Always a smile from me when Kairos crops up on my IoS watch. One or two bits of post-solve investigative work required, which led me down some interesting paths.
Abbreviations
cd cryptic definition
dd double definition
cad clue as definition
(xxxx)* anagram
anagrind = anagram indicator
[x] letter(s) removed
definitions are underlined
Across
1 Escapes while crossing Gulf
AVOIDS
An insertion of VOID in AS.
5 Link arrest to Matthew’s follower
BOOKMARK
A charade of BOOK and MARK, who follows Matthew in the New Testament.
9 East End icon dropping drug in Spar
BOWSPRIT
A charade of BOW and SPRIT[E]. This had me puzzled for a while, but then my trusty Collins came to the rescue:
sprite (n) ³ an icon in a computer game which can be manoeuvred around the screen by means of a joystick, etc
10 Young girl‘s story about a ship
LASSIE
An insertion of A SS in LIE.
11 A part with lines composed for musician
PALESTRINA
This was my LOI, despite it being an obvious anagram. I’m usually not too bad on musicians/composers but this Italian Renaissance composer had passed me by. (A PART LINES)*
12 Forced English, Dutch and American to return
MADE
A reversal of E, D and AM. ‘He was forced/made to do it.’
13 This ham’s performing blockbuster
SMASH HIT
(THIS HAMS)*
16 Stopped Anthony arresting quibbler
PEDANT
Hidden in stoPED ANThony. PEDANTS on Fifteensquared? Nooo …
17 Harry Chandler seen regularly in mall
ARCADE
The even letters of hArRyChAnDlEr. Harry Chandler was a real estate investor and is famous enough to have his own Wiki page. He’s not that interesting.
19 Reportedly purchase trees to make aircraft
BIPLANES
A homophone of BUY followed by PLANES for ‘trees’.
21 Lover left out celebrity
FAME
F[L]AME
22 Data may be on-board here for business
ENTERPRISE
I’m hoping there’s a better parsing than mine. I can only think it’s a dd: there would be data on board the Starship Enterprise with James T Kirk at the helm, and then ENTERPRISE is also of course a ‘business’.
25 Wedding venue starts to prepare elegant finger food
CANAPÉ
Always good to have a bit of Biblical knowledge when Kairos is in town. A charade of CANA and PE for the first letters of ‘prepare’ and ‘elegant’. Referencing the Wedding Feast at Cana, from John 2:1-12, where at his mother’s behest, Jesus turned water into wine for the guests and became Mr Popular for the night.
26 Knotty bowl in mahogany?
HARDWOOD
A charade of HARD and WOOD. ‘That’s a hard/knotty problem’ and WOOD as in the game of bowls.
27 Maybe Arctic queen’s a rat
DESERTER
A charade of DESERT and ER for Elizabeth Regina. The Arctic is a climatically a desert, since the definition depends on the lack of precipitation rather than the temperature.
28 Unknown drone flying around over there
YONDER
A charade of Y for the mathematical ‘unknown’ and (DRONE)*
Down
2 One played a character in Twelfth Night
VIOLA
A dd.
3 Children raised in the US sisterhood
ISSUE
Hidden reversed in thE US SIsterhood.
4 Write hurriedly to cancel test money
SCRATCH
I have not seen one of these for a while: not a dd, nor a td, but a qd – a quadruple definition. I think these four example sentences nail it down:
a. ‘I scratched down a note.’
b. ‘We had to scratch the project because of a lack of funds.’
c. ‘She went for a scratch test to see whether she was really allergic to histamine.’
d. ‘He plans to make some serious scratch setting crosswords.’
5 In the middle of venture involving confectionery
BETWIXT
An insertion of the chocolate bar TWIX in BET.
6 Light and smooth note (fairly quiet)
OIL LAMP
A charade of OIL, LA for the sixth note of the tonic sol-fa, and MP for mezzo piano, the musical command meaning ‘moderately softly’.
7 Reactionary aimed to support state TV and radio?
MASS MEDIA
A charade of MASS and (AIMED)* The anagrind is ‘reactionary’ and ‘to support’ works because it’s a down clue.
8 Precipitative movement?
RAIN DANCE
A cd.
14 Spoil man eating a daughter’s preserve
MARMALADE
A charade of MAR and A and D inserted into MALE.
15 Get seaman excited with Lady Gaga?
STAGE NAME
(GET SEAMAN)* Her real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, but you’re not that interested, are you?
18 He is one!
ELEMENT
It certainly is. Helium, He, is preceded by H for Hydrogen and followed by Li for Lithium in the Periodic Table.
19 In EastEnders, Pat maybe more manly
BUTCHER
A dd. Never watched it, but you could get it from the crossers and second definition. Pat BUTCHER is a character in the soap.
