Thanks to Tramp for the themed puzzle. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
And by the way, Toy Story 4 was recently released.
Across
1 Is Mr Potato Head to cry around fellow citizens? (11)
COMPATRIOTS : Anagram of(… around) [IS MR POTATO + 1st letter of(Head to) “cry” ].
9 Punished American getting drugs out of back of German car (7)
AMERCED : A(abbrev. for “American”) plus(getting) “Es”(plural of abbreviated slang for the drug Ecstasy) deleted from(out of) tail end of(back of) “Mercedes”(… Benz, German car brand).
Defn: … with a fine, in legal jargon.
10 Current cup holder to follow victory: change pitch with this? (7)
VIBRATO : [ I(symbol for electric current, in physics) + BRA(underwear to support female breasts, consisting of cups and straps) + TO ] placed after(to follow) V(abbrev. for “victory”).
Defn: The effect of changing musical pitch, regularly and pulsatingly.
11 Close arguments with these? Draws lots, randomly (4,5)
LAST WORDS : Anagram of(…, randomly) DRAWS LOTS.
12 Tips from Tom Hanks: film a character (5)
THETA : 1st letters, respectively, of(Tips from) “Tom Hanks” + ET(… the Extra-Terrestrial, sci-fi film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg) + A.
Defn: … in the Greek alphabet.
13 Note: does have chest bug (4)
NARK : N(abbrev. for “note”) plus(does have) ARK(a chest/a box).
Defn: …/to annoy.
14 Plan mother’s time at home with daughter (10)
MASTERMIND : MA(familiar term for one’s mother)‘S + TERM(a period of time) + IN(at home/not outside) plus(with) D(abbrev. for “daughter”).
16 One can’t keep away from lad reversing one yard in front of driver pulling over (4,6)
NOSY PARKER : Reversal of(… reversing) SON(a form of address for a young boy/a lad) + Y(abbrev. for a/one “yard”) plus(in front of) PARKER(a driver who is pulling over to park his/her vehicle).
19 Toy Story’s endless love (4)
LEGO : “legend”(a traditional story) minus(…-less) “end” + O(letter signifying 0/love in tennis scores).
21 Party girl mostly first to act badly (5)
MISDO : DO(a party/a social function) placed after(… first) “miss”(a girl/a young woman) minus its last letter(mostly).
22 Does press put English into old page with changes? (9)
EXPEDITES : E(abbrev. for “English”) contained in(put … into) [ EX-(prefix signifying “old”/former) + P(abbrev. for “page”) plus(with) EDITS(changes text prior publication) ].
24 Part of online Visa verification for review: it’s not straightforward (7)
EVASIVE : Hidden in(Part of) reversal of(… for review) “online Visa verification“.
25 Completely clear, England captain dismissed (4,3)
ROOT OUT : ROOT(Joe, current captain of the English Test cricket team) + OUT(dismissed, say, in a cricket match).
26 Marriage wreckers: losers settled with these? (11)
TIEBREAKERS : TIE(marriage/union) + BREAKERS(wreckers/those who take apart/destroy, eg. old ships).
Defn: Methods of deciding who wins or loses if scores are tied at the end of a, or part of a, competition.
Down
1 Fantastic actresses earn it with few lines? (6-9)
CREASE-RESISTANT : Anagram of(Fantastic) ACTRESSES EARN IT.
2 One might talk through bill with account in the morning recalled (5)
MACAW : Reversal of(… recalled) [ W(abbrev. for “with”) + AC(abbrev. for “account”/a bill for goods or services provided) + AM(abbrev. for “ante-meridiem”/in the period of the day before noon/in the morning) ].
Defn: …/beak.
3 Land with short pointer pointing up (7)
ANDORRA : AND(with/plus) + reversal of(… pointing up, in a down clue) “arrow” minus its last letter(short …).
Defn: …/a state, in southwest Europe.
4 Once more see on TV: is broadcast featuring one? (7)
REVISIT : RE(on/concerning) + anagram of(… broadcast) TV: IS containing(featuring) I(Roman numeral for “one”).
5 They go around with gold teeth (8)
ORBITERS : OR(gold as a colour in heraldry) + BITERS(teeth/things that bite).
6 Actors follow these in Toy Story, initially categorised for animation (5,10)
STAGE DIRECTIONS : Anagram of(… for animation) [IN + 1st letters, respectively, of(…, initially) “Toy Story” + CATEGORISED].
7 Ultimately Sheriff Woody in film’s dead (6)
FALLEN : Last letter of(Ultimately) “Sheriff ” + ALLEN(Woody, director and actor in the movies/in film).
