Another enjoyable puzzle by a Tuesday regular. Thanks to Phssthpok. Definitions are underlined in the clues. [[The pictures at the bottom have unidentified links to the puzzle. Please enclose any comments on them in double brackets. Thank you.]]
Across
1 Direction to confiscate chief’s fighting fund (3,5)
WAR CHEST : WEST(a direction) containing(to confiscate) ARCH(chief;principal).
5 For part of the weekend, finally swapped dessert (6)
SUNDAE : “Sunday”(part of the weekend) with its last letter changed to(finally swapped) “e”.
10 Broke epidermis over bone (5)
SKINT : SKIN(the epidermis;the largest human organ) plus(over) T(as in the steak which contains a bone shaped like a T, and called, well, a T-bone steak).
Answer: British slang for being penniless.
11 Broadcasts vehicle on bombing raid (3-6)
AIR-STRIKE : AIRS(broadcasts, on the radio or television) + TRIKE(short for a tricycle).
12 Make up stalker’s oral confession (3,6)
EYE SHADOW : Homophone of(oral) “I shadow”(a confession by a stalker).
13 Alien broken by pain in country (5)
EGYPT : ET(abbrev. for “extra-terrestrial”;an alien from another planet) containing(broken by) GYP(severe pain).
14 Republicans get this woman a small animal (6)
GOPHER : GOP(abbrev. for “Grand Old Party”, a term for the US Republican Party) plus(get) HER(pronoun for “this woman”).
15 Determined to get sedated after treatment (4-3)
DEAD-SET : Anagram of(after treatment) SEDATED.
18 Break off from chorus (7)
REFRAIN : Double defn: 1st: To stop engaging (although the answer implies holding back from engaging in the first place); and 2nd: A recurring part of a song.
20 Does tipping over ingredient of potion aid a recovery by some degrees? (6)
RADIAN : Reversal of(tipping over) and hidden in(ingredient of) “potion aid a recovery “.
Answer: A unit of measurement for the angles between two lines or surfaces, equivalent to 57°, to the nearest degree.
22 Sloping edge of chewable leaf has new central axis (5)
BEZEL : “betel”(a leaf from the betel plant that is chewed with other ingredients, including a betel nut, mainly by South East Asians) with its middle letter replaced by(has new central) “z”(an axis in the Cartesian coordinate system).
24 Saturday evening is not a small piece (9)
WEEKNIGHT : WEE(small) KNIGHT(a piece in the game of chess).
Answer: What Saturday evening is not.
25 Dear old lover’s wistful (9)
EXPENSIVE : EX(a former lover) + PENSIVE(wistful;dreamily thoughtful). Nice surface.
26 Room at the top for contents of network (5)
ATTIC : The inner letters of(contents of) “lattice”(a structure whose members are arranged in a regular network pattern).
27 Quiet time gets agreed to be withdrawn the most (6)
SHYEST : [ SH(an interjection to request or urge for silence) + T(abbrev. for “time”) ] containing(gets) YES!(agreed!)
28 Where to grow fruit or vegetables (8)
ORCHARDS : OR + CHARDS(beets with large leaves and thick stalks used as vegetables).
Down
1 Was Edward drunk? (6)
WASTED : WAS + TED(a short form for “Edward”).
Answer: Slang for “drunk”.
2 Delayed making of a friend (6,3)
RAINED OFF : Anagram of(making) OF A FRIEND.
Answer: Of an outdoor event, delayed or postponed by rain.
3 Land knockout punch and further punishment to make the news (3,3,9)
HIT THE HEADLINES : [HIT THE HEAD](to punch the head and knock one senseless) plus(and further) LINES(punishment for schoolchildren).
4 Belittle success by German authority (7)
SLANDER : S(abbrev. for “success”) plus(by) LÄNDER(German for a state authority).
Answer: In belittling someone, you could be slandering him/her.
6 Wrongly apprehend: taught the wrong way (2,3,6,4)
UP THE GARDEN PATH : Anagram of(Wrongly) APPREHEND: TAUGHT.
7 Regularly swap hands when milking cows here (5)
DAIRY : “daily”(regularly, with a frequency of 1 day) with “l”(abbrev. for the left hand) replaced by(swap) “r”(abbrev. for the right hand).
8 Project by art gallery is lacking bite (8)
EDENTATE : EDEN(the Project that is a visitor attraction in Cornwall, essentially a multiple greenhouse complex) plus(by) TATE(the art gallery in London).
Answer: Without teeth.
9 Had workers with divided beliefs (6)
CREWED : W(abbrev. for “with”) contained in(divided) CREED(a system of beliefs).
16 Massacre in Rome’s capital followed rioting by the Gauls (9)
SLAUGHTER : 1st letter of(…’s capital) “Rome” placed below(followed, in a down clue) anagram of(rioting by) THE GAULS.
