Thanks Nutmeg, for an enjoyable puzzle and not too difficult. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1 Cosseting number one son, delicate duffer nursing broken leg (4-10)
SELF-INDULGENCE : S(abbrev. for “son”) + ELFIN(of a person or face, small and delicate) + DUNCE(a duffer;a dimwit) containing(nursing) anagram of(broken) LEG.
Defn: Cossetting(spoiling) number one(reference to oneself).
9, 10 England pack in a horribly undignified touchdown? (7,7)
PANCAKE LANDING : Anagram of(… horribly) ENGLAND PACK IN A.
Defn: A belly-flop made by an aircraft crash-landing.
10 See 9
11 Being sorry for government after collapse … (5)
RUING : G(abbrev. for “government”) placed after(after) RUIN(to collapse;to disintegrate).
12 … awkwardly placed right now (2,3,4)
ON THE SPOT : Double defn: 1st: In an awkward;difficult sitatuon; and 2nd: Immediately.
As in “He was put on the spot when he was asked to answer the question on the spot.
13 Commercial payment collected by that man’s fans (9)
ADHERENTS : AD(a commercial;an advertisement, or ad, on TV or radio) + RENT(payment collected from letting property out) containing(collected by) HE’S(contraction of “he is”;that man is;”that man’s”).
14 Our country’s divided in support for this garment (5)
BURKA : UK(our country, that of the crossword setter and publication) with its letters separated(divided) contained in(in) BRA(support for the feminine breasts).
Defn: … worn by Muslim women in public.
15 Up to taunt ill-natured guards (5)
UNTIL : Hidden in(… guards) “taunt ill-natured“.
17 Give thickhead the boot, ultimately with a show of remorse? (9)
SACKCLOTH : SACK (dismiss …;give … the boot) CLOT(a thickhead;an idiot) + last letter of(ultimately) “with“.
Defn: Coarse fabric worn to demonstrate one’s remorse or repentance.
20 Beastly behaviour from wild simian male (tailless) (9)
ANIMALISM : Anagram of(wild) [SIMIAN + “male” minus its last letter(tailless) ].
22 I punch counter, grabbing hot veggie snack (5)
BHAJI : Reversal of(… counter) [I + JAB(a quick sharp punch)] containing(grabbing) H(abbrev. for “hot”).
23 A member involved in revolutionary work, like Davy’s miners? (7)
LAMPLIT : [A + MP(abbrev. for a Member of Parliament) ] contained in(involved in) reversal of(revolutionary) TILL(to work;to pepare land and cultivate crops on it).
Defn: Like miners using the Davy lamp, one with a flame but safe to use in the flammable atmosphere they work in.
24 Nervy drunkard may get this, if woken too soon (7)
UPTIGHT : [ UP TIGHT ](how you might describe a drunkard who was woken up too soon, before he/she slept off his/her drunkenness, and would therefore be still tight;drunk.
25 Play‘s unoriginal by end of the season (3,7,4)
THE WINTERS TALE : STALE(unoriginal;no longer a new thing) placed after(by end of) [THE + WINTER(one of the four seasons) ].
Defn: … by Shakespeare.
Down
1 Partner usually dancing in angelic fashion? (14)
SUPERNATURALLY : Anagram of(usually dancing) PARTNER USUALLY.
Defn: In the manner of supernatural beings like angels.
2 Doctor losing height is far from short (7)
LONGISH : Anagram of(Doctor)[ LOSING + H(abbrev. for “height”) ].
3 During summer month, leader leaves country first (9)
INAUGURAL : IN (during) AUG(abbrev. for August, the summer month in the northern hemisphere) + 1st letter deleted from(leader leaves) “rural”(in the country, as opposed to the city).
4 Long feathers blow over (3,4)
DIE DOWN : DIE(to long for, as in “I’m dying for a drink”) + DOWN(fine, soft, fluffy feathers).