20 Show left and right united over indication of agreement
PORTRAY
A charade of PORT for the lhs of a ship, R and AY. ‘Over’ works because it’s a down clue. The AYES have it (but not when Teresa’s proposing the motion).
23 Argue about origin of native tree
ROWAN
Not sure about this. It looks like a charade of ROW for ‘argue’ and AN. Is Kairos asking us to reverse to first two letters of ‘native’ to give us the AN?
24 Small ice-cream provides tea time treat
SCONE
A charade of S and CONE. SCONE doesn’t rhyme with CONE, obviously.
Many thanks as always to Kairos for this Sunday’s puzzle.
Have I missed a day?
Data is a character (in fact an android) in Star Trek: The Next Generation (the third series).
Thanks, Andrew. Goodness, I would never have got that. (Never had you down as a Trekkie, btw …)
This was nicely challenging and great fun. The wonderful QD 4d gets my vote as favourite but there were loads of other top clues too.
The musician in 11a was new to me and required some Googling, and the Eastenders character in 19d died many years ago so needing Mrs RD to help me with that one.
Many thanks to Kairos and to Pierre.
Pierre, I parsed 23d as ROW (argue) + A(bout) + N (origin of native).
Even though I finished this pretty quickly, it was no stroll in the park and I had quite a few unparsed including the CANA bit of CANAPÉ, OIL LAMP and ENTERPRISE. Thanks for the explanations and to Rabbit Dave @4 for the parsing of ROWAN. Seems obvious, but I don’t recall having come across A for ‘about’ very often before.
‘He is one!’ and the quad def were my favourites today.
A welcome way of recovering from the rigours of yesterday’s offering.
A big thanks to Kairos and to Pierre
Made life difficult by confidently writing in ‘pronoun’ for 18d before any checkers were in place. I did have to look up the musician and couldn’t parse the second part of 9a – thank you, Pierre!
I’ve only come across the ‘money’ definition of 4d in crosswords – does anyone actually use that term?
Thanks to Kairos for another excellent puzzle and to Pierre for the blog.
11a became an exercise in arranging the remaining letters into plausible combinations. Foreign words/names clued as anagrams are a real bugbear of mine (and I know I’m not alone).
Nice to see somebody other than me complaining about clues such as 11a. Didn’t know that meaning for SPRITE or the biblical wedding venue or the EastEnder character so I’ve learnt something even if the latter is of no interest. Thanks to Kairos and Pierre.
For those bemused by my post@1, Pierre’s blog briefly appeared in the early hours of Saturday, so didn’t mean a lot without having yet seen the relevant puzzle.
Nice and gentle when it did surface, and a relief after the Nimrod slog. I sort of knew the Data character, but got to Palestrina via the anagram fodder and the ‘show errors’ button. Thanks to Kairos and Pierre.
An enjoyable Sunday solve with no real problems. PALESTRINA was a write-in for us, but then one person’s write-in is another’s bugbear – the world would be a very dull place if it wasn’t so. We too puzzled over the parsing of ENTERPRISE and ROWAN but were alert enough to remember ‘He’ as the chemical symbol. Favourite was VIOLA – possibly becaues Twelfth Night is one of our favourite Shakespeare plays.
Thanks, Kairos and Pierre.
Chambers gives ‘a’ for “about”.
Thanks to Pierre and Kairos
Great blog Pierre, given your introduction to last weeks Everyman I’m surprised you hadn’t heard of Data.
At the risk of appearing to be a 16a, I doubt many Londoners would consider anything beyond Stepney to be in the East End, but perhaps that’s sour grapes from looking for a H to drop as well as the E.
jane@6, they certainly do round my way.
LOI Palestrina but only as a lucky toss up between that and Lapestrina
Thanks for the confirmation of A for ‘answer’ in 23d.
You’re right, Dansar, I have let myself down a bit there with the Trekkie reference. But one of the things I really like about this site is that as a blogger you never have to be shy of saying you don’t know something about the solution or the parsing, because there is always a kind and better informed soul who will come to the rescue.
Thanks for your response, Dansar@12. Could I ask – where is ‘down your way’?
I was convinced that 27ac was DEFECTER. I couldn’t parse it and I now see it’s not spelled that way.
There’s a legend about PALESTRINA, which became the subject of an opera by Hans Pfitzner, that the Council of Trent was going to ban polyphonic church music. They felt that all the voices singing on top of each other made it impossible to hear the words. Palestrina supposedly wrote a polyphonic mass setting, the Missa Papa Marcella, in which you could hear all the words and saved church music.
I’m Trekkie enough that 22ac was a write-in.
Outer NW London at the moment Jane@14, but I’ve heard SCRATCH for money for all over London for decades – perhaps it’s the company I keep.