Very enjoyable – favourites were 1ac and 19ac. Thanks, Screw.
| Across | ||
| 1 | BOWLING ALLEY | Spare place that’s used by cook at sea? (7,5) |
| =a spare is a bowling term for knocking over the pins with a second ball. BOWL IN GALLEY=something that might be “used by cook at sea” |
||
| 9 | DIARY | Record why Sally’s left (5) |
| Y=”why” in text-speak, plus RAID=”Sally”; all reversed or going “left” | ||
| 10 | BESTRIDES | Is on horse jockey targets at meeting? (9) |
| a jockey would target having the BEST RIDES at a race meeting | ||
| 11 | IRKSOME | Trying one end of cigar — smoke’s blown (7) |
| I=”one” plus [ciga]R, plus (smoke)* | ||
| 12 | MINARET | Perfect flipping time to spread feature on mosque (7) |
| MINT=”Perfect”, around a reversal/flipping of ERA=”time” | ||
| 13 | TWITTERATI | Social media users write tat — it’s awful (10) |
| (write tat it’s)* | ||
| 15 | AMOS | Like holding flash book (4) |
| =a book of the Bible AS=”Like”, around MO[ment]=”flash” |
||
| 18 | DATA | Figures sold at auction houses (4) |
| housed inside [sol]D AT A[uction] | ||
| 19 | BEER GARDEN | British nurses agree about study in local area (4,6) |
| “local” meaning pub BR[itish] around (agree)*; plus DEN=”study” |
||
| 22 | TOURISM | Travelling to old city is start of mission (7) |
| TO, plus UR=”old city”, plus IS, plus M[ission] | ||
| 24 | HANDSAW | Cutter‘s crew was almost retired (7) |
| HANDS=”crew”, plus WA[s] reversed/retired | ||
| 25 | ELEMENTAL | Simple iron, say … ball’s out of bounds (9) |
| chemical ELEMENT=”iron, say”, plus [b]AL[l] without its “bounds” or outer letters | ||
| 26 | LINES | Description of Els’s scores (5) |
| LINES is a description of letter “Els” Edit thanks to Don: L IN E+S gives ELS |
||
| 27 | RIVER COTTAGE | Cheese somewhat overlapping edge of base for celebrity chef (5,7) |
| =the base of celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall [wiki] RI/COTTA=”Cheese” somewhat overlapping VER/GE=”edge” |
||
| Down | ||
| 1 | BLACKLIST | Billionaire’s first to not offer tip in bar (9) |
| =bar as a verb meaning exclude B[illionare] plus LACK=”not offer” plus LIST=lean to one side=”tip” |
||
| 2 | WEYMOUTH | Seaside town us kids mark for investment (8) |
| WE YOUTH=”us kids” around M[ark] | ||
| 3 | IMBUE | Fill one’s sad line out (5) |
| I’M B[L]UE=”one’s sad”, minus a L or a “line” | ||
| 4 | GASOMETER | Supply Middle East storage — one of these? (9) |
| =a tank to store gas i.e. storage that might be supplied to the Middle East (M[iddle] E[ast] storage)*, with ‘Supple-y’ as the anagrind |
||
| 5 | LARYNX | One used to scream at rat, initially, with cat circling (6) |
| A[t] R[at], with LYNX=”cat” around them | ||
| 6 | EIDER | It sounds like your setter got a duck (5) |
| sounds like: I’d a=I had a=”your setter got a” | ||
| 7 | ADDICT | I can’t stop cat — did monkeys? (6) |
| (cat did)* | ||
| 8 | AS IT IS | Currently, warship tails every other one (2,2,2) |
| every other letter of [w]A[r]S[h]I[p] T[a]I[l]S | ||
| 14 | RHEUMATIC | Bits of house reportedly suffering from inflexibility (9) |
| sounds like: ‘room’ + ‘attic’=”Bits of house” | ||
| 16 | MADE SENSE | Manufactured feeling was clearly explained (4,5) |
| MADE=”Manufactured” plus SENSE=”feeling” | ||
| 17 | MAGNOLIA | One’s blooming great desire in the morning, after getting up (8) |
| AI=A1=”great”, plus LONG=”desire” plus AM=”in the morning”, all reversed/”getting up” | ||
| 18 | DITHER | Stew in France, said to touch that woman (6) |
| DIT is French for “said”, plus HER=”that woman” | ||
| 20 | NEWEST | Most recent points (6) |
| N[orth] E[ast] and WEST are compass “points” | ||
| 21 | BIREME | Believe paper reported those rowing in this (6) |
| =a galley rowed with two banks of oars sounds like: ‘buy’=”Believe” and ‘ream’=”paper” |
||
| 23 | UTERI | Growth areas of computer industry (5) |
| Hidden inside [comp]UTER I[ndustry] | ||
| 24 | HELOT | Being in slavery topped everything (5) |
| =a Spartan slave [t]HE LOT=”everything”, with its top letter removed |
||
Up with the birds on this longest day.