5 Signs of rookie‘s large feet in EastEnders (1-6)
L-PLATES : L(abbrev. for “large”) + PLATES(… of meat, rhyming slang for “feet” among London East Enders).
Defn: Signs displayed by a rookie;learner driver.
6 Wise number cruncher? (5)
ERNIE : Double defn: 1st: … Wise, the straight man in the comedy duo, Morecambe and Wise; and 2nd: Acronym for Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment, the random number generator for the lottery based on National Premium Bonds in the UK.
ERNIE Mk 1, encased in 5 telephone boxes.
7 Traveller returns, after shaving, in high spirits (7)
CHIPPER : Reversal of(… returns) REP(a sales representative who travels, visiting customers) placed after(after) CHIP(a wood shaving).
8 Complex, rich saga that is abridged by English writer (6,8)
AGATHA CHRISTIE : Anagram of(Complex) [ RICH SAGA THAT + “is” minus its last letter(abridged) ] plus(by) E(abbrev. for “English”).
14 Disparages player defending snacks (9)
BACKBITES : BACK(a defending player in a team game, say, football) + BITES(snacks).
16 The speaker involved in President Hoover’s first victory (7)
TRIUMPH : I(first person pronoun, the speaker self-referentially) contained in(involved in) TRUMP(Donald, current POTUS) + 1st letter of(…’s first) “Hoover” – Herbert, also another US President.
17 Child with inclination to drink dairy product (7)
STILTON : SON(a male child) containing(with … to drink) TILT(an inclination;a sloping position).
Defn: …, specifically an English cheese.
18 Shorten journey to and from work (7)
COMMUTE : Double defn: 1st: To reduce;shorten a prison sentence.
19 Longing for home, cardinals ignored listener’s complaint (7)
OTALGIA : “nostalgia”(originally meaning “longing for home”, before its present meaning of “longing for the past”) minus(… ignored) [“n”, “s”](abbrev. for 2 of the cardinal compass points, north and south, respectively).
Defn: Ache in one’s listening organ.
21 Radiant silver-blue (5)
AGLOW : AG(in chemistry, symbol for the element, silver) + LOW(blue;feeling sad)
A couple that I couldn’t parse but scchua put me right, for which much thanks.
Gentle puzzle, not too difficult, with a few particularly enjoyable ones; 16d is neat. I hadn’t heard of PANCAKE LANDING before but the wordplay took me there.
Thanks Nutmeg and scchua
Great fun, with TRIUMPH and the wonderful BURKA (which I took to be &lit) favourites. I didn’t parse the DIE bit of 4d.
Minor points: there seemed to be a lot of anagrams, and I don’t think “defending” works in 14d – “Players defending snack” makes more cryptic sense.
Although I found 6d easy, I don’t think it’s a good clue, as it requires two pieces of GK, without any other way of solving it. (Compare 23a, also needing GK, but solvable from the wordplay.)
I finished this quite quickly (for me) but that doesn’t mean I thought it was too easy – it was very enjoyable and satisfying. Plenty of really good clues, my favourites being PANCAKE LANDING and BURKA, the latter making a serious point in a clever way.
Thanks to Nutmeg and scchua.
5 anagrams, in fact. Too many?
A wonderful puzzle (great surfaces from Nutmeg as always), although I got completely stuck on STILTON. Favourites were SELF-INDUCGENCE, SUPERNATURALLY and CHIPPER. Many thanks to Nutmeg and scchua.
Thanks for the blog. Whilst correctly guessed, parsing of triump and die down eluded me.
This didn’t solve smoothly for me. All the answers went in, in the end quite quickly, but I needed Scchua for some parsing. On 25a I couldn’t get past seeing end as TAIL and a homophone of TALE, so just didn’t see STALE. Nice explanatory sentence for the 2 definitions of ON THE SPOT, Scchua.
Like Neil H @1 I hadn’t come across PANCAKE LANDING before but it is easily gettable. (My pancakes land in the pan, usually.)