8 Firm sketch put up for Jessie and company care (6)
COWARD : 1st: CO(abbrev. for “company”/a commercial firm) + reversal of(… put up, in a down clue) DRAW(to sketch); OR 2nd: CO(abbrev. for “company” + WARD(the state of being in the care of a guardian).
I can’t see the significance, if any, to the double wordplay (and to the definition being in the middle of the clue).
Answer: Jessie in Toy Story was claustrophobic, but was otherwise adventurous, feisty, energetic, etc. Refer comments below.
15, 16 Partner in, Mrs out: Bo Peep going out (8,6)
OPPOSITE NUMBER : Anagram of(… going out) IN, MRS OUT: BO PEEP.
16 See 15
17 Animals run out with energy, rolling over grass (3,4)
ROE DEER : RO(abbrev. for “run out”, in cricket scores) plus(with) E(symbol for energy, in physics) + reversal of(rolling over, in a down clue) REED(grass/tall slender-leaved plant).
18 Parking over space at the front, show around shops (7)
EMPORIA : [ P(abbrev. for “parking”) + O(abbrev. for “over” in cricket scores) ] placed below(… at the front, in a down clue) EM(a unit of the width of printed text) + reversal of(… around, in a down clue) AIR(to show, as with a TV programme, say).
20 Starts playing scenes (6)
ONSETS : ON(playing/being shown, as in “what’s on at the cinema?”) + SETS(the settings/scenes in which filming is taking place or a play is being performed.
23 Buzz Lightyear’s back, ready to entertain (5)
DRONE : Last letter of(…’s back) “Lightyear” contained in(… to entertain) DONE(ready/suitable and available for immediate use, as in “the turkeys done”).
Defn: A low continuous humming sound.
Thanks both. Not being too familiar with the franchise, I took “Jessie” in 8d as the slang word for a wimp or coward
Many thanks for the parsing of 9ac. I came up with a formulation but was unhappy with it. So pleased to see the light, thanks to your blog sschua.
Meant to add that Shirl is right re “Jessie” in 8d
Good Friday workout. Tricky but fun. Thanks Tramp and Scchua.
Thanks Tramp and scchua
I couldn’t see the definition for COWARD or where the TO in VIBRATO comes from (which you seem to have imitted too, scchua). What’s the “does” doing in 13a?
ROOT is a bit GKy, especially as he isn’t captain in the tournament going on at the moment.
Once again, the online version differs from the dinosaurs’ one: for us, the clue for 8d is Firm returned sketch for Jessie – which, like Shirl, I took as slang for coward. I haven’t checked to see whether there are any other differences. But thanks to Tramp and schhua.
Thanks muffin re 10across. Omission corrected.
Re the query above –
13a: In “does have” ‘does’ is for emphasis, I think. In effect, it only means ‘have’.
Didn’t know Amerced, so struggled with far north-west corner…
Shirl et al, you’re right. Sorry I maligned Jessie the cowgirl.
7d had me a little confused at first. The clue references Woody (for Allen the director), but in Toy Story it was Buzz Lightyear who was voiced by the actor Tim Allen. Deliberate misdirection?
Tramp has explained 8d in the online comments on Guardian site – and seems overly upset about it …
New words today were amerced and misdo; neither were in my Collins but both in the good old SOED. Agree about (Joe) Root; if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. Cruisy for a Friday. Thanks Tramp and scchua.
New words for me today were AMERCE = punish/fine and JESSIE = coward.
I failed to solve NARK.
Thanks B+S
Thanks to Tramp and scchua. Another very enjoyable puzzle with lots of nice clues and “lightbulb moments) for me. Last ones were amerced and expedites, and I liked nark, Lego and fallen. Thanks again to Tramp and sccchua.
That was fun – a few oddities and I can never quite make my mind up with Tramp…he often arranges the clue in such a way that you really don’t know what is what, so the instruction and the word it acts on can be in rather an odd order. In the end, it all makes sense, but his envelopes and charades are never straightforward. But I felt this was well judged with enough easier ones and anagrams to give crossers to solve the next one and so on. I enjoyed learning what “amerce” meant after solving the clue.
Thank you scchua for the blog. Good use of a theme here too – not one that interfered with anything but gave those who knew something more to enjoy. A pity about Root appearing (again) as he’s not England captain at the moment, Eoin Morgan is. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that.
Found this quite difficult, and enjoyed the challenge. In retrospect many of them should have occurred to me earlier.
Thanks to Tramp and scchua
Good fun, and a rare Tramp finish for me. I hadn’t heard of AMERCED before it was v fairly clued. Thanks Tramp and Scchua both.
I enjoyed that. I also had not heard of “amerced” before, and got as far as Merc but not Mercedes. In 3 down I had two short pointers: (h)and and arro(w) and could not see how that fitted the clue at all, so thank you Scchua for the explanation. I hope the Guardian proof-reading/on-line publication department will soon gets itself sorted out and back to publishing the final version!
