Well, I don’t know about you, but I found this hard. Some very good cluing by Kairos, and you have to say that this setter takes care with his surfaces; there were some good ones here. It was satisfying to complete it; but a step above the usual degree of difficulty for an IoS puzzle in my opinion. I think I’ve pinned everything down apart from one clue. I’m sure someone will ride to my rescue soon.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Girl returns with duke after working in American field
DIAMOND
A charade of DIAM for MAID reversed, ON for ‘working’ and D for ‘duke’. It’s referring to the diamond in a baseball field. Cissy’s game.
5 Spies arrest cook leaving southern republic
CROATIA
Kairos is asking you to take the S out of ROA[S]T and surround it by the CIA.
9 Job description written by trendy hospital visitor
INPATIENT
Lovely misleading surface. ‘Job description’ here is nothing to do with Human Resource Departments: it’s referring to the Biblical Job, who was renowned for his patience. So it’s a charade of IN and PATIENT.
10 Baby boy gets everything
TOTAL
A charade of TOT and AL for ‘boy’.
11 Met over a drink
DECAF
Coffee at its best, as the advert used to go. In fact, concise cluing at its best: a reversal of FACED.
12 A new singer sacks number one presenter
ANCHORMAN
A N CHO[I]RMAN.
13 Put in charge of various nutters
ENTRUST
(NUTTERS)*
15 Physical state of work included in note
ENTROPY
This is a word I did know, having studied sciences a long time ago, but it’s probably not a term that’s passed into public consciousness. I remember it as being to do with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of irreversibility: entropy cannot decrease. Defining entropy in two words is a brave move. If memory serves, Dormouse is our resident physicist, so if he or another scientist of that persuasion drops in, he can tell you whether it’s fair.
Whatever, it’s an insertion of OP for ‘work’ in ENTRY for ‘note’.
17 Extremely half-hearted friend hides sweet
ACUTELY
Another insertion, of CUTE in A[L]LY, or AL[L]Y, take your pick.
19 Ban broadcast about marketing feature
SUSPEND
And another insertion: of USP in SEND. USP is a marketing acronym for Unique Selling Point: what makes your mousetrap better than everyone else’s.
21 Spooner’s people quickly become deadpan
POKER FACE
I’m not a big fan of the Reverend’s clues, but this one is a Spoonerism of FOLK APACE.
23 Smash ball for a point
PRONG
No doubt a dd, but for the life of me I can’t see or discover why. Edit: Muffyword has kindly explained this one. PRANG is a crash and if you replace the A with an O (ball?) you get PRONG.
25 Poet’s description of emptiness is elliptical
OVOID
Another insertion, of O in OVID. Is O for ’emptiness’ acceptable? You decide.
26 Remove arresting officer for wearing a low-cut dress!
DÉCOLLETÉ
This setter likes insertions, although you’ve got to say the surface is a good’un. The indicator here is ‘arresting’ and it’s COL in DELETE, for the French term we’ve pinched into English for the type of dress where there’s a bit of cleavage on show.
27 Met Dons playing in final
ENDMOST
(MET DONS)*
28 Latvian queen’s literary culture
LETTERS
A charade of LETT and ER’S. LETTS are the ethnic group who were the original inhabitants of modern-day Latvia. In general use, the two terms are interchangeable.
Down
1 Degenerate son leaves fleece for daughter
DWINDLE
A replacement of D for S in SWINDLE for ‘fleece’.
2 Lavender jelly
ASPIC
A dd.
3 Educator’s historical home, a French flat?
OUT OF TUNE
A charade of OU for ‘Open University’, TOFT for ‘historical home’ and UNE for one of the French words for ‘a’. For ‘toft’, my SOED gives ‘a homestead, the site of a house and its outbuildings’. It also marks it as late middle English, which I guess is where the ‘historical’ bit is coming from.
4 Moulded into shape cadets I trained
DIE-CAST
(CADETS I)*
5 Audible reminder to stimulate skin
CUTICLE
A homophone (‘audible’) of CUE TICKLE. I’d always had CUTICLE down as the half-moon thing at the base of your nails (which it is); but it’s also a synonym for the epidermis, so fair play.
6 Reveal the same thing in defeat
OUTDO
A charade of OUT for ‘reveal’ and DO for the abbreviation for ‘ditto’.
7 Temple too maybe a cult object
TOTEM POLE
(TEMPLE TOO)*
8 Fruit cored and nasty when discarded in heaps
APLENTY
A charade of AP[P]LE and N[AS]TY. This clue relies on the equivalence of ‘when’ and ‘as’.
14 Body took to the water, we hear, in a major way
TRUNK ROAD
A charade of TRUNK and ROAD for a homophone (‘we hear’) of ROWED.
16 Top titles coined for Alan Shepard once?
TEST PILOT
(TOP TITLES)* with ‘coined’ as the anagrind. The American Alan Shepard was the second man into space after Yuri Gagarin; his other claim to fame is that he’s the only member of Homo sapiens to have played golf on the moon.