Really enjoyed TRIUMPH and BURKA, and AGLOW was rather pleasing. I’m imagining the colour. A sort of visual equivalent of an earworm.
Many thanks to Nutmeg and Scchua.
A leisurely one-cuppa job, so pretty much a write-in for veterans I’d expect. Lazily didn’t bother post-parsing 1a (thanks Scchua), worried about sacking the poor clot in 17a (the Tories here hate unfair dismissal laws), had no idea of Ernie the acronym, and hadn’t heard of the otic ache, tho obvious. Also, I had to run the alphabet to get the j in bhaji, tho I’ve eaten them, and wondered whether ‘disparaged’ lacked the spite to equate to ‘backbite’.
So plenty to cogitate on, ease notwithstanding. And the stale winter and the son drinking tilt were fun.
Thanks Nutmeg and Scchua.
Thanks to Nutmeg for a fun puzzle. I liked TRIUMPH. I don’t remember seeing the “the speaker” used to indicate the letter i before. Like Crossbar I enjoyed trying to imagine the new colour. UPTIGHT and BHAJI also very neat… It was pleasing that parsing BHAJI almost requires you to say aloud an anagram of it, “HIJAB”, which like 14a is another garment worn by some Muslim women.
Thanks to Nutmeg and Scchua for the blog
muffin @6 I disagree about 14d. ‘Defending’ surely works perfectly well in conjunction with ‘player ‘ – better than if it were (as I assume in your version) being used as an indicator for nursing/enclosing. In that version (players = backs) people could well object that the cluing is too vague, whereas ‘player defending’ in not vague. Altogether this was a great instance of a puzzle quite easy to solve but giving much pleasure along the way with its brilliant surfaces, so thanks from me too to Nutmeg, and to scchua for the elegant blog.
sorry, I meant muffin’s first comment: @2 not @6
quenbarrow @10
I take your point, but “defending” doesn’t mean “put on top of” for me.
Lord Jim @3, yes indeed re 14a, a most apposite surface, especially as the Danes too have just passed a law about it.
Yes, a relatively speedy solve today with plenty to like – TRIUMPH, BURKA and AGLOW got ticks like Crossbar@7. I was disappointed that the two of the anagrams contained large parts of the fodder unchanged (ALLY and LAND) which made the solving of them much easier. I also didn’t get the STALE part of 25 nor did I parse OTALGIA (a TILT) – so thanks to scchua for that (and the illustrated blog) and to Nutmeg for the puzzle.
All went in pretty easily, but then got stuck in the southwest. Had thought of BHAJI, but failed to parse it, so it was my KOI, when I finally saw “counter” as the reversal indicator.
I do feel that the two meanings of ON THE SPOT are pretty close to being synonymous, as is suggested by Scchua’s example.
Favourites were, I think, TRIUMPH, SACKCLOTH, and AGLOW.
Many thanks to Nutmeg and Scchua.
Apologies for the stray carp swimming through my previous comment. The dreaded autocorrect strikes again.
Muffin. ‘Defending’ doesn’t have to mean “put on top of”. It is simply the order of the parts “player defending” + “snacks”. By the way, BURKA is only a semi &lit – the last 3 words are not part of the cryptic fodder.
PS I meant to add a carpenter’s quibble re 7d: a shaving curls off the plane while a chip flies off the chisel; in the same workshop but not the same thing.
Hovis @17
Ah, football! I was thinking of rugby, in which the backs are the attacking players!
Raced through in the early stages thanks to the longuns but slowed to a crawl and flopped over the line on 19d courtesy of Madame Google.
14 is great – small but perfectly formed with a dash of social comment thrown in
Thanks to Nutters and scchua for the excellent puzzle and blog
I’m glad you mentioned that grantinfreo @18. I briefly wondered about CHIP and shaving. They’re not quite the same thing for me, either.
Forgive me if I have missed this in other comments, but ‘country first’ was the theme of the Trump INAUGURAL.