17 Without one blip, Morse solved puzzles (8)
PROBLEMS : Anagram of(solved;decoded) [ “blip, Morse ” minus
(Without) “I”(Roman numeral for “one”) ]. Nice surface of Inspector Morse solving crimes effortlessly (and doing crossword puzzles at the same time).
19 Novice born before widespread broadband internet initially introduced (6)
NEWBIE : NEE(indicating the name of a married woman she was born with) containing(… introduced) 1st letters, respectively, of(initially) “widespread broadband internet “.
20 Mammal‘s eggs found beside two rivers (3-4)
ROE-DEER : ROE(eggs of fish or crustaceans) placed above(found beside, in a down clue) DEE(any of the rivers with the same name in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Australia) + R(abbrev. for “river”, the second in the answer).
21 Is bogged down by small parasites (6)
STICKS : S(abbrev. for “small”) TICKS(small parasitic arachnids living on the skin of warm blooded mammals).
23 Quick fastener goes on front of pyjamas (5)
ZIPPY : ZIP(the fastener on the fly, found on trouser fronts) placed above(goes on, in a down clue) 1st two letters of(front of) “pyjamas “. Nicely ironic surface – it would be really strange to find a zip on a pair of pyjamas.
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Thanks scchua! I parsed 1d as PAST (Was) ED (Edward) – which is slang for very drunk. And thus spent some trying moments on 1ac while the rest of the crossword was done
Also, I thought 4d was relatively a weak clue – belittle and slander dont quite line up perfectly ?
Thanks, scchua & Phssthpok. I managed to solve this without aids, but the two “remove & replace” clues (5a, 7d) gave me some pause. I thought “here” in 7d was sufficient to indicate that DAIRY (vice DAILY) was the solution. But, IMHO, 5a required 8d to resolve the SUNDAE/SUNDAY ambiguity. Perhaps “In” (vice “For”) would have made it clearer. After spending the last few years learning UK acronyms (CID, NUM, etc.), it was nice to see an American one in 14a!
[[Pic 1 is Groucho Marx. I doubt this is what you had in mind, but one of his famous quips is “One morning I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got into my pyjamas I’ll never know.” (See 23d.)
Pic 2 is The Bangles, who sang “Walk Like an EGYPTian.”
Pic 3 is Bill Murray in Caddyshack, where his character, Carl Spackler, waged war against a GOPHER.]]
Thanks Phssthpok for a very enjoyable puzzle and scchua for the blog.
10ac: A very small grumble here – to me “over” only really works to mean “followed by” in a down clue. If possible I would have liked the setter to transpose the grid to accommodate this clue, but I am not sure how much freedom FT setters have to do this.
4dn: LANDER (with the umlaut) is plural of LAND, which means “state”. Are people happy with “authority” as a sort of collective singular? On balance, I think I am, but as always I have no quarrel with those whose views differ from mine.
7dn: A more serious grumble here. I think this clue is ambiguous between DAILY and DAIRY, and the ambiguity is not resolved by checked letters.
Please note that my overall comment “very enjoyable puzzle” takes the above grumbles into account.
[[Hi Keeper, a hint: it’s not necessary to look for another quip besides what’s given.]]
Thanks, scchua, and to Phssthpok as usual. I wasn’t very keen on Lander (plural) — ‘authorities’ would have been a much purer match. And I wasn’t very keen on belittle = slander, either. Put that’s a nitpick, because the answer was obvious anyway. Great fun, thanks.
Keeper @3: I neglected to check for new comments after taking a long time to draft mine @4. On reflection, I think I agree that 5ac is ambiguous. Had Phssthpok started “For this part …”, I think the clue would definitely give only SUNDAY. I am not sure that the problem is solved by writing “In” instead of “For”.
My original thought on 7dn was that “here” was enough to resolve the ambiguity, but after some reflection I decided that it was not quite enough, although I am reasonably sure that DAIRY is the intended solution.
[[The hint did the trick, scchua. The quip is an example of a GARDEN PATH sentence, which, after reading the Wikipedia entry, seems like a common tool of cryptic crossword setters!]]
Since I’m here, I’ll add my voice to those not quite happy with “authority” (singular) used to clue LANDER (plural). But that didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the puzzle.
Phssthpok seems to have used ‘get’ to indicate two different instructions
In 14a ‘gets’ means to place (her) AFTER GOP
In 27a ‘gets’ means to place yes INSIDE sh+t
Is this acceptable?
Also with 23D ‘front of pyjamas’ I would have preferred something like ‘pyjama tops’ to indicate that it was more than just the first letter that was needed.
That said I thought that this was a very good puzzle.
Thanks to Scchua and Phssthpok