A tough but fair challenge from Picaroon.
I struggled a bit with a few entries this morning. It took me ages to see BRAWL for example, and I could not see B-RAINSTORM for some reason at 6dn (thanks to the first commenters for pointing it out).
I also learned a new word, at 13dn.
Thanks Picaroon.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SOCIALISM | Note Islamic rebels will provide doctrine (9) |
| SO (musical “note”) + *(islamic) | ||
| 6 | BRAWL | Flipping R&B, something that bores The Clash (5) |
| [flipping] <=RB + AWL (“something that bores”) | ||
| 9 | PHOTOJOURNALIST | Expert in shooting stars, after day in Paris probing boson (15) |
| A-LIST (“stars”), after JOUR (French for day, so “day in Paris”) probing PHOTON (“boson”), so PHOTO(JOUR)N-A-LIST | ||
| 10 | DODO | Old-fashioned person‘s parties (4) |
| DO (“party”) twice, so “parties” | ||
| 11 | MAIN LINE | Graduate set to succeed in an important way (4,4) |
| M.A. (“graduate”) + IN LINE (“set to succeed”) | ||
| 14 | PARAMOUNT | Unrivalled lover hasn’t finished spiritual texts (9) |
| PARAMOU(r) (“lover” hasn’t finished) + NT (New Testament, so “spiritual texts”) | ||
| 15 | TWEED | Used aid for driving across western river (5) |
| TEED (“used aid for driving” in golf) across W (western) | ||
| 16 | NITRO | Explosive beginning, in which the first person appears late (5) |
| INTRO (“beginning”) with the I (“the first person”) appearing late (indicating that it is has come in second when it is supposed to have come in first) | ||
| 18 | TOLERABLY | Fairly charge to keep wild bear back from family (9) |
| TOLL (“charge”) to keep *(bear) + [back from] (famil)Y | ||
| 20 | INERT GAS | He is one running Tangiers (5,3) |
| *(tangiers)
He is the chemical symbol for helium, which is an inert gas. |
||
| 21 | GNAT | One may have a bite of taste from the east (4) |
| <=TANG (“taste” from the east, i.e. from right to left) | ||
| 25 | ENTENTE CORDIALE | Electorate, in end, agitated for European Union (7,8) |
| *(electorate in end) | ||
| 26 | SHRED | A little bit of wine? Cork it at first (5) |
| RED (“wine”) with SH (be quiet, so “cork it”) at first | ||
| 27 | DEFEATISM | Readiness to lose belief without very good deed (9) |
| DEISM (“belief”) without FEAT (“very good deed”) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SAPID | Knocked up humus, say, because it’s tasty (5) |
| <=DIP + <=AS (knocked up “humus say” and “because”) | ||
| 2 | CHOWDER | Dish of food with eg cherry around (7) |
| CHOW (“food”) + <=RED (“e.g. cherry” around) | ||
| 3 | ANON | Unidentified person gets a rebuff from the French (4) |
| A NON (“no” in French so “rebuff in French”) | ||
| 4 | ICON | Crook’s confession: it’s seen in church (4) |
| A crook making a confession may say, “I CON“ | ||
| 5 | MERCANTILE | Americans who rocked up have roofing skills like tradespeople (10) |
| <=R.E.M. (American band, so “Americans who rocked” up) + CAN TILE (“have roofing skills”) | ||
| 6 | BRAINSTORM | Think British must get terrible weather (10) |
| B (British) + RAINSTORM (“terrible weather” | ||
| 7 | ASININE | Vacuous account about odd figure (7) |
| ISA (Individual Savings “Account”, about) + NINE (“odd figure”) | ||
| 8 | LATTER-DAY | Treat Lady Gaga, giving present (6-3) |
| *(treat lady) | ||
| 12 | IMPORTUNED | What solicitor did, brought in to defend international group (10) |
| IMPORTED (“brought in”) to defend U.N. (United Nations, so “international group”) | ||
| 13 | SUBTRAHEND | It’s taken away from rough brute’s hand (10) |
| *(brutes hand)
In mathematics, a subtrahend is a number to be subtracted from another. |
||
| 14 | PENNILESS | River’s captured by writers with no change at all? (9) |
| (river) NILE’S captured by PENS (“writers”) | ||
| 17 | TWEETER | Speaker who gives brief messages (7) |
| Double definition, the firt relating to a loundspeaker and the second to Twitter users. | ||
| 19 | BENGALI | Boy meets girl, one from part of Asia (7) |
| BEN (“boy”) meets GAL (“girl”) + I (“one”) | ||
| 22 | THERM | It’s not us dressing right for some heat (5) |
| THEM (“it’s not us”) dressing R (right) | ||
| 23 | TOFF | Swell until at great volume (4) |
| TO (“until”) + FF (fortissimo in music, so “at great volume”) | ||
| 24 | EDDA | Studied Dante’s collected verse works (4) |
| Hidden in “studiED DAnte” | ||
*anagram
I parsed 6dn as B(ritish)+RAINSTORM
I failed to parse 9a as I read the definition as “expert in shooting stars”.