I raised the white flag early on this one and revealed several, all of which parsed easily afterward, so I can’t blame the clues. Interestingly, I wasn’t held up by the unfamiliar AMERCED, the equally unfamiliar Joe Root, or the puzzling clue for 8d, now explained. Thanks to Tramp and Scchua.
Nice puzzle with excellent exploitation of theme.
Really can’t understand the objection to Joe Root. It’s hardly an obscure reference.
Good and tough themed puzzle, thanks Tramp and schuss. FOI was FALLEN and it was a slow but steady solve after that. LOI was MISDO which I stared at for a very long time before putting it in, not quite sure why. CODs were Tiebreakers and Crease Resistant, both great “penny droppers”. Have to admit to never finishing Toy Story after three attempts, not one of my favourite movies (too many Americanisms ?) but that’s just a pet grouse about Modern Hollywood.
Sorry, my spellchecker does not know Scchua. Is schuss really a word?
We found this very tough. We did get there eventually but were feeling jaded with it by the end. Like Roberto@22 I had TIEBREAKERS and CREASE RESISTANT ticked, and also MASTERMIND with PLAN being a verb. I printed it off last night before the amendment to the online version so COWARD was loi with a lot of grumbling about COWARD and CO-WARD – and then came here to discover the error. Clever use of the the theme to create smooth surfaces mixed in with some tricky phrasing. Many thanks to Tramp and scchua.
Nothing too controversial today. Yesterday’s was a great puzzle but clearly divisive. My final thought on it is that if you are going to use a potentially highly offensive word (for some), whatever the context, then some sort of editorial comment at the top might help. If you belong to the demographic of solvers who are people of colour and are unfamiliar with Joseph Conrad, I can imagine that clue, with no explanation, causing great hurt and offence.
Anyway, today was fun though AMERCED was new but fair.
As a cricket follower I was pleased to see ROOT, captain of the England Test side but not the one day team that’s playing at the moment. If you don’t follow English cricket you may be unfamiliar with his work, but then as an atheist I bitterly resent the frequent references to “books” from the Bible that I make it my business not to know about. So there.
COWARD seemed to be a triple part clue, for no particular reason, with two of the parts using two classic/hackneyed crossword cliches of firm and company for CO. Unnecessary?
Never a fan of EM and other spaces. For many years I was convinced they were just invented for crosswords, but I do realise that’s me.
Thanks as always.
Blanchflower @25 re “em”, “en”, “ex” – I always assumed they were invented for Scrabble, but I was playing that before crosswords!
Roberto @23 isn’t “schuss” a skiing term – where you just point the skis downhill and go for it?
“em” and “en” are terms from typesetting. An “em” space is the same width as the letter “m” in that font and fontsize; similarly an “en space is the same width as a letter “n”.
Jim T @21
If Root is in the public consciousness at the moment, it wouldn’t be as captain. Sport avoiders (who seem to be disproportionately present in the crossword community – I myself am blind to any football references) would have no chance of seeing the wordplay.
Thanks to Tramp and scchua. I did know AMERCED but not Joe Root or JESSIE = coward. NARK was my LOI.
I can’t agree with the objections to ROOT OUT for those in this diverse community of ours who know little about cricket and might even care less. If you think the answer MIGHT possibly be the captain of an England team game then look it up. To my mind, Google is your friend and a perfectly legitimate (nay, enjoyable!) tool to deploy at the interface between word play and general knowledge – or the lack thereof.
Imagine if you will that you are a stranger to Planet Cryptic, possessed of a devious mind but woefully ignorant in matters cinematic. Now suppose you have two errant letters that can’t be accounted for. Would you be justified in thinking along these lines?: “I wonder if there was ever a talking picture with Et as a title? It’s not listed in my compendium of great dictionaries, but perhaps I might consult this computer thingy. But will I be transgressing some cruciverbalist sin and have to hate myself forever?”
I failed to answer my own question, but the solution (2,6,3,6,5) is:
Of course you bloody would!
Sorry, I left off (3): NOT!!
(A touch of the old Grauniads there, I fear. God bless ‘we!)
Sorry yet again….
The answer to MY question is (3): YES.
The answer to YOUR question would be (2): NO
And “God bless ‘we” should have read “God bless ‘er” (The Graun)
Thanks to Schuaa for the perfect explanations. Thanks to Tramp for a mighty puzzle – I misdid only one clue.
Since it is now July 2020 – I am not sure if this will be read. What a shame. I sauppose I’ll just continue reading my book on David Bowie by Simon Critchley – another mighty puzzle.