I found this a tough puzzle to get started with. There was an interesting variety of clues and you often had to break the clue down to atomic level to work out the parsing.
14 and 20 were the only ones I had a minor carp about. But there was much to enjoy, especially the humour of clues like 11/21.
| Across | ||
| 1 | RINGMASTER | His audience requests Send in the Clowns (10) |
| CD | ||
| 6 | AWED | Gripped by dread, having cut head off (4) |
| [S]awed | ||
| 9 | MASQUERADE | Prepared to host special Question Time where everyone’s wearing the veil (10) |
| Made around s(pecial) Qu(estion) era | ||
| 10 | FLAN | Fellaini regularly dismissed; what a pudding! (4) |
| Odd letters of FeLlAiNi | ||
| 12 | STATUS SYMBOL | Revolting little tattoos, typically “bald eagle” or perhaps “Ferrari” (6,6) |
| Tats< (short form of tattoos, hence little tattoos) + US symbol | ||
| 15 | ABOLISH | A blunder to take on old Liberal in scrap (7) |
| A bish around o(ld) l(iberal). Bish is UK slang for a mistake. | ||
| 16 | ROUGH IT | Backpack through Italy’s interior (5,2) |
| Hidden in thROUGH ITaly | ||
| 17 | ALGEBRA | Part of the maths syllabus gets a big supporter! (7) |
| A + lge (abbrev for large) + bra | ||
| 19 | MARINES | Resistance infiltrating state’s elite corps (7) |
| R(esistance) in Maine’s | ||
| 20 | ANNA KARENINA | North Australian, turning 9, discreetly visiting Turkish capital; it’s a long story! (4,8) |
| N(orth) A(ustralian) + nine* in Ankara. I think the discreetly is meant indicate that the two words are placed separately but isn’t it the wrong spelling? Should be discretely. | ||
| 23 | CROW | Native American bird (4) |
| DD | ||
| 24 | UNOBSERVED | Ben devours bananas behind closed doors (10) |
| (Ben devours)* | ||
| 25 | ROAM | I left aborigine heading west to go on walkabout (4) |
| Maor[i]< | ||
| 26 | FLASH HARRY | Spiv trafficked hash on board Florida river railway (5,5) |
| Hash* in Fla (not the official state abbrev but accepted as an abbrev for Florida) + R(iver) + ry (railway) | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | ROME | Chaplain dropped plate in church (4) |
| [Ch]rome. To chrome something can be to plate it with a chromium compound. Church refers to the Church of Rome i.e. Catholicism. | ||
| 2 | NOSH | Eats starter of sushi during visit to Japanese theatre (4) |
| S[ushi] in Noh | ||
| 3 | MOUNTAIN BIKE | Make Baku in no time on this! (8,4) |
| &lit – (Baku in no time)* | ||
| 4 | SCRATCH | “15 shillings? Leave it out!” – Dickensian Bob (7) |
| S(hillings) Cratch[it] – Bob Cratchit from A Christmas Carol | ||
| 5 | END USER | As a consumer, going around the South of France René’s all upset (3,4) |
| (Rene around sud)< | ||
| 7 | WELL BEHIND | 50 by Bangladesh opener in New Delhi; bats in a desperate situation! (4,6) |
| L + B[angladesh] in (New Delhi)* | ||
| 8 | DONALD TUSK | Old Nat’s Roaming in the Gloaming, no.1 in Europe (6,4) |
| (Old Nat)* in dusk. Tusk is president of the European Council, which would make him a sort of Number One. | ||
| 11/21 | MY CUP RUNNETH OVER | “I’m more than pleased” said Violet Elizabeth, “but no Wembley this year” (2,3,7,4) |
| Needed some google help to explain the Violet Elizabeth reference, but it refers to lisping Violet Elizabeth Bott (of “I’ll sqweem, sqweem and sqweem” fame) who would say “My cup run is over” in this way. | ||
| 13 | MADAGASCAR | Land Rover possibly carrying angry Turkish commander south (10) |
| Car with Mad Aga + S(outh) on top of it. | ||
| 14 | GORGONZOLA | Big cheese Republican from the USA, bizarre, crazy, held in rough gaol (10) |
| R(epublican) + gonzo (an American term for bizarre best known from gonzo journalism) in gaol*. Not sure the “big” adds much to the clue other than helping the surface definition. I’m not aware that gorgonzola comes in huge wheels or anything like that which would otherwise justify the inclusion. | ||
| 18 | ADRENAL | Doctor probes rear end of diva Lois, flipping close to the kidneys! (7) |
| Dr in [div]a + Lane< (ref to Lois Lane). | ||
| 19 | MINIBUS | -1, 3rd of February, boarding vehicle (7) |
| Minus (indicated by the -) with 1 and third letter of Febuary in it. | ||
| 21 | See 11 | |
| 22 | D DAY | Tricky landings alongside R Hudson? (1-3) |
| CD/DD referring to Doris Day, who appeared in a number of films with Rock Hudson. | ||
*anagram
Ah, ‘discretely’ – now it makes sense. As a minor difference, I took “turned” to denote reversal of NINE rather than any old anagram. Couldn’t parse 1d, so thanks for that. Also didn’t know the Violet Elizabeth reference in 11/21 but clearly indicated a lisping issue.
