[If you’re attending York S&B please see comments 32&33] - here
Apart from my vague grumblings over the use of ‘possibly’, and what seems to me to be a bit doubtful in 26dn, Alchemi has as usual produced a very neat and enjoyable crossword. Not all that demanding (although I did get stuck on the SPROUT/FROZE intersection) but plenty of nice clues that fall neatly into place with no stretching.
Definitions in ‘darkred’, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
Can see no Nina.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PREFAB | Roll back around whistle-blower’s house (6) |
| (bap)rev. round ref | ||
| 5 | TEARDROP | Start to draft a report about water from the Eye (8) |
| (d{raft} a report)* | ||
| 9 | SPROUT | Shoot French author’s son in the head (6) |
| Proust is the French author and its s moves to the front [the head] | ||
| 10 | EXPLODES | Blows up former policeman at test centre (8) |
| ex-plod {t}es{t} | ||
| 11 | WEEKEND | Maybe Saturday night beginning dangerously with little knowledge in Glasgow (7) |
| ‘wee ken’ d{angerously} — Glaswegians might refer to ‘little knowledge’ as ‘wee ken’ | ||
| 12 | EAGLES | League’s ruined without uniform golf scores (6) |
| (leag{u}e’s)* | ||
| 13 | PRETENDERS | Penny submits additional business proposal for Charles Edward Stuart and Perkin Warbeck? (10) |
| p re-tenders — CES and PW were pretenders, but we don’t have ‘possibly’ as we do in 16ac, even though ants are examples of workers, and these two are examples of pretenders — perhaps the question mark does the job | ||
| 16 | ANTS | Workers possibly like collecting books (4) |
| a(NT)s | ||
| 18 | THEM | Those people show what Donald Trup is missing (4) |
| No, not a mistake: ‘Donald Trump’ is missing the m | ||
| 20 | TELEVISION | Set new levies on it (10) |
| *(levies on it) | ||
| 23 | SAILOR | Trouble very much engulfs Republican rating (6) |
| s(ail)o R — in other words ail, which so [very much] engulfs — ‘ants’ are ‘workers possibly’ [16ac] but ‘sailor’ isn’t ‘rating possibly’; an ant is an example of a worker, a sailor is an example of a rating — there are other workers which aren’t ants, just as there are other ratings which aren’t sailors (like my chess rating), so why the ‘possibly’ in 16ac but not here? | ||
| 25 | NIRVANA | Enlightened state strangely invariant without outsiders (7) |
| *({i}nvarian{t}) | ||
| 27 | CHEMICAL | Caught Alchemi cycling in compound? (8) |
| c Alchemi becomes (c Al) (chemi) and the second bracket cycles to the front | ||
| 28 | NATURE | Reject article essentially congratulating disagreeable personality (6) |
| (an)rev. {congra}tu{lating} {disag}re{eable} | ||
| 29 | BROTHERS | Monks regularly defrost soup in advance (8) |
| broth {d}e{f}r{o}s{t} — very good surface | ||
| 30 | EUROPE | Regret going back to work with Earl in a lot of countries (6) |
| (rue)rev. op. E | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | REPOWER | Give new energy to record-breaking oarsman (7) |
| r(EP)ower — and there I was, trying to see how Redgrave could be there somehow | ||
| 3 | FROZE | Cockney Chuck’s suddenly stopped (5) |
| “throws” said in a Cockney voice | ||
| 4 | BUTTERNUT | Squash bullies’ leader – complete lunatic (9) |
| b{ullies’} utter nut | ||
| 5 | TREADLE | Pedal expert read legal parts (7) |
| Hidden in experT READ LEgal | ||
| 6 | APPLE | Record company‘s software extremely laughable (5) |
| app [a modern item of software that didn’t exist in Apple’s day] l{aughabl}e | ||
| 7 | DROP GOALS | Abandon targets for rugby scores (4,5) |
| 2 defs | ||
| 8 | OVEREAT | Put too much in round barrel before getting in (7) |
| O v(ere)at | ||
| 13/17 | PUTS ON | Dons resort to puns (4,2) |
| (to puns)* | ||
| 14 | TIME LIMIT | Farron and Henman face off over priest setting deadline (4,5) |
| The two Tims are Tim Farron, leader of the Lib Dems from 2015-2017, and Tim Henman, the ex-tennis player. It’s Tim and miT [Tim reversed, the two Tims facing off] round Eli, the usual crossword priest — ‘over’ is a synonym [which some people don’t like] for ’round’ | ||
| 15 | SEVERANCE | Cutting off home counties raven flying around church (9) |
| SE [home counties] (raven)* CE — the only way I can make this work is to see the anagram indicator as ‘flying around’ | ||
| 17 | See 13 | |
| 19 | HEATHER | Warm woman, Erica? (7) |
| heat her | ||
| 21 | LUNULES | Strangely sullen about uniform with small crescents (7) |
| *(sullen) round u — lunules are those white crescent-shaped areas at the base of fingernails | ||
| 22 | ON A TRIP | Travelling partition moves when it isn’t there (2,1,4) |
| (part{it}ion)* | ||
| 24 | RECCE | Crèche wasting hours making preliminary survey (5) |
| (Crèc{h}e)* — presumably the anagram indicator here is ‘making’; not sure if this is something involving a jiggling action (no, I don’t think so) or, more likely, in the sense [the letters of A] make [ie can be reconstituted as] B | ||
| 26 | AFTER | Chasing a queen underfoot (5) |
| a ft. ER — only the other day I was moaning about this device, which was used by another setter: ‘underfoot’ doesn’t mean ‘under foot’ — as I said, whatever happened to Afrit’s injunction that ‘you need not mean what you say but you must say what you mean’? I suggested that it was the thin end of the wedge. | ||
Thanks to Alchemi for a very enjoyable outing, and to John for, as usual, an excellent review. I don’t see the problem with “underfoot”, although, frankly, I don’t think that the surface would be much different with “under foot”. Re. definition by example, “rating” defines an ordinary seaman. There are other definitions of that word, “rating” as in a chess rating being one of them. I’m not sure that a definition by example has to consider the possibility of alternative, different