I found this one more difficult than many a Guardian Cryptic. Several of the entries seemed at first to have far too much clue for the answer, which is generally a sign that careful parsing is necessary. My favourite was 14/15, with its very unobvious anagram and misleading surface.
ACROSS
1 UMBRELLA STAND Anagram (‘redesigned’) of ‘at slumberland’.
10 ALL-STAR Charade of RATS (‘traitors’) + L (‘left’) + LA (Los Angeles, ‘US city’), all reversed (‘travelling west’).
11 PITCHER Double definition; the “bowler” in baseball.
12 IRISH Charade of IRIS (the flower, ‘flag’) + H (‘top of Hoist’).
14/15 YOUTH HOSTELLER Anagram (‘perhaps’) of ‘those let hourly’. That took quite a while to get, and was one of the last to go in.
16 PRICE WARS Envelope (‘in’) of RICE (‘basic food’) in PWARS, an anagram (‘fancy’) of ‘wraps’.
18 OVERSPEND A charade of OVERS PEND (‘cricket match unfinished?’). Overspend can be a noun, an instance of overspending.
19 SATYR Hidden (‘to some extent’) answer in ‘iS A TYRant’.
20 TRAVELLER Envelope (‘during’) of a charade (‘attended by’) of RAVE (‘party’) + LL (‘students’, L being a student driver) in TER[m] (‘short term’).
23 COPSE Envelope (‘trap’) of S (‘sun’) in COPE (‘manage’). A copse or coppice is a thicket, for example growing from the cut stumps of trees.
24 RATTLED Charade (‘middle of’) of ATTLE[e] (‘postwar PM, almost’) in RD (‘road’).
25 ROPED IN Definition (‘recruited’) with cryptic amplification.
26 UNPRESENTABLE Envelope (‘wearing’) of charade of PRESENT (‘now’) + AB (able-bodied, ‘sailors’) in UN + LE (a and the, ‘French articles’).
DOWN
2 MULTITUDE Anagram (‘could make’) of ‘tumult die’.
3 RETCH Homophone (‘reported’) of wretch (‘rat’). Cat as a verb means to vomit, or retch.
4/13 LORDS SPIRITUAL A cryptic definition that perhaps does not repay too close analysis. LORDS (‘cricket-loving’ and ‘members of an upper house’) SPIRITUAL (‘song’). The Lords Spiritual are bishops of the Church of England serving in the House of Lords.
5 AMPLIFIED Charade of A MP (‘a politician’) + envelope (‘held’) of ‘if’ in LIED (‘prevaricated’).
6 TATTINESS Charade of an envelope (‘collecting … in’) of TIN (‘can’) in TATE (‘gallery’; about the only one in Crosswordland) + SS (‘2 shillings’, from pre-decimal days).
7 NEHRU Charade (‘first’ indicating order) of NEH (hen, “bird’, reversed, ‘flying up’) + RU ( Rugby Union, about the only ‘game’ in town).The ‘well-known Indian’ is Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India after independence.
8 FAMILY DOCTORS Cryptic definition; ‘bad’ in the sense of unwell; ‘relations’ in the sense of FAMILY. Not an easy one to get, with the mostly nondesctipt crossing letters.
9 DRILL SERGEANT Charade of DRILL + SERGE (‘two types of cloth’) + [p]ANT[s] (‘pants with trimmed edges’).
16 PRECLUDES Envelope (containing’) of C (musical ‘key’) in PRELUDES (‘pieces of music’). Definition ‘bars’ as a verb, not musical.
17 ANTIPODAL Charade of ANTI (‘not liking’)+ PO (‘river’ – an Italian change from Cam, Dee, Exe etc.) + DAL (lad, ‘boy rises’). I weas held up for a while by failing to take heed of ‘rises’, and entering ANTIPODES.
21 ACTON ACT[i]ON (‘court case’ ‘one’s lost’). My home town, in the west of London (‘part of capital’).
22 RE-RUN Charade of RE (reversal, ‘climbing’, of ER, ‘queen’) + RUN (‘ladder’, as in a stocking).
23 CUPPA Charade of CUP (‘award’) + PA (‘father’).
A good blog, Peter, and folk are going to need it today. The Quiptic’s meant to be a gentle Monday morning warm-up for experienced solvers and an accessible challenge for improvers. This wasn’t that. I agree with you: this was a medium-difficulty daily cryptic.
I didn’t enjoy it much. ‘Cat’ for throw up? It’s not in any of my dictionaries and I’ve never heard of it. If you’re going to clue IRIS on ‘top’ of H then it’s got to be a down clue, in my opinion. ‘Capital’ for London is bad enough, but who outside the M25 has ever heard of Acton? (Sorry, Peter, I’m sure it’s delightful.)
I did like ANTIPODAL.
Thanks Peter.
I’d never heard of ‘cat’ in this context, either, and didn’t see the parsing of 10ac.
A few of the long answers were educated guesses – in 8d. I assumed ‘practice’ referred to lawyers or doctors and took it from there, and with 4/13, I assumed it must be ‘Lords?, but must have typed it in wrong, as the ‘check’ button erased it, which held me up for a time.
I liked 9 and 16d.
K’s D – I must admit that at one stage a slight feeling of panic did creep in, when so many answers did not present themselves with the readiness I expected from Nutmeg’s last outing. In 12A, the ‘top’ refers to the manipulation of ‘hoist’; I had not noticed this before, but Nutmeg eschews the use of ‘on top’ in favour of the more orientationally neutral ‘at top’.
Stella – Now you bring my attention to 10A, I note that I had left out the salient reversal. Now you don’t have to stand on your head to get the wordplay. I cannot say that I had across the usage of ‘cat’ before, but I was not too surprised to find it when I looked it up. Perhaps it is something I picked up from Ginger.
Thanks, Peter, for the explanation about IRISH. You’re right, of course – the clue does make sense and it was just my inability to parse it. I guess it’s just when you’re in a bit of a mard about the puzzle you look for flaws that aren’t there.
Thanks for the blog, Peter. Glad to see I’m not the only one who’d never heard of cat = retch.
Apart from that, I quite liked this puzzle – though as Kathryn’s Dad says, it did seem a bit harder than the average Quiptic.
I knew cat = be sick from Evelyn Waugh’s ‘A Handful of Dust’, where John, the hero’s young son, shocks his nanny by using it.