Dalibor in the Indy is new to me (and evidently to anyone: he has so far been appearing at the weekends, which I don’t do). I did one of his at a Sloggers and Betters gathering a while ago — well to say that I did it ‘at’ the meeting is to pretend that I’m one of those people who can rattle these things off while chattering away and drinking beer, which I’m not, but I finished it later and it was good and rather difficult.
The difficulty seems to have eased a little, although not much, and there are again some original and very nice clues.
Definitions underlined, in maroon. Anagram indicators in italics.
| Across | ||
| 1 | RAMIFY | Branch of Marks invested in Fairy liquid (6) |
| M [Marks] in (Fairy)* | ||
| 4 | SMACKERS | Kisses worth more than one pound (8) |
| 2 defs | ||
| 10 | MANCUNIAN | Copper’s close to desperation, in a panic, chasing fellow citizen (9) |
| man Cu {desperatio}n (in a)* | ||
| 11 | AUGER | Argue about something that’s boring (5) |
| (Argue)* | ||
| 12 | NIGHT | Man beheaded, causing death (5) |
| {k}night — the man is the chessman, and night = death, something I was a bit uncomfortable with until I found it in Collins | ||
| 13 | BERNSTEIN | Kiki Bertens heartily playing tennis, scoring ace (9) |
| (Bertens)* in, but I’m afraid this is too much for me. I established from Google that Kiki Bertens is a top woman tennis player, and the scoring ace is the great composer Leonard Bernstein (the ace who uses a score …), and Bertens is anagrammed to give the first part of his name, but then …. [NeilW@1 reckons it’s {Kiki}Ber{tens} *(tennis), and I think he’s right] | ||
| 14 | ITALIAN | European institute, political group, Britain’s got out (7) |
| I [institute] Tali{B}an | ||
| 16 | DUCK | Steer clear of Donald! (4) |
| 2 defs, one of them referring to Donald Duck rather than Donald Trump | ||
| 19 | A TAD | Not much information based on facts will be reversed (1,3) |
| (data)rev. | ||
| 21 | OIL LAMP | Light problem detected inside old electronic device (3,4) |
| o (ill) amp — the electronic device is presumably an amplifier, but are amplifiers all electronic nowadays? What about my old amplifier, bought in 1973 and still going strong? | ||
| 24 | OURSELVES | Resolve US, resolve US (9) |
| US is simply us, ourselves, and it’s *(US resolve) | ||
| 25 | TITAN | Speaker’s become stricter towards bigwig (5) |
| “tighten” | ||
| 26 | ORGAN | Newspaper having leader from Piers binned (5) |
| {M}organ, referring to Piers Morgan | ||
| 27 | LENINGRAD | Sloping road with one moving forward to reach old city (9) |
| (leaning rd) with the a moved to the right — I suppose it is an old city but really it’s an old name for a city that is probably quite modern | ||
| 28 | ROCKWEED | Spooner’s put grass into a wok to get bladderwrack (8) |
| ‘wok reed’ Spoonerised, but I don’t see how grass is actually put into the wok — is it not just placed next to it? | ||
| 29 | LOLLOP | Silly walk‘s hilarious (see Python, for a start) (6) |
| LOL [textspeak for laughing out loud] lo P{ython}, referring to the Ministry of Silly Walks in Monty Python | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | ROMANTIC | Amorous date’s cancelled, Doc Martin’s devastated (8) |
| ({D}oc Martin)* — yes it makes far more sense referring to the television show and not the shoe, which is Doc Marten anyway | ||
| 2 | MONOGRAM | Type of Personal Identification Number to access synthesiser memory (8) |
| Mo(n)og RAM — a Moog Synthesiser, Random Access Memory | ||
| 3 | FAUST | Alchemist, one surrounded by mouldy smell … (5) |
| F(a)ust | ||
| 5 | MANFRED | … Name? Dr F, possibly defining Mann? (7) |
| (Name Dr F)*, the 60s pop group Manfred Mann, not Thomas Mann, who wrote Doktor Faustus | ||
| 6 | CLASSICAL | Traditional college girl I rang, disconnected halfway through (9) |
| c lass I cal{led} | ||
| 7 | EAGLES | Paul, jazz guitarist, backing English silver band (6) |
| E Ag Les — this references Les Paul, a guitarist of whom I’d never heard (and it seems I should be ashamed of myself), but Wikipedia has plenty about him, also the band The Eagles, of whom I had heard (just) | ||
| 8 | SPRING | May is part of this small circle that’s power-grabbing (6) |
| s (P) ring — May is part of this, as well as April and June perhaps | ||
| 9 | LISBON | City of London’s capital is good for Macron (6) |
| L{ondon} is bon [as the Frenchman Macron would say for ‘good’] | ||
| 15 | IN THE KNOW | Think about these days in which Leave at last is well-informed (2,3,4) |
| {Leav}e in ((Think)* now) | ||
| 17 | PASTORAL | Phosphorus from the stars seen across old country (8) |
| P ast(o)ral | ||
| 18 | OPENED UP | One party in NI admitting heartless police started shooting (6,2) |
| o(p{olic}e)ne DUP | ||
| 20 | DEVOLVE | Pass Swedish car, almost going into river (7) |
| De(Volv{o})e | ||
| 21 | ON SONG | Performing well but not off air (2,4) |
| on [not off] song [air] | ||
| 22 | COLOUR | State of Denver to look threatening – black? (6) |
| Co lour — Denver, Colorado | ||
| 23 | TRAGIC | Unlimited criticism surrounding newspaper, very sad (6) |
| {s}t(rag)ic{k} | ||
| 25 | TANGO | Somehow no good? To a T! (5) |
| *(ng To a) — Tango is T in the NATO alphabet | ||
*anagram
Thanks, John. I think BERNSTEIN is kikiBERtens + (tennis)*
Lots of nice clues here though I didn’t like the Spoonerism. Liked the clue for OURSELVES but I imagine the US = us might rankle some. TANGO was good too. Spent far too long getting OPENED UP. Parsed BERNSTEIN as Neil did which I’m sure must be correct.
