A pleasant puzzle from Pan to start the week.
There’s sound cluing, some innovative anagram indicators and elegant and often witty surfaces throughout. Thank you, Pan – I enjoyed it.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Wife leaving Jack the Lad for dedicated follower of fashion (7)
HIPSTER
[w]HIPSTER [Jack the Lad, minus W {wife}]
5 Band with penny at the end in small amount of prize money (7)
JACKPOT
PACK [band, with the P [penny] moved to the end] in JOT [small amount]
9 Cheer when doctor visits surgery (5)
WHOOP
WHO [doctor] + OP [surgery] – as someone has pointed out here more than once, Doctor Who is the name of the programme, not the doctor
10 Comedian sacked by head of austere region of Greece (9
MACEDONIA
An anagram [sacked] of COMEDIAN + A[ustere]
11 Agent with old anecdote about one in vault (10)
REPOSITORY
REP [agent] + O [old] + I [one] in STORY [anecdote]
12 Verbal leaders of outspoken rabble are lefties (4)
ORAL
Initial letters [leaders] of Outspoken Rabble Are Lefties
14 Vessel containing another meat socially acceptable for ancient king (11)
TUTANKHAMUN
TUN [vessel] round TANK [another vessel] + HAM [meat] + U [socially acceptable]
18 Part of cell released by sumac pollen (11)
NUCLEOPLASM
An anagram [released] of SUMAC POLLEN
21 God right to desert French artist? (4)
ODIN
[r]ODIN [Auguste RODIN – French artist]
22 Refuse to be taken in by swaggering gait of the fashionable set (10)
GLITTERATI
LITTER [refuse] in an anagram [swaggering] of GAIT
25 Predicament encountered by awfully green go-between … (9)
MESSENGER
MESS [predicament] + an anagram [awfully] of GREEN
26 … caught en route to bed (5)
PATCH
C [caught] in PATH [route]
27 Keep going from US city getting southern trade (4,3)
LAST OUT
LA [US city] + S [southern] + TOUT [trade]
28 Trainees in pubs covering short part of academic year (7)
INTERNS
INNS [pubs] round TER[m] [part of academic year]
Down
1, 19 Unusually hard arrow traced to 14’s finder (6,6)
HOWARD CARTER
An anagram [unusually] of H[ard] ARROW TRACED for the archaeologist who discovered Tut’s tomb
2 Reminder for politician to attend closing of parliament (6)
PROMPT
PRO [for] + MP [politician] + [parliamen]T
3 Press employee temporarily on vacation to exercise dog (10)
TYPESETTER
T[emporaril]Y + PE [exercise] + SETTER [dog]
4 Bank upset over money transfer (5)
REMIT
A reversal [upset] of TIER [bank] round M [money]
5 Drink containing calcium and root of acacia tree (9)
JACARANDA
JAR [drink] round CA [calcium] + AND + A[cacia] – I think, in a down clue, the ‘root’ could be either the first or the last letter
6 Actor died having lost odd set of principles (4)
CODE
[a]C[t]O[r] D[i]D[e] losing the odd letters
7 Girl supported by both parents has a broad outlook (8)
PANORAMA
NORA [girl] in PA MA [both parents]
8 Men trial new marking on tennis court (8)
TRAMLINE
An anagram [new] of MEN TRIAL
13 Waste 11 with slight convexity around top of handle and upturned lid (7,3)
CHAMBER POT
CAMBER [slight convexity] round H[andle] + a reversal [upturned] of TOP [lid]
15 Drug rejected by learner in struggle to be excellent (3-6)
TOP-FLIGHT
A reversal [rejected] of POT [drug] + L [learner] in FIGHT [struggle]
16 Easy setter – female – in run-of-the-mill setting (8)
INFORMAL
I [setter] + F [female] in NORMAL [run-of-the mill]
17 Doctor sees about fastener for shrouds (8)
ECLIPSES
An anagram [doctor] of SEES round CLIP [fastener]
20 Simple introduction to solutions to be found in a grid (6)
LIGHTS
LIGHT [simple] + S[olutions] – solutions could be part of the definition
23 Take supplement primarily found in fish bones (5)
TARSI
R [R{ecipe} – take] + S{upplement] in TAI [fish]
24 Construction materials impounded by sensible government (4)
LEGO
Contained in sensibLE GOvernment
Thanks for the blog. Quite tricky for the Monday slot but an elegant puzzle – I couldn’t parse timer, tarsi or jackpot.