Thanks to Knut and Neal.
I like Knut’s puzzles. I can just sit down with a pencil and a paper and work my way through it. No need for a word wizard to find something I’d never heard of before.
For those who don’t know of Violet Elizabeth Bott, she feature in the “Just William” books by Richmal Crompton.
A lovely stretching of the cryptic grey matter – thank you Knut. I too reversed NINE in the same way as Hovis @1
The 11/21 combination is just brilliant
Thanks also to Neal
Enjoyable as ever, and at the tougher end of Knut’s range. Took me ages to see ROME even with both crossers. MY CUP RUNNETH OVER was my favourite.
Thanks to Knut and Neal
Great puzzle that completely ignored (and I am glad it did) the “Monday puzzles must be easy” convention.
I’ve been out for most of the day but did this before I went.
Basically, what crypticsue said: a stretch – but lovely!
Caught out by 1dn: thought it must be ROME but didn’t know CH =chaplain and didn’t think to look it up Also, initially stuck in an unparsed OMNIBUS at 19dn, until light finally dawned re MARINES.
Thanks to Neal and, of course, Knut – I loved it!
I found this too much on the tough side to be enjoyable. Even doing extensive word searches, I couldn’t finish.
Very hard to get in to but after the ball started rolling not as fearsome as it initially looked.
A pity of the mistake in 20ac but, actually, I didn’t notice it when solving.
Last one in, ROME (1d) – a complete guess. I wasn’t familiar with CH for ‘chaplain’ (but look at 25ac in today’s Guardian Quiptic from Pan!) and didn’t know what to do with ‘plate’. But if you put an imaginary comma after ‘dropped’ and accept that ‘plate’ is enough to define ‘coat with chromium’ (as I did), then it’s fine. Perhaps I would have gone for Church (uppercase). Ah well, I am just a bad loser today! 🙂
11/21 is wonderful and if this clue really comes straight out of our setter’s brain, well, then it’s just exceptional.
Many thanks to Neal for the blog & Knut for the fun.
Thanks to NealH and Knut
I thought this was very good, especially 20 (shame about the typo),and 11/21 BUT:
1a in my experience the audience wants the clowns run over by their own jalopy
9a THE veil is unfortunate – perhaps misleading
1d I have never seen or heard ROME as a stand in for CHURCH – THE CHURCH, yes, but there is an important distinction. That, with the unindicated yoda speak, and stretchy PLATE = CHROME, made this an unsatisfying clue even though it was obvious.
14d I’d be happy for someone to come up with a justification for BIG, but even then we are left with a redundant CRAZY
My cup one is over, but I enjoyed this one very much too
We finished this unaided quite early but haven’t had chance to comment till now. We thought of RINGMASTER for 1ac but considered the definition a bit vague and it was only when we got some crossing letters that we were confident enough to put it in. Although we missed the plate=chrome bit (doh!) we were quite happy with ROME = church; it’s a sort of ecclesiastical shorthand – Rome for the RC Church, Canterbury for the Anglican – that we’ve come across before.
Lots to like; favourites included MASQUERADE, ALGEBRA (despite the ‘bra’ for ‘supporter’ cliché) and MOUNTAIN BIKE.
Thanks, Knut and NealH.
11/21D the clue of the year so far. Difficult puzzle, but brilliant.
Thanks to Knut; and NealH for the blog.