Some lovely stuff today. Thought BURKA was brilliant. “support”=”bra” always makes me giggle (possibly because I learnt how to solve at an all-boys grammar school, and the mind-set has stuck), a slightly different construction method and a semi-&lit all in one go!
Thank you, Nutmeg and scchua.
BTW is the British spelling Haj and Haji normal, or optional? In America and Australia I usually see Hajj and Hajji, as well as in English transliterations in Arabic-speaking countries.
Thanks to Nutmeg for her usual elegant puzzle and scchua for his usual informative and entertaining blog. I did not know ERNIE as an acronym, L-PLATES (my LOI), or BHAJI, but the clues were sufficient, and I took a while before getting the “die” in DIE DOWN.
Lovely puzzle, detailed and helpful blog and interesting feedback here. Thanks to all concerned. I liked AGATHA CHRISTIE. Her novels read in my teens first got me interested in solving puzzles of all kinds.
Thanks to Nutmeg and scchua. Like others I found this a relatively straightforward solve. I did find however that a lot of the answers were obvious from the definitions, and it was just a case of working out why (e.g. 1and 11a). Therefore a bit of solve then parse. Another fan of burka, triumph and sackcloth. Thanks again to Nutmeg and scchua.
Always a pleasure with Nutmeg.
Thank you Nutmeg for a fun puzzle and scchua for the illustrated blog.
I, too, wondered about CHIP and shaving – the COED gives for chip “Brit. a thin strip of wood, straw etc., used for weaving hats, baskets, etc.”, and for shaving “a thin strip cut off the surface of wood, etc..”
The veggie snack was new to me, going to look up some recipes, I love Indian food.
17a made me smile, one of my cousins had a friend who lived in a Scottish castle, an elderly aunt used to go out early each morning dressed in SACKCLOTH with ashes on her head to feed the goats on the moor.
This wasn’t as easy for me as for some here. I hadn’t heard of ERNIE, either the comedian or the computer, so this was a DNF for me, in fact.
(Over here, the only well-known Ernie I can think of is the Muppet. I guess there’s baseball’s Ernie Banks and war correspondent Ernie Pyle, but neither of those are fair dinkum for a crossword. “Friend of Bert Pyle who wrote about Normandy” just doesn’t cut it, does it?)
[Hi mrpenney
Not seen you around for a while, I think? Hope you’ve been OK]
Enjoyed this one – not too difficult but nicely varied. My favourite was BURKA. STILTON was last in – should have seen that earlier.
Thanks to Nutneg and scchua
[Muffin, I’ve been fine. I’d gotten into a schedule where I wasn’t doing the puzzle until afternoon Chicago time, which is of course evening GMT, so everything here had already been said.]
I admit to not parsing everything but this was rather fun.OTALGIA was new to me but everything else in this went in quite painlessly. I liked L PLATES and ERNIE.
Thanks Nutmeg.
There was much to enjoy here, so thanks Nutmeg. I did know ERNIE, being a coffin dodger myself, but I can’t imagine either element would be common GK for those a generation or more younger than me (or from outside the UK, as others above have noted). Ta to scchua for the blog.
[mrpenny, how come you’re in Chicago and using Oz expressions like ‘fair dinkum’?]
Enjoyable but not too difficult puzzle today.
Favourite clues were: BURKA, SACKCLOTH, TRIUMPH, OTALGIA.
Many thanks to Nutmeg and scchua.
(Also thanks to Simon from yesterday for info re the weather forecast next week in Britain. I’m actually going to be in South Wales).
@29, I am rereading Lark Rise To Candleford, and have just reached the chapter where Laura goes over to Candleford for the first time wearing a “plain little hat of white chip …”
mrpenney@30
Re: ERNIE, you got me thinking of a panatlantic clue for this. How about the oxymoronic “Wise muppet”. Being an expat Brit in the US, this works nicely for me, but I don’t know that the general reaction would be so positive.
BTW, a fun, tight puzzle. Another BURKA fan here. Thanks, Nutmeg and scchua.
Thanks to Nutmeg and scchua.