Nice to see account used to me an something other than AC.
6 down is B for British and rainstorm.
Of course!!! Not awake yet this morning – will edit!
1d was misleading, since the more common spelling of the edible item is hummus – presumably intentional rather than, as yesterday wth geranium, an error. It’s good anyway to see that error noted immediately in today’s Corrections and Clarifications.
In 24 down collected is part of the wordplay and the definition is just ‘verse works’.
Woody @5 – it work’s both ways, I think as the Edda were a collection of verse works, so I took the easy way out.
Wow that was fun. I need several new tea trays, a new desk top and a new forehead but enjoyed myself – I think “inert gas” caused the biggest dent. First pass was desperate – an “ism” here, a “ed” there and slowly it built Some lovely contraventions of conventions I thought – “spiritual text” for “nt” which suggest something more exotic and avoided the hackneyed “books”. “photojournalist” I built up slowly, piece by piece, and felt much more awake afterwards. Great anagram at 25ac and so many ticks I cannot enumerate them here. Thank you Picaroon for a delightfully inventive puzzle, and Loonapick for unpicking the pieces so artfully.
Loonapick @ 6, you could say collected is doing double duty, thanks for the blog.
Thanks Catflat for referring me here for help with 5.
What I had been doing wrong: I got the answer from letters revealed by other clues before needing to parse completely. In attempting to parse after the event, I was thrown by the fact that MERCAN is not only found within AMERICANS but can be derived from it by a regular and symmetrical exclusion of the first middle and last letters of it. So I assumed that “rocked up” (which in another context might well be used as a signifier that some kind of transformation is to be done to a word) was meant to signal that the first, middle and last letters of AMERICANS were to fall away. And for the life of me I had no idea why it should be understood to signal that specifically.
My thoughts on the clue once parsing has been made clear to me: obviously it makes sense in hindsight. But that AMERICANS WHO ROCKED should lead to REM and nothing else does seem a little diffuse and loose to me. Then again, I guess there aren’t many defunct US rock bands whose names consist of 3 letters, so not too onerous to sift through available options in order to find the solution that fits. So I guess it’s perfectly fine.
Excellent puzzle, full of well-written clues. Slow to get started but the two long answers went in fairly easily and got me going. I have often thought that the longer the answer, the easier it is to get.
LOI was DODO, which had me stumped for a while. Was thinking of ‘does’ and then, when CHOWDER was in place, ‘dods’ and ‘duds’.
Particularly liked BRAWL, NITRO, INERT GAS (remembered He from school), SHRED, IMPORTUNED, BENGALI.
And the river wasn’t the Tamar this time!
Thanks to Picaroon and loonapick.
As usual, a very enjoyable challenge from Picaroon.
Now that was hard work, didn’t make life any easier for myself by rushing in Nave for 4d without due care and consideration. Shred at 26ac was LOI…
We too started with nave – ‘confessed knave’, Ronald @12.
As others have said, this was hard but fair. INERT GAS was a real tea tray moment and, like thezed @7, enjoyed building up PHOTOJOURNALIST from JOUR onwards.
Thanks, Picaroon and Loonapick (any relation?)
I saw off my daughter this morning for her exam. Settled down to this with a coffee not expecting her to have got the better deal! This was tough. Nothing initially up top so tried the SE corner which started to give.
Eventually got through on 3rd coffee.
Inert gas, shred, penniless and others are excellent
Sheer class from start to finish. A lesson to all would-be setters
The hardest of today’s cryptics (well of the ones I’ve solved so far anyway)
I too started with ‘nave’, I always forget about the perishing gases masquerading as HE (or AS) and like loonapick, learned a new word in 13d
Thanks to Picaroon for the brain stretching and loonapick for the blog
A brainstorm in the literal sense! Loved 12D and 13D,,,Thanks to the blogger and the setter for the entertainment.
Very good – a real workout today. Especially liked 10 dodo and asinine 7d, the latter still difficult to get with all the crossers. 1d new word for day. Nave also tried, but icon, when seen, smart.
