There is the usual swathe of political subject matter in the clues, but besides the grid centring on Jeremy Corbyn, there isn’t much in the answers.
Favourite clue must be the long anagram for “Keep your head above water” – always nice to see a full understandable phrase used.
I got that and many others in the first pass so there were only a handful of tricky clues to polish off, mostly top left because I failed to get Boswell till having some crossing letters – I got stuck thinking it was a modern biographer.
| Across | ||
|---|---|---|
| 8 | OWN UP TO | Acknowledge BoJo’s finally now put out (3,2,2) ([boj]O NOW PUT)* AInd: out |
| 10 | NEEDLER | One who might make a prick burn at the end, leered horribly (7) [bur]N (LEERED)* AInd: horribly |
| 12 | STOP PRESS | Late news: “What Trump would like to do” (4-5) Double Definition |
| 13 | LEICESTER | Erectile dysfunction restricts second favourite of the Queen (9) (ERECTILE + S[econd])*AInd: dysfunction |
| 14 | OGLED | Eyed up Lodge’s novel (5) (LODGE)* AInd: novel |
| 16/18 | JEREMY CORBYN | “Mercy! Yer on!” (Boris Johnson openers) – the making of party leader? (6,6) (MERCY YER ON B[oris] J[ohnson])* AInd: the making of |
| 21/6 | ROYAL BLUE | Colour gets Prince Philip down? (5,4) ROYAL (Prince Philip) BLUE (down) |
| 22 | RECTANGLE | General screwing while hugging court figure (9) (GENERAL + CT (court) )* AInd: screwing |
| 24 | SPHERICAL | “Ah! Cripes! Transformed!” Normal finally? Like bollocks! (9) (AH CRIPES)* AInd:transformed, [norma]L |
| 27 | LOAFERS | For sale: kinky footwear (7) (FOR SALE)* AInd: kinky |
| 28 | NO LET-UP | Quite lacking obstruction, having an erection is relentless (2,3-2) NO (quite lacking) LET (obstruction) UP (having an erection) |
| Down | ||
| 1 | BOSWELL | Biographer causes Boris’s head to get inflated – “nothing in it” (7) B[oris] SWELL (get inflated) around O (nothing). |
| 2 | SPARSE | Scanty boxers do split embarrassingly at first (6) SPAR (boxers do) S[plit] E[mbarrassingly] |
| 3 | CORSETRY | The craft of pressing the flesh? (8) Cryptic definition |
| 4 | ON TOUR | Playing around makes balls turn bad (2,4) (OO (balls) TURN)* bad. Last one in. Even with all crossers this was hard to spot – TURN, which is usually an anagram or reversed indicator, as the material made this particularly difficult. |
| 5/25/26/11 | KEEP YOUR HEAD ABOVE WATER | AA poked about everywhere, casually giving advice to potential debtor? (4,4,4,5,5) (AA POKED ABOUT EVERYWHERE)* AInd: casually. For a while I pondered between “Your” and “Ones” till I ticked off the anagram letters |
| 7 | CRUSADE | Conservative about to go round America with Donald’s debut campaign (7) C[onservative] RE (about) around USA D[onald] |
| 9 | NOT LIKELY | Tony possibly accepted as laudable leader? No way! (3,6) (TONY)* AInd possibly, aroun LIKE (as) L[audable] |
| 15 | LAY A GHOST | Shag with spirit and get over past mistake (3,1,5) LAY (Shag) A GHOST (with spirit) |
| 17 | ENLARGED | Tumescent? Finish imbibing lousy lager (8) (LAGER)* AInd: lousy, inside END (finish) |
| 18 | CACKLING | Sniggering Conservative, lacking refinement (8) C[onservative] (LACKING)* AInd: refinement |
| 19 | BRISTLE | Rage: “Brexit’s crap! Labour’s leader must oust the ballot choice!” (7) (BREXIT’S swap X for L)* AInd: crap, where X=ballot choice , and L=Labour’s leader. First one in – which is surprising given the wordplay. At the time the answer just leapt out. |
| 20 | RECEIPT | IT creep fiddled income item (7) (IT CREEP)* AInd: fiddled |
| 22 | RACISM | Prejudice of Bergerac is mean at heart (6) Hidden in BergeRAC IS Mean |
| 23 | ARABLE | Arafat, say, on the French: “Ripe for cultivation” (6) ARAB (Arafat, say) LE (the, French) |
Couple of originally Russian jokes from the Cold War era suitable for post-Hard Brexit:
– Man walks into a shop and says to woman behind the counter: “You don’t have any meat?”. The lady replies: “We don’t have any fish. It’s the store across the street that doesn’t have any meat”
– A man queueing outside an off-licence tells the man beside him: “I have had enough, save my place, I am going to shoot Boris Johnson.” Two hours later he returns to reclaim his place. “Did you get him?” asks his friend. “No, the line there was even longer than the line here.”
(Second one slightly reworked)
As predicted, I didn’t get to try this one, so thanks, Beermagnet for the guided tour. Glad I looked in, or I wouldn’t have seen 9d.I presume that’s referring to Blair, not me (I have no leadership ambitions).
Btw, 27a has been nominated as Clue of the Fortnight on the Guardian Crossword Blog.
New laptop now functional, so I should be ok this week.
My accolade goes to 13ac’s “erectile dysfunction”. I’m looking forward to a wardrobe malfunction now.