Very late to the party and all has been said and I join in the general plaudits with STILTON a fav. In my world (and perhaps only in my world?) the arrival of August means we are into Autumn (not Fall, I can’t be doing with Fall) so INAUGURAL led to some lip-pursing and de-focussing.
Muffin@2 I’m always grateful for an anagram or two – five is just about on the limit and totally agree about ERNIE and LAMPLIT.
BURKA and BHAJI gave me pause for thought as these can be spelt so many different ways trying to pin down a non-English word (think of Calcutta and Peking of yore) and dictionaries seem happy these days to confirm the existence of variety rather than offering a definitive rendition. Is it possible (cf Cookie@29) to have anything other than an onion bhaji? As one who explodes on contact with onions, I’ve never eaten a bhaji, but I’ve seen various spellings.
Alphalpha @40
Our local curry house offers bhajis based on several different vegetables, and I have cooked quite a few myself. Onion bhaji is rather different from all the others, being dry – a fritter, as we would call it.
Busy day at work, so getting here rather late in the day. Nice puzzle today. My clear favorite of the four long perimeter clues was AGATHA CHRISTIE. I also enjoyed PANCAKE LANDING, LONGISH, INAUGURAL, CHIPPER, and my CotD (for its humor), UPTIGHT.
I confidently solved ERNIE … for all the wrong reasons!! What (little) I know about Morecambe and Wise, I mostly know from this forum — including a clip of the comedians with Andre Previn that Eileen posted on one of her blogs a couple of weeks ago, in which, as I now recall, *Eric* made a comic mess of being the soloist in a piano concerto by Grieg. In solving 6d today, I confused Morecambe with Wise (i.e., Eric with ERNIE), and thought the “number cruncher” part of the clue referred to the comedian (who, again, I mistakenly thought was Ernie) mangling a musical number! Thanks to scchua for explaining the correct solution concerning the random number generator. I would say that E.R.N.I.E. (the number generator) was a TILT, but I have a vague recollection of encountering at least once in a prior Guardian Cryptic and 15^2 blog, maybe 2 or 3 years ago. Maybe that makes it a TILPBFIK (a Thing I Learned Previously But Forgot I Knew).
[I did not enjoy TRIUMPH as much as several of the other commenters, because I would have preferred to see more mockery or sarcasm in using “President” to clue five letters of the solution. Putting “President” in quotes (as I have just done twice) might have helped. I realize this is a highly subjective comment!]
Many thanks to Nutmeg and scchua and the other commenters.
A delightful puzzle. BURKA and UPTIGHT were joyous!
Many thanks, both and all.
Two additional comments I had regarding BURKA:
1. scchua’s explanation in the blog of the BRA portion of this answer was, I think, the most detailed and specific one I have seen here on 15^2 (unless I have not been paying close enough attention, the many times this three-letter word has been involved in the wordplay of clues in past puzzles). Explaining specifically that a bra is “support for the feminine breasts” made me think of this Seinfeld episode (I have no idea if that 1990s sitcom was exported out of the US).
2. Talking of BURKAs and hijabs, as several commenters did above, just this morning in a store I saw a woman using her hijab as a cell phone holder, similar to this picture, which allowed her to carry on her phone conversation while still having both hands free to do her shopping. Maybe this is done all the time (after all, I was able to find a generic picture on the Internet), or maybe, in terms of religious observance (of which I know little) this is something that is absolutely not supposed to be done, but in any case it was a new one on me, and I thought it was pretty clever.
[mmm… not that clever; unless her car is stationary – unlikely, given visual clues – she’s breaking the law!]
[alphalpha@40 – surely scchua’s helpful photo is not of an onion bhaji? Looks more like chopped okra (aka lady’s fingers, gumbo or kidney vetch) – known as bindi bhaji I believe). Perhaps you didn’t read his generously provided blog?]
William F P@46
[I read it, but didn’t look at the picture – I really can’t even look at a picture of an onion.]