Mostly some cleverly written clues, (‘good surfaces’ though i’m not fond of that term). BEER GARDEN, IRKSOME, ELEMENTAL,TWITTERATI and many more.
But I don’t get the explanation of LINES at all. Links might have almost worked. Only got River Cottage by thinking cottage cheese and i was there. But what kind of clue is a partial overlapper??
And GASOMETER surely is an anagram of storage and ME but an E too many so i can’t work it out.
It’s going to be a long day.
Lines is l-in-e,s, description of Els
Aaah! That works
Fantastic stuff. A great setter we don’t see enough of. Failed to parse LINES, so thanks to Don@2. Also failed to get 27a and 21d. Since I didn’t know RIVER COTTAGE, I’ll forgive myself. Lots of wonderful clues – my favourite being 1a. Thanks to all.
Thanks Don – I got to 26ac after 3dn and had ‘l’ for “line” blinkers on
Thanks Screw and manehi
I always find this setter difficult, and much “checking” was needed before I had a completed grid, though with DIARY and RIVER COTTAGE unparsed.
Two false starts. I had D ONE for 18a and BANDSAW for 24a (nearly as good, but doesn’t account for the “almost”). I didn’t see that the “ball’s out of bounds” was needed in 25a (I solved it without reference to it) as iron could be described as “elemental”.
Favourites were TOURISM and (COD) UTERI.
This version of the MINT ARE clue for MINARET worked better than last week’s.
Many thanks manehi for parsing some very cunning clues. 1,9,26 and 27 acrosses.
Got beaten badly by this young Turk. He is brilliant. I just wasnt expecting him to be this tough today.
I too had to admit defeat but enjoyed some solves along the way.
Of the ones I solved, I really appreciated 5d LARYNX, 17d MAGNOLIA and UTERI.
However I missed 19a BEER GARDEN (clever), the RIVER part of 27a RIVER COTTAGE, and BIREME, and needed the explanations for 1a BOWLING ALLEY (though I saw the GALLEY part, and for the “ball” part of the clue for 25a ELEMENTAL.
Disappointed now as I feel like I gave in too easily.
Thanks to Screw and manehi, and other commentators.
Rewolf @3 surely the anagram at 4d is OK? – ME STORAGE, GASOMETER
I agree with others that this was fresh and testing, a great start, like Arachne yesterday, to another hot day. But sometimes stretching the conventions a bit far. 9 ac DIARY: not only ‘left’ for reversal, unfamiliar (?) variant on ‘west(ward)’, but Y for ‘why’ without any ‘sounds like’ qualifier. As it happens, Arachne, yesterday, clued the Y part of CONTRARILY (3d) with ‘Wye, reportedly’. Or does ‘Record’, in the DIARY clue, do double duty, as definition and as ‘sounds like’ indicator? Or are Why and Y now seen as interchangeable?
unsure also about the wordplay at 12ac MINARET, though others seem happy with it.
a tricky one to blog altogether: big thanks to manehi as well as Screw
I should think this is impossible without aids, so abstruse is the indication. Just using one across as a first example, how are we to guess what a ‘spare place’ is without very specific knowledge, or that ‘bowl in galley’ is the item ‘used by cook at sea’? I could go on, and on, so wilfully (by which I mean, not naturally) difficult is this crossword.
Thanks Screw and manehi.
Very entertaining; I guessed RIVER COTTAGE without parsing it. I’ve always wondered how to use overlapping words in clues, so now I know!
What a great clue for UTERI, and some ingenious definitions, like that for LARYNX.
Really enjoyed this – though one or two were fill in the gaps and work out the logic later. Well played Screw
Thank you Screw and manehi, and Don @2 for the parsing of LINES.
I enjoyed this crossword, but I had to bung in BOWLING ALLEY, having got GALLEY, and RIVER COTTAGE, COTTAGE cheese having come to my mind, not RICOTTA. RIVER COTTAGE, along with BEER GARDEN, are cooling images today even though it is too hot to sit outside here in France.
Well this was a surprise. Seeing the setter’s name I thought I was down for an on-and-off hour of perceived unfairness and frustration, not helped by MINARET first in on a wing-and-prayer basis, having no idea how it parsed. But it led to a few others, and surely 1a / 1d must start with B? Both clues fell soon after.
Then I chanced to glance at the bookshelf, at ‘River Café Cook Book Easy’. Enough hint there for RIVER COTTAGE. By now I was even smiling, thanks to this and LARYNX, UTERI, BIREME, LINES and others. Shame about the clunky surface in second-last-in BESTRIDES but there was a final chuckle when I realised what had gone on with HELOT. More like this please!