It took me a while to get going on this. I could not parse 5d apart from TILE and 7d apart from NINE. Never heard of I.S.A. for a bank account.
My favourites were INERT GAS + PHOTOJOURNALIST.
New for me were SAPID + SUBTRAHEND.
Thanks Picaroon and blogger.
I knew 13d was one of those old arith terms, like multiplicand, but needed all crossers to nail it. Yep, nice chewy number from the Pirate with lots to enjoy. Dnk the acronym in 7d, my sole ?, and not a quibble anywhere throughout. Slow to twig helium, a doh as it’s a recent regular, and ditto REM for 5d. Yes, the dip for 1d is never spelt like that, so maybe the ‘say’ is both ‘for example’ and a homophone indicator… just an idea. Great fun, thanks L and P.
Great puzzle as usual from Picaroon. Should have understood the ISA reference, as I’ve had several. For Michelle: Individual Savings Account they replaced TESSAs in UK around the end of the last century; latest version is the LISA, which helps younger people to save for a later house deposit or pension, with government bonuses added. LISA very good value; ISAs less so these days unless you have a lot of money to save, since tax on savings interest for most of us disappeared a couple of budgets ago.
I thought about 27 as I slowly progressed – I found this very hard but fair.
I can’t believe that I fell for He again, only noticing when the anagram was resolved.
I didn’t know EDDA or the SUB*. I ticked PHOTOJOURNALIST, NITRO, ENTENTE CORDIALE, SHRED and MERCANTILE.
Thanks Picaroon and loonapick.
Failed to follow through properly parsing 11 and dashed down Main Road into a cul-de-sac in the NE corner. Can only agree with everyone else, a great puzzle.
This was great fun. I got most of it done last night and all the remaining words this morning. My favorite way.
Liked the expert in shooting stars at 9a, the paramour in 14a, the I-always-fall-for-it chemical symbol in 20a and the terrible British weather in 6d. This last reminds me — in British fiction of maybe midcentury, British characters would sometimes say to non-British friends something about “our weather, our cooking and our plumbing.” I understand about the weather and the cooking, but what was supposed to be wrong with British plumbing? When I visited it looked like normal plumbing to me, but with the small exception that washbasins had separate taps for hot and cold so you couldn’t run warm water to wash your hands in, rather than a central tap as here. But that’s pretty minor — nowhere near the gravity of the bad reputation of the weather and the cooking. (When I visited in 1974 I never had a good cup of coffee. When I visited again in the 80’s I never had a bad one. Must be the EU?)
Anna@10 — no, and it wasn’t the DEE or the EXE either. We had the Nile and the Tweed instead.
I’d forgotten about the old woofer and tweeter. Vivid terms!
They taught us “subtrahend” along with “addend”, “dividend”, “quotient” etc. in elementary school while they were teaching us subtraction. Don’t know why they bothered, I’ve never used the word since.
Thanks, Picaroon and loonapick.
I had C_O_D_ _ and guessed CROWDIE for “dish of food”. Bad move. I couldn’t parse it, but then I couldn’t parse CHOWDER either.
Thanks Picaroon for a very enjoyable tussle and a well-dented tea tray.
Reading a lot about science and maths probably helped me to make easy work of SUBTRAHEND, INERT GAS and PHOTOJOURNALIST. As for He (the inert gas), I am always on the lookout anyway for chemical symbols like that, other innocent-looking ones being As and I.
Like Anna @10, I often find longer answers easier to get, but, easy or not, I like to go for those anyway when I first tackle a crossword. PHOTOJOURNALIST came readily without crossers, but I needed the middle E and the D to help me get ENTENTE CORDIALE.
This was a great crossword overall, with tricky bits noted already by others. 1d was especially tricky for me because it looked wrong, but in the end I realised ‘say’ would account for that spelling of ‘humus’ (soil). Doubly cryptic!
Thanks to Picaroon and Loonapick.
Thanks to Picaroon and loonapick.
Gosh I enjoyed this with many favourites already noted in previous contributions. Biggest AHA! moment was from MERCANTILE which let me break out from the NE corner, followed closely by ENTENTE CORDIALE which led to a general clean-up. EDDA led me to Google (it had to be, but what does it mean?) which I normally count as a cheat, but I gave myself the licence for a change. Happy Goldilocks and a McIvor moment when it was all over.
Oops that should be “a MacGyver moment” – this Google is handy……
Thanks to Picaroon and loonapick. It has mostly all been said. Pretty tough but nonetheless very enjoyable. Thought of giving up a couple of times, but glad I stuck with it. Last ones for me were inert gas, photojournalist and mercantile. As it turns out they are also my favourite clues and new words for me were Edda and subtrahend. Thanks again to Picaroon and loonapick.
