I found this a bit of a struggle, particularly in the top half of the puzzle. There were a few slightly obscure answers and word associations.
I didn’t help myself by initially putting Lady Day for 8 down and the deceptive parsing of 1 down (which looked like a word for porter around T) had me stumped for ages. I found 7 down quite interesting because there appear to be two answers which work equally well – I can’t see how you could distinguish between awake and aware.
| Across | ||
| 1 | TRUMPET STOP | Better set up cover for organ control (7,4) |
| Trump + set* + top | ||
| 7 | AIL | Miss France leaves upset (3) |
| [F]ail. | ||
| 9 | UNION | Peacekeepers’ boss returning for wedding (5) |
| UN + (No I)< | ||
| 10 | MELODRAMA | It may feature emotional role with madam (9) |
| &lit -(Role + madam)* | ||
| 11 | PLAINSONG | Frank’s playing German church music (9) |
| Plain’s + on + G(erman) | ||
| 12 | CREED | Principles of mediocre editor (5) |
| Hidden in “medioCRE EDitor” | ||
| 13 | RAIN | Gunners’ stylish volley (4) |
| RA + in. I think rain here is used in the sense of “rain blows on something”. | ||
| 14 | MY FAIR LADY | Woman from posh part of London ignores first American musical (2,4,4) |
| M[a]yfair lady | ||
| 18 | MONOGRAPHS | Specialist books: Rebuilding Phonograms (10) |
| Phonograms* | ||
| 19 | SCAM | Some computers returned in dodgy scheme (4) |
| Macs< | ||
| 22 | GUILT | Clear about the Italian’s culpability (5) |
| Gut around il. Gut is used as a verb in the sense of to gut something. | ||
| 24 | LIVE IN SIN | Cohabit, as it happens, in Southern Indiana (4,2,3) |
| Live + in + S(outhern) In(diana) – rather a dated expression in the modern world. | ||
| 26 | HYPOTONIC | Tiny pooch suffering, lacking muscle tone (9) |
| (Tiny pooch)* | ||
| 27 | AFRIT | Legendary creature attending around end of the working week (5) |
| At (=attending) around Fri(day). | ||
| 28 | TOY | Closed with unknown play (3) |
| To(=closed) + Y. | ||
| 29 | DUSTY MILLER | Originally study factory owner’s plant (5,6) |
| Study* + miller | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | THUMPER | Porter carries tons – a big lie? (7) |
| T(ons) on (being carried by) humper. | ||
| 2 | URINATION | The act of going into a ruin is misinterpreted (9) |
| (Into a ruin)* | ||
| 3 | PINING | Longing to see province take part in online test (6) |
| NI in ping – to ping a computer is a send a test message to it to confirm it is connected to the network. | ||
| 4 | TEMPO | Allegro maybe encountered travelling north over river (5) |
| Met< + Po | ||
| 5 | TELEGRAPH | Signal originally heard after English side’s caught in ambush (9) |
| E + leg in trap + h[eard] | ||
| 6 | PEDICURE | Doctor’s removing top in virgin’s treatment (8) |
| [M]edic in pure | ||
| 7 | AWAKE | Conscious of reverence surrounding a king (5) |
| Awe around a K, but could equally well be Awe around a R to give aware. | ||
| 8 | LEAP DAY | Springtime opened up opportunity for women? (4,3) |
| &lit. If you open up (separate) springtime, you get words for leap and day. The clue refers to Feb 29th, when traditionally women are allowed to propose to men. | ||
| 15 | YEARLINGS | Time with Heather’s racehorses (9) |
| Year + ling’s. | ||
| 16 | ANCESTRAL | Lancaster’s illegitimate according to inheritance (9) |
| Lancaster* | ||
| 17 | AGITATED | Anxious Australian soldier thanks Edward (8) |
| A(ustralian) + GI + ted | ||
| 18 | MUGSHOT | Print Starbucks’ warning? (7) |
| DD/CD – mug’s hot might be a warning given at Starbucks’ (except that they normally use paper cups). | ||
| 20 | MINSTER | Man going round Northern church (7) |
| Mister around N | ||
| 21 | KIGALI | Briefly sleep with first lady in African capital! (6) |
| Ki[p] + gal I (a sort of colloquial first lady) | ||
| 23 | IMPLY | Hint‘s easily uncovered (5) |
| [S]imply | ||
| 25 | VICHY | In Germany I may invade abandoned varsity town in France (5) |
| Ich (German first person pronoun) in v[arsit]y | ||
*anagram
Good for a Monday with enough difficult ones to get me thinking. I took the def. for 7 to be ‘Conscious of’ in which case I think AWARE is better, but I see what you mean about AWAKE being an alternative correct answer if the def. is just ‘Conscious’. I missed the &lit interpretation of LEAP DAY, but liked the clue anyway, along with MUGSHOT, THUMPER and the wordplay for KIGALI. Horticultural knowledge increased by +1 – always useful for cryptics if nothing else – with DUSTY MILLER.