For 4d I read it as M(oney) inside TIER (as in a bank of seats) reversed (upset) with the def being ‘transfer’.
Thanks to setter and blogger.
Thanks to Pan for an enjoyable puzzle, and to you, Eileen, for a better passing of 14a than I managed, hindered as I was by putting an “o” as the penultimate letter, in Spanishfashiln.
For 4d, I took “bank” to give TIER,with the M from “money”.
Thanks Pan and Eileen
I was unable to parse quite a few here – HIPSTER, JACKPOT, WHOOP, TUTANKHAMUN, REMIT and TARSI – so I can’t really say I enjoyed it overall. I did like GLITTERATI, TYPESETTER and ECLIPSES.
Enjoyable stuff from Pan, though more challenging at times than I expected. However now that I look back on it I can’t really see why.
My top favourite was The Kinks reference in 1a HIPSTER. I also liked 9a WHOOP, 21a ODIN, 22a GLITTERATI (clever misdirection with “Refuse” – also liked “swaggering” as the anagrind!), 13d CHAMBER POT, and 24d LEGO.
Many thanks, Pan and Eileen. [Eileen, interesting that you have blogged Friday, Saturday and Monday blogs in a row.]
Thanks, Eileen and Pan.
I am finding his more recent crosswords harder than the earlier ones, so I needed explanations for the first three clues. Still not sure about WHIPSTER.
4d Puzzled me, too; looking again, is it TIER over M(oney)?, definition “transfer”
[Crossed with all previous. No other posts when I started.]
Well, I filled in all the solutions correctly, but somehow it didn’t feel very smooth and I needed to come here for explanations. I expect I’m being dim, but I don’t understand the parsing of TARSI – take, recipe ??
WHIPSTER was guessed at, not a usage I’ve come across, and I didn’t parse JACKPOT. So many thanks Eileen for that.
And thanks to PAN for the grey cells exercise.
I’ve not been able to find any reference to “whipster” as “Jack-the-lad” online, and Chambers has one of the least useful entries I’ve ever seen! :a term of contempt formerly with various meanings, notably Shakesp. Othello; a whippersnapper.
Of course TUTANKHAMUN reminds me of the old chestnut about the American tourist (apologies to our US friends) asking for directions to the exhibition in London many years ago and being directed to Tooting Common.
I’ll go away now.
Rather hard for a Monday we thought with at 3 we couldn’t parse (including those given by andysmith @1).
Still cannot see why ‘take’ = recipe = R
Many thanks, penzephyr, Stella [good to hear from you again!] and Dave Ellison – I’ll amend the blog.
Thanks, JinA – I intended to include this link!
I’m with Crossbar and Pex in not seeing why recipe = take.
Quite an easy crossword to start the week.
R means ‘take’ as it was the initial letter of the Latin word ‘recipe’ (!!) meaning ‘take’ and used in mediaeval medical instructions. I read lots of them at university many moons ago!
Thanks to Pan and to Eileen.
Thanks to Pan and Eileen. Like those above I had trouble parsing REMIT, TARSI, and tout as trade. I’ve never heard of Jack the lad, but Othello’s “every puny WHIPSTER gets my sword” is familiar to me (5.2), in part because it’s a phrase I find meaningful but is usually omitted in performance today as obscure.