Thanks to Dalibor and John.
There’s a theme here.
Have a look at 1d and 6d (general) and 8d, 14a, 26a, 17d, 23d and 27a (specific) examples. There may be more and there are a few other related clues, including BERNSTEIN.
Well spotted WordPlodder. 25, 3 & 5 also. I was looking for a theme to explain the rather odd A TAD, but was looking in the wrong places.
Enjoyed the wide ranging references, particularly the Kiki Bertens and Fairy Liquid clues.
Thanks Dalibor, John
I wondered if they were all connected to Bernstein, so googled him + Manfred to discover ‘Bernstein referred to it as trash and never recorded it’. So no.
That’s clever. I didn’t notice it. Arthur Bliss wrote a Colour Symphony. No doubt someone wrote a Mancunian symphony or a Lisbon symphony.
Thanks Dalibor for making it a bit more general. My impression when blogging, although I said nothing, was that the references tended to be a bit heavily in the pop/rock direction and now I see that this was not the case.
I won’t amend the blog to reflect the theme because my comments would need to be hidden and so far as I know it’s too late to do this now.
Thanks to John and Dalibor
Very good mostly but some clues involved one or two of my pet dislikes.
1a INVESTED plays no part except in the surface
4a WORTH? I don’t see what role this plays. If it is a DD then it is redundant, and if it is a whole clue as CD then it warrants a ? at the end. I hope Dalibor doesn’t mind a suggestion: Much tender kisses? along with other variants involving commonly/uncommonly etc.
10a Does PANIC work or should it be PANICKING?
21a DETECTED surface only
25a TOWARDS ditto
28a I don’t really get this unless TO WOK is a transitive verb, perhaps I’m missing something
7d Not a gripe, but I’m sure I’m not alone in immediately thinking ARGENT and spending a little time trying to make it fit. Perhaps a clever piece of misdirection. I got there in the end but some may not be happy with the use of BACKING in a down clue – I wonder if SUPPORTING was considered?
21d BUT seems superfluous and might have been avoided: Performing well going to air.
Plenty of great clues that outweigh any niggles though.
Many thanks to all who commented and John in particular for the blog.
There were indeed 12 (nick)names of relatively famous symphonies forming a kind of ghost theme.
Dansar, I take your points re 28ac and 7d. The Spoonerism is indeed pretty weak because did you ever see someone putting grass into a wok? I have friends, when visiting a wok restaurant, tell me they are going ‘to wok’ (verb) tonight. But, yes, perhaps they made it all up (as dictionaries keep far from ‘wok’ as a verb). Mea culpa. But it got past my test solvers and eimi too.
1ac: ‘A invested in B’ meaning ‘A inside B’ is a well-known containment indicator, I think. In 10ac, the anagram fodder consists of two words and therefore it is legitimate to use the plural form of the verb ‘(to) panic’. Most setters would consider ‘panic’ to be a noun but I am one who would like to avoid nounal anagram indicators as much as I can.
‘Detected’ (21ac) and ‘but’ may only be there to enhance the surface, the latter being used as a link word, but they do not stand in the way of the cryptic construction, in my opinion. As to ‘towards’ in 25ac, my intention was to see ‘A tightens B’ = ‘A becomes stricter towards B’.
D.
I spotted a theme!
Couldn’t parse 21ac. Thanks for the explanations.
Late in the day as usual. We would echo Hovis@2 in his comments. We missed the theme although when we were prompted to look whilst reading the comments, Bert noticed the possibility of some symphonies in the grid. We’d never heard of Kiki but guessed BERNSTEIN despite not being able to parse it so thanks to NeilW@1 for the explanation.
Thanks to Dalibor for the challenge – see you in Leicester on Saturday. Thanks John for the blog. Maybe we will see you in Leicester. Dalibor has another puzzle for you!
Dalibor @8
Having reread 10a I see what you mean, yes of course PANIC works.
As you rightly say, most of my other points refer to accepted practices, and I certainly don’t contend that any clue is invalid.
On one of those practices though: I have never been comfortable with BACKING or BACK OF referring to the right hand side of a word.
If I were to spell WORD backwards (i.e from the front towards the back) I would get DROW. This seems to me to put D at the front of WORD.
Similarly, if I were writing, I would consider words already written to be behind my pen.
If the convention was that FRONT referred to the RHS of a word then Les Paul might have been said to be FRONTING the band – surely more befitting of his status!
What I forgot to say is that I really liked your alternative for 4ac. And I think just ‘Tender kisses’ is even better. Wish I had thought of it but you can’t have it all, can you?
Rather belatedly I’d like to say that I thought this was a first-class puzzle. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t notice the symphony connection though – I really should have done. Loved the clue for LOLLOP.