Thank you to Kairos and Neal H.
Thanks, Neal, for blogging.
All was going swimmingly until, like Neal, I got stuck up North. Putting RUINATION instead of URINATION didn’t help (yes, muppetry, I know); I also had AWARE, which works perfectly; and then I had a stab at MEGAHOT for 18dn, which is also muppetry but kind of worked in my head at the time. AFRIT also had me beat.
Not my favourite ever Kairos, but with him being (as far as I know) a man of the cloth, I’m always on the lookout for solutions like TRUMPET STOP, PLAINSONG, CREED, MINSTER. Oh, and also maybe GUILT and LIVE IN SIN.
I’ll be looking out for astronomy, classical music and books in Phi’s Friday puzzle.
Thanks to the setter.
I thought this was good Monday fare-only niggle was yearlings for racehorses. Otherwise-jolly fine.
This took some time, not because of the difficulty of the puzzle but because of the imperfections of the Indy site. It just won’t accept any input via Firefox, even with adblocker disabled, so I installed Chrome and tried with that; it worked but the adverts made it so slow that I gave up in frustration, printed it off and finished it in hard copy. And uninstalled Chrome.
As for the puzzle itself, I found it pretty straightforward, though I was held up briefly by putting MEDICINE (MEDIC + [f]INE – though ‘fine’ isn’t exactly a synonym for ‘virgin’) in 6dn. PLAINSONG and MUGSHOT were my favourites.
Thanks, Kairos and NealH.
Thank you Kairos, this was much more accessible for a Monday than some recent weeks. Just to be different I was held up in the South West corner, but I rejoined the herd for AWARE/AWAKE.
Never heard of AFRIT, apart from unhappy associations with the last female Tory leader.
Whatever.
Thanks to NealH and Kairos
Afrit is a revered name in crossword history. Afrit is the pseudonym of crossword compiler Alistair Ferguson Ritchie (1890-1954), a predecessor of Ximenes. Think Listener puzzles.
Well done Kairos for the tribute, and thanks Neal for the blog.
Further to Conrad’s comment at #6, Afrit is, I think, the author of the crossword injunction “You need not mean what you say, but you must say what you mean”
allan_c@4:
Reinstall chrome, and then once you’ve loaded the crossword, press and hold the ‘ctrl’ key, then while holding that, press and hold the ‘alt’ key, and then while holding those two (!) press the ‘i’ key. Then let go of all three.
This will launch ‘developer mode’ which is an extra panel that will come up somewhere on your screen. At the top of that panel you should see a menu with the word ‘network’ in. Click it, and then at the bottom of the panel you should find the words ‘network throttling’ and a little drop down menu. Select ‘offline’ from that drop down menu, and all your ad-loading problems should disappear!
Particularly useful if you’re on a slow connection (which I am – currently ensconsed in hospital for the indeterminate…)
Hope this helps.
Will
Edit – I’m an idiot. It’s ctrl, then SHIFT, then i.
Apologies.
I rather liked this. Pity about the ambiguity in 7dn. Nice to have first lady not = EVE for once.
Wukka@9
On chrome, I just disconnect the internet connection until I have finished, which works the same.
Rullytully@11
I can’t argue with your method for simplicity, but for someone who needs to Google every other word (as I do!) there is the advantage of being able to have the internet running in all your other tabs.
I’m in on the AWAKE/ AWARE uncertainty.
Re LEAP DAY I’m afraid that’s not an &lit clue at all. It has a definition that stands alone. There’s a lot of confusion about these clues on 15/2, I note.
It’s a funny &lit that has a definition part!
It is precisely NOT.
Wukka@8/9: Thanks for that tip; I’ll give it a try although having a hard copy has some advantages, like enabling me to have a coffee break away from the computer. Hope your hospital stay won’t be too long!
Issy Porter,
I agree that Leap Day isn’t actually an &lit if only because 29-Feb isn’t in Springtime. As I said, my initial thought was that it was Lady Day, which is a date in Spring and probably coloured my view of the clue slightly. Having said that, I think “opportunity for women” is a very weak as a definition and you need some context from the rest of the clue that it is a time of the year to point you towards the right answer.
Nothing is actually an (sic) &lit unless it accords with certain principles. In general the bloggers and contributors at 225 (and elsewhere) seem not to understand what those principles are, and make a wild stab at pigeonholing some clue or other when they have no basis for so doing. That’s not very satisfactory.
No fellow for mixing (4,4)
The jungly mass one cleaves (7)
Start of number trio’s playing? (5)
The clues above are for your consideration.
Thanks to NealH for the review and to everyone for the comments. Apologies for the ambiguity on 7d. They are always far easier to spot after the event!