Hi bagel, Crossbar and Pex – this crops up very regularly: ‘recipe’ is the Latin imperative of the verb to take and the abbreviation R used to appear at the beginning of doctors’ prescriptions. It’s a very common crossword abbreviation and well worth keeping a note of.
Thanks, Anna @14 – I should have refreshed.
JinA @5 – the Guardian blogging rota advances by one day a week, so the Friday blogger blogs the following Monday. Every so often , as this weekend, this coincides with my monthly Prize blog.
20 down last one in, don’t quite see it…
Eileen @16 Thank you! Can’t understand how in 50 years of doing crosswords (mostly Guardian) this use of R(ecipe) / take has passed me by. And I did Latin O-level and loved it.
*makes mental note for future reference*
Eileen @17
No problem! 🙂
Talking of mediaeval medicine, I read somewhere recently that patients are being advised to examine the colour of their urine and compare with a chart available somewhere online. Well, so much for modern medicine. One of the standard tools the mediaeval doctor had at his disposal was just this – a chart with flasks of ‘urines’ coloured in different shades with explanations as to what was wrong with the patient. This was the Tabula Urinarum – no doctor would be seen without one. Often, one flask was coloured jet black with the caption ‘death’.
Thank you Pan and Eileen.
I enjoyed the puzzle, but did not understand 1a. Agree with Eileen about the clue surfaces, lovely. I was thinking about Jacaranda trees yesterday which was a help.
Crossbar @10, my father once lived in a houseboat moored at Pharaoh’s Island on the Thames, it was named “Toot and Come In”.
Setting by Pan, blog by Eileen…..Girl Power!
Thought this was up to Nutmeg’s puzzle that kicked the week off recently.
And thanks for the fish(23d)
There is also a Russian bank named TIMER (but had to google it), so thought that was the parsing.
https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=22831903
Roger GS @23 – yes, that’s what I had to begin with, until I was put right!
I had a similar experience to many who posted above. I could not parse 23d TARSI, nor the PACK bit of JACKPOT, never heard of ‘whipster’ before, and could not parse the JAR bit of 5d.
I liked 3d.
Thanks Eileen and Pan.
Cookie @21 – gotta love a good (?) pun.
Finished it but without parsing all of them (the usual suspects, called out in many of the above posts). I found the bottom half harder than the top for some reason. JACARANDA and NUCLEOPLASM were new. I have a feeling in my water (which isn’t black luckily, Anna @ 20!) that I’ll fail to remember R = take.
Enjoyable puzzle and blog. Thanks to P & E.
A really nice start to the week with some elegant clueing as has been mentioned including my favourite GLITTERATI which was second to last in once the i from LIGHTS went in.
Like Crossbar I’m surprised I’ve not come across take=recipe=R before – or if I have it’s a long time ago and faded from memory so thanks to Eileen and Anna for the explanations and the Tabula Urinarum.
Did anyone else have CHIMNEY rather than CHAMBER? It could be a waste repository but the rest of the clue doesn’t parse. So it will just be me then.
Thanks to Pan and Eileen.
Thanks Eileen [no rest!] and Pan. Yes, tricky for a Monday. Dnk whipster and had forgotten the Kinks’ song (long time since You Really Got Me), had heard of nucleotide but not -plasm, wondered why the ‘?’ in 21a (he’s both French and artist) and, for the thousanth time, Mrs ginf and I regretted not having other than anecdotal Latin, re r for take. Loi patch–pretty neat.
PS and tarsi had me looking for a fish (or fish, pl) called ari. Hey ho.
It seems to me that the clue for 7d should give norapama or some such. Can ‘supported by’ be used to mean ‘in’ in a down clue?
Nice clue for JACKPOT that I failed to parse properly, thanks Eileen.
Good entertaining puzzle, thanks Pan.
Thanks to Pan and Eileen. I found this tougher than usual for a Monday and a DNF for me. Just like Whiteking I had an unparsed chimney pot at 13. I also could not parse tarsi or jackpot, but I did like typesetter and glitterati. Thanks again to Pan and Eileen.