Thanks to Picaroon and loonapick. Nothing much to add. Tricky but enjoyable.
A photon is not a boson. Bosons are heavy particles containing 3quarks such as protons and neutrons. I would get out more but I’ve got all these crosswords to do.
Richard @31 I think you are thinking of baryons. Bosons are integer spin particles, including all the force carriers (photons, gluons, gravitons, W&Z bosons) and the Higgs. Opposed to fermions, with half-integer spin. Matter is made up of hadrons and leptons, and hadrons are sub-divided into baryons (3 quarks) and mesons (quark and anti-quark).
Really enjoyed this. Chewy and satisfying. Hadn’t heard of subtrahend either. But guessed and popped it in last. Not a word I’m likely to be using in any songs or poems! Too many favourites to mention. Thanks Picaroon and Loonapick
Great puzzle. FOI THERM, LOI ICON. EDDA has appeared several times in the Times jumbo, so it was no problem for me.
Many thanks, loonapick and, of course, Picaroon.
I’ve been out for a most enjoyable walk and pub lunch. I made time to solve the puzzle before I went but had no time to comment. Now there is nothing left to add to the words of praise for this super puzzle – copmus @15 says it all – but I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed constructing PHOTOJOURNALIST and SUBTRAHEND – a totally new word for me but it shouldn’t have been, since I know the other Latin-gerundive-derivated mathematical terms [addend{um}], dividend and [vaguely] multiplicand. It’s strange how some words are so familiar and other related ones not: I’ve always thought that about Orient and Occident, for instance.
Whoops
I’m confusing baryons with bosons!
I was afraid someone would start debating bosons and the like thus putting me way out of my depth. Anyway I found this quite hard but I rather expected it be given the setter. More agreeable than usual though, but I can’t say I parsed everything even in retrospect. Didn’t know SUBTRAHEND or SAPID but the latter was easy to get. TOFF was LOI.
Thanks Picaroon.
Me @35 – for ‘derivated’, please read ‘derived’. [Tut!]
Thanks Picaroon and loonapick
Sorry, quite quick for me, though I did need a wordsearch for SUBTRAHEND.
I really only came to nominate ENTENTE CORDIALE for clue of the year. I’m surprised that (at a quick glance through) no-one else seems to have mentioned it!
Thanks both,
I needed a couple of checks to get this done. I had ‘towed’ for ‘Tweed’ and ‘twitter’ for ‘tweeter’. A very fresh and inventive puzzle.
Great crossword, clever, witty & challenging. I’m with Muffin @ 39 on ENTENTE CORDIALE, I really did laugh out loud
If my biology memory is correct, humus (pronounced hyoumus) is the organic fraction of soil, whereas hummus(without the y-sound) is the dip
MD @ 42: I agree with you. I think that was just a straight-up typo. “Say” has to be interpreted as meaning “for example” for the clue to work. It doesn’t work as a “sounds like” clue – at least not in my part of the world.
That aside, great puzzle. Very challenging – especially “brawl” – but I was able to tackle it in the end.
Thanks to loonapick and Picaroon
Superb.
I agree with BlueDot @43. In a puzzle that takes this much care, that spelling wasn’t intentional.
MD, BD & Dansar: I wonder if humus could have been rendered with two question marks rather than one – and if so, whether such a device would have engendered heaps of praise or loads of opprobrium?(?)
Eileen@35
I’m also struck by those familiar/unfamiliar related pairs. The most surprising one for me is illustrated right in this puzzle – SAPID vs INSIPID!
Great puzzle and blog. Thanks both.
Failed on SW as I couldn’t get IMPORTUNED 12d, so I cheated it in the end for the solve. Liked parts of this puzzle e.g. 10a DODO and 20a INERT GAS. Yes, SUBTRAHEND 13d was also new to me. Thanks to Picaroon and loonapick.
I won’t go into my shameful errors that stopped me completing this – thanks Picaroon and loonapick.
The inert gas reminded me of this which you may enjoy:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132191-300-periodic-table-special-the-elements-crossword/
A very neatly constructed puzzle from Picaroon and a pleasant solve. Nice to see a distinct lack of quibbles here – reflecting the elegance of clueing.
My favourites, both ticked, were ENTENTE CORDIALE and SHRED.
[phitonelly@46 – Thank you for that super insight re sapid/insipid, something that had never occurred to me before.]
Many thanks, Picaroon. Great blog, loonapick.