17 Like T-tom’s cracking greeting
APPROVE
An insertion of P-PRO in AVE. You have to know two things here: that AVE is a Latin greeting meaning Hail! (think AVE MARIA); and that TOM is a slang word for a prostitute, as is PRO. Luckily I did know these two things, but it still took me an age to see what was going on.
18 In the beginning ready to run
YEAR DOT
(READY TO)*
19 Model held up in acrylic net stockings
STENCIL
Hidden reversed in acryLIC NET Stockings. ‘Held up’ works because it’s a down clue.
20 Stray from research into excavations
DIGRESS
An insertion of RES for ‘research’ in DIGS.
22 Men returning to God for show
RODEO
A reversal of OR for ‘men’ or ‘other ranks’ and DEO for the Latin word for ‘God’.
24 Stout old porter briefly supping bit of stout
OBESE
An insertion (‘supping’) of S for the first letter of ‘stout’ in BEE[R], all preceded by O. A nice surface to finish off.
Many thanks to Kairos for today’s prize puzzle.
Thanks for the blog, Pierre. I agree this was harder than many IoS puzzles, but good fun. My favourite was APLENTY.
Re 23 ac PRONG: it is prang (smash) with O (ball) for A (a).
Well, I don’t have the paper to hand now, but I think I finished it and I don’t recall it being excessively hard.
I’m hardly a physicist, just have a physics degree, but “physical state” was OK for me. Entropy is often considered as a measure of how much disorder there is in a system.
Thanks, Muffyword. I’ll amend the blog. O for emptiness, O for ball: our circular friend is centre stage today.
Thanks for the blog, Pierre. I also found this quite difficult, especially to parse many of the clues I solved such as 21a, 17d, 14d, 2d, 6d, 19a.
I liked a lot of the clues: 3d, 11a, 18d, 8d, 5a, 5d, 26a, 20d, 23a (last in).
New words for me today were DIAMOND = a baseball field, TOFT = home, USP = unique selling point, ASPIC = lavender, TOM = prostitute.
Many thanks, Pierre.
I suspected aspic for jelly in 2d but was unfamiliar with any association between aspic and lavender and lacked the means to look it up, so I had to resort to cheating to confirm the S and the I. This opened the floodgates to the only remaining NW corner. Other than that, I found the puzzle straightforward with just the right amount of challenge to help fill the long gap between proper puzzles in the Guardian from Saturday to Tuesday.
Thanks, Kairos.
Thanks Pierre. One comment – 1ac only works if the definition is “in American field” rather than just “American field” because the baseball diamond is only part of the playing area and is never used to describe the whole.
I found the NW the toughest to unlock, and overall I thought it was a lot harder than the usual Indy Sunday puzzle.
Thanks, Andy. Just shows how much I know about baseball.
I not only have a physics degree, I’m a baseball fan, and I never spotted that. (Assumed Kairos had got it wrong, I’m afraid, so I’m pleased to be corrected on this.)
I’m far from an expert on baseball but Collins dict says ‘diamond’ is the ‘whole playing field’ as well as ‘the square formed by the four bases’.
I don’t think that has been my experience listening to American baseball commentators, but I’ll have to listen more attentively in future. I think they refer to the outfield, the infield and the diamond, but now I’m not sure.
Yes, harder than the average IoS but good stuff. I thought 25ac was a cracker of a clue!
From my recollection of thermodynamics lectures in my student days (long gone, alas!) I would say that entropy is a quantity rather than a state. Chambers would seem to agree, giving one definition as ” a measure of the disorder of a system”.
Thanks, Kairos and Pierre.
But surely, Allan, when something is disordered, you say it is in state. 🙂
nmsindy@9 – after reading your comment I checked a few of the online American dictionaries and they also say that “diamond” can refer to either the whole baseball field or just the infield, so I stand corrected and the clue works either way. However, I would also add that in all my years of following baseball and communicating with my American friends about it I have never heard the whole field referred to as the diamond.
I did hint in comment no 7 that I didn’t know much about baseball, and following others’ comments, I rest my case. But I rest my case also that this was a good puzzle from Kairos, and others seem to have agreed.
Many thanks to Pierre for the dissection and encouagement and to all for the feedback.
Chambers describes the diamond as the baseball field or the part between the bases but apologies to those who follow the game closely and reserve its use to the infield.
Emptiness (nothing) for O was a little cheeky but fitted the clue and hopefully was not too much of a stretch.
Entropy is more problematic and gives rise to a variety of descriptions. The best introduction to the subject is undoubtedly Flanders and Swann’s “First and Second Laws”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnbiVw_1FNs
Until the next time
I could be wrong but I read VOID as emptiness. O void being the poet’s description of it….
Enjoyable challenge in today’s i. Like Bron I was surprised that the poetic “O Void …” in 25A wasn’t picked up by the earlier bloggers (too distracted by baseball, I guess).
As a physicist, I’d agree that “entropy” is a property of a state, not itself a state. Indeed in statistical mechanics, the entropy of a system is defined in terms of the number of states accessible to the system.
Showing off a little, I also did Latin at school, and recognised in 22D that DEO means “to God”, which is the wording of the clue. RO-DEUS doesn’t fit …