Robi @31 – I think I thought of supporters standing on either side of someone – but you might not like that in a down clue, either.
I look in almost daily, Eileen, but by the time I do, anything I might have to say has usually been covered by others. Today, though, I did the crossword earlier than usual, and the blog wasnt up when I finished.
Thanks both. I thought that R=recipe=take was used fairly recently in a Guardian cryptic (that could mean any time in the last 2 years!). Beery Hiker where are you?
[I looked up urine colours – apparently you can get black (or very dark) urine by taking some legal drugs, so you might not be dead after all!]
All good stuff but I can’t really persuade myself about 20dn. Why are lights solutions? Or why are lights to be found in a grid?
Eileen @33; yes, as in bookends. I think this would be OK perhaps in an across clue but it doesn’t seem to be right in a down clue.
Anthony Warren @36 – Chambers: ‘light – in a crossword, the word [or sometimes an individual letter in the word] on the diagram that is the answer to the clue’. A crossword ‘diagram’ is known as a grid.
I found this extremely difficult for any day of the week. Why is there a question mark in 21a?
It must be me having a senior moment, but I still can’t see how ‘Take’ becomes ‘R” via ‘recipe’ – and I also did Latin ‘O’ Level1!!
And I’m Rob not ‘o’ in 40 above!!
AW @ 36: to presumptuously amplify Eileen @ 38, the grid can be seen as being composed of LIGHTS and DARKS.
Not just you, Whiteking. I got chimney pot,too. Couldn’t parse it, of course, but then again I can’t always parse them all anyway. Thanks to everyone.
Rob @41- a recipe is a set of instructions for making something [e,g food, drink or medicine]. Recipe literally means ‘Take’ [the following ingredients]. See here and Anna’s comment @14.
9a: On the vexed question concerning Doctor Who, anyone who really cares could try reading this article https://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-06-24/is-his-name-really-doctor-who-the-history-of-the-time-lords-moniker-and-showrunner-steven-moffats-view/
Many thanks for that, Paul R – I was just trying to forestall the inevitable comment. 😉
Shirl @35 – I am afraid my list is not clever enough to search specific parsing elements so I can’t answer that one.
Enjoyed this more than most Monday puzzles.
Thanks to Pan and Eileen
Why does LIGHTS always fox me? I found myself staring at 20dn and PATCH for a looong time after the rest went in. I have to admit some remained unparsed- HIPSTER was a guess as were a few others. And,yes,a harder Monday than we’re used to. Quite enjoyable but not really satisfying.
Thanks Pan.
Pan is likely to be attacked by angry Macedonians when they get wind of 10A. The name, confusingly, is claimed by the southernmost part of what was once Yugoslavia as well as the adjacent province of Greece. It’s been a bone of contention for a long time.
Geopolitics notwithstanding I completed the puzzle with some hand-waving in the parsing department, notably the fish bone thing.
El inglés above. I think they just resolved it. FYROM is to become North Macedonia.
Thanks to Pan and Eileen – I found it quite tough to finish.
In 1a a possible connection might be, whipster is a wannabe hipster (Urban Dictionary) and Jack the Lad is a wannabe somebody so the connection would be “wannabe.”
In the earlier days, Dr Who was a person, played by Peter Cushing – all the way back to 1965
And in a nitpick moment Eileen, you interchanged the ‘d’ and the ‘e’ for the last letter of code in 6d
Nice puzzle to start the week . . . but count me among those who failed to tarse PARSI, er, parse TARSI. After reading Eileen’s explanation, I had a flicker of recognition of R = “recipe” = (in Latin, not English) “take” — or, should I say, a flicker of recognition of having failed on the same clueing device in a previous crossword. Hopefully I won’t fail on it again the next time(s) it comes around! Apart from the foregoing, I thought there were a number of tick-worthy clues, including the Kinks-y 1ac (I enjoyed the link, Eileen), JACKPOT, GLITTERATI, LEGO, and my top favorite, TYPESETTER (why? I dunno, I guess I liked that dog).