Thanks to Screw and manehi. I did get BOWLING ALLEY but could not parse DIARY and LINES – and RIVER COTTAGE defeated me (though I did guess “river” correctly). A challenge.
Nervous at first because Screw can be so hard. But we managed OK and completed it in good enough time. But a couple unparsed (1a and 27a) and we guessed links for 26a, without properly parsing it. Good fun though, although my other half grumbled at twitterati! Thanks Screw and Manehi
Good to see Screw back – this was another top class puzzle – challenging in places but slightly easier than yesterday’s Arachne. Loved LINES once I worked out how it parsed. Annoyingly BOWLING ALLEY and BLACKLIST were the last two in.
Thanks to Screw and manehi
Odd how some setters match our mindsets better than others, BH – I found yesterday’s Arachne very much easier; not a lot longer than a Rufus in duration, whereas today’s…..!
Agree with Quenbarrow on 9a and 12a. Glad I pressed reveal when I did on last couple. Too many that I got but couldn’t parse to be enjoyable.
I can’t account for ‘those’ in 21d. Surely the bireme is the ship, not the rowers, so what does ‘those’ refer to?
Hi Bayleaf. Isn’t it a case of the container represents those inside, as in “hothouse” would mean the set of nutters therein!
I hesitate to ask, but did you mean “nuthouse”, Martin?
crimper @ 10. We were lucky to be given so much help with 1a; Rufus might well have clued it as just “Spare place”
Thanks manehi and Screw
Re 1a – I think it might have made it easier on solvers if the clue was “Strike place…” or “Strike locality…” or whatever. More people who’ve never gone bowling will have heard of the word “strike” in this context, than “spare”.
Re 21: Bayleaf@20: I think “those rowing” is just a way of saying “rowers”. Then the definition “rowers in this” clearly refers to the ship.
Just my thoughts.
muffin @ 22
Sorry to be late responding – it’s the heat here in Germany, due to end a day or so later than in the UK, I gather. Yes, nuthouse would perhaps have been better but hothouses suggest, to me, a wider range of activities involving frenetic people!
Best wishes and belated thanks to Screw and Manehi.
crimper @ 10 gives my thoughts rather succinctly. I would add 9A as a converse of to his/her example: definition OK but dubious clueing.
Needed manehi (thanks) to parse too many of the answers.
OK, perhaps I should spend more time on these before giving up and moaning.
Perhaps in “those rowing in this,” “this” stands for “bireme,” with “those rowing in” cluing us in?
Finished this this morning out of sheer bloody mindedness. The top half went in relatively quickly but far too many gaps in the rest. I’ve never heard of RIVER COTTAGE and I don’t understand LINES.
Not my happiest crossword experience.
I still cannot see the source of the “er” in 6d “eider”. I had read it as ‘sounds like: “I’d” “err”‘, with the source of the “err” being the error of being out for a duck or scoring zero. This has two problems though: the clue would need to be revised to the future tense “… would get…” and it might be against the rules for “duck” to perform double duty.
“… your setter got a [unspecified] …” = “… I got a [unspecified] …” = ” … I had a [unspecified] …” = “… I’d a [unspecified] …” = “sounds like “eider””
Thanks Van Winkle. It probably stretches the homophone further than I wanted but I accept your interpretation. I can now sleep easy.
Thanks to setter and blogger. I beg to differ on 26a ( which means I’m almost certainly wrong) for which I had “lands” – “l” and “s” describing “Els” phonetically, and “lands” = “scores” (the job, the prize etc)
It’s very late, but this is my first opportunity to comment on this fascinating puzzle, which was such a contrast to the Arachne the day before.
I was interested in the comparison made by beery hiker @17 and muffin @18 on their solving experiences of these two puzzles. I found no real difference in the level of difficulty (I found both of them a bit more challenging than most). It was the solving experience that was so different. The Arachne I thought was a more professional product, but solving it was like working successfully through an exam paper. The Screw, however, in several places had deliberately vague hints where you would expect a definition or indication of the answer, and in some clues the wordplay arguably didn’t quite work.
I enjoyed the Screw more. It was certainly a clever puzzle, and I was pleased to get my final entry 27a RIVER COTTAGE, which I have never heard of, but the unusual wordplay (overlapping parts) allowed me to get there (after I had dismissed COTTAGE as the cheese early on).
One casualty, if I can call it that, of the liberties Screw was taking was 4d GASOMETER, which had the dual answer MEGASTORE [although all the crossers fail!].
Thanks to Screw and menehi.
I know it’s late but I couldn’t hold back. Abstruse, tortured. are the two nicest things I could say about this. Spare place for BOWLING ALLEY? Meh! The use of “overlapping” to indicate alternating portions of two words is just awful. 26a possibly the worst of a tortured bunch, made impossible in my case as I had EARNS (reference to Ernie Els). On the plus side, I liked TWITTERATI.