 32. I think x in the sense of ‘times’ is usually in lower case.
21 PUT IN PRISON – cha. of anag. of “turnip pi” (after deleting e from pie), son
23 NOW – read ‘regained’ as ‘re gained’; but is ‘re’ OK as rev. ind.?
25 Not solved
27 Not solved
28 IDAHO – rev. of had in Io (moon)
29 OSCILLATE – anag. of lost and Alice, “at sea” being the anagrind.
Down
2 Not solved
3 STANDING IN – stand-in(g) in – stand (“run-making partnership”), in (“at the crease”), g (“edge to groundsman”), “on as substitute” is the def., “broken by” is c/c ind. Surface reading is rather involved.
7 LA-DI-DA – Di in lad, A
16 INTANGIBLE – anag. of “iningtable” deleting D from “dining table”
20 MINUTIAE – I haven’t fully worked out the wordplay. Of course it is “nut” tucked between two institutions. “West” because the abbreviations are reversed?
22 TRIBAL – rib (“joke playfully”) in Tal (“chess champion”, Mikhail Tal)
28 GOON – two def. – thug, talk too much (go on)
Still not there at 4pm GMT!
Hello!
For the record:
25a BRIDGET (bridge + t), the lead character in the book/film Bridget Jones Diary;
27a BRITTEN (bitten around r), Benjamin Britten, famous 20th century composer and pianist;
2d KOWALSKI (ok, law reversed over ski), Stanley Kowalski, a character in Tennessee Williams “Streetcar Named Desire”
Like you, overall I thought it was a nice puzzle!
Hi Rishi
In 20dn, ‘west’ wouldn’t work to indicate reversal in a down clue. I thought it was I NUT I in MAE [West] but could find ‘I’ as an abbreviation only for ‘institute’, not ‘institution’.
Thanks, Eileen.
Chambers XWD: A Dictionary of Crossword Abbreviations does not give I = institution.
And I can’t think of an abbreviation where I = institution, while I can think of many where I = institute, such as the famous IITs in my country.
While Chambers Crossword Dictionary gives many abbreviations/acronyms where I = institute, there is none where I = institution.
The setter seems to have used an abbr. for the nonce.
Phrasal answers were split to give access to different areas of the grid, hopefully to aid rather than hinder solvers. Whether that was successful or not …
I = ‘institute or institution’ according to Chambers Online (the everyday usage one). I can’t remember exactly where I sourced it, but it was a standard abbrev in either Collins Lite or Chambers fat.
6/14 ac definition as in ‘we are His like’.
10 is AB/ AS/ H (little hashish).
13 (Hitler’s) bodyguard = SS
23 NOW regained as in ‘won back’.
All other queries as parsed by the contributors.