Many thanks to Pan and Eileen and the other commenters.
I forgot to mention WHOOP, which I also enjoyed.
I fondly recall the days of my whipster youth, when the bananaquits whooped in the jacaranda . . .
I found this quite a toughie – and many answers were inspired guesses, semi-parsed. Like Peter Aspinwall, I spent an eternity staring at Patch and Lights, and although distant memories of school biology helped with Tarsi, schooldays were no flaming use with take=R=recipe (I did do Latin to A level, but alas, medieval medical texts weren’t part of the syllabus). I’d never heard of Jack the Lad being a whipster either. So much for an English degree! But I really liked Glitterati and Odin and Typesetter and king Tut – and the gag about American tourists made me giggle.
Thanks to Pan for tying me in knots – and to Eileen for untangling me afterwards.
Hi Wellbeck @54 – please forgive me if I’m wrong but I don’t recognise /remember your name – on my blog, at least – so, if this is your first comment, Welcome! I hope you’ll continue to comment.
Please will everyone add R = take [as well as Run[s] – I really do think it comes up almost as often – to their little notebooks? Today has really been a revelation! 😉
Late to the party, but I very much enjoyed this so thank you Pan. Also I had a few I was dubious about and as ever Eileen you have sorted them out for me, so once again, three days in a row, many thanks. Favourite for all the wrong reasons was JACARANDA. During much of the 1970s we lived and worked in Paraguay under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. The main street out of Asuncion was called Mariscal Lopez after Paraguay’s hero. During spring this Avenue was a glorious sight, being totally lined with Jacaranda trees in full blossom. There is no more beautiful colour than this shade of blue!!
El Inglés @49 — I think that Pan is likely to be safe in this case. As I understand it, the Greeks object to the use of the term Macedonia to refer to the nation to their north, but I don’t believe that the residents of that nation object to the Greeks’ use of the term to refer to the residents of northern Greece. So Pan would have been courting Greek anger if the clue had referred to the former Yugoslavia, but not vice versa.
Am I the only one who parsed 5a by postulating the existence of a band called “Ack”? (Not surprisingly, there is such a band.)
Ted @58 – you may well be right!
Me too!
Thanks very much Ted for confirming the existence of a band called Ack, which I thought of but was too idle to check.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_TEcJwKznI
I rather like it (punk nostalgia) but suspect others will not.
Grim and Dim @61 –
Thanks for the link. I see that the band name is an Ack-ronym.
German punk at that. The punk squirrels at 2:45 are the best.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that my parsing is the intended one. I’m quite sure that Eileen’s parsing is right.
Quite a puzzle for a Monday, but a bit of a shock to the brain this early in the week! Liked HOWARD CARTER and the little bit of history discovered. I needed Eileen’s help with JACKPOT. Quite a lot of pots today in fact.
Perhaps Pan could have sidestepped the thorny issue of The Doctor’s correct moniker with “Cheer when doctors visit surgery”, but perhaps that’s just another cat and a different set of pigeons.
Thanks, Pan and Eileen
Sorry to come so late to the party, but was I really the only person to write ’passenger’ rather than ‘messenger’ for 25ac? After all, ‘pass’ = ‘predicament’ (things have come to a pretty pass) and a passenger is definitely a go-between. So I was a DNF for once, since the P of passenger made 16d impossible. Thanks Eileen and Pan.
Thanks Eileen for clarifyingso many of Pan’s trickier traps today. I too thought there were a lot of “pots”lying around and was pleased with chamber pot,and jackpot but disappointed that the answer to 26a wasn’t potty! Recipe =take was new to me but I think there is a link to the derivative receive in there somewhere? And so to bed now whereis that gazunder? !
“Yeah, “whipster” is the same as “Jack the lad”. Isn’t it obvious?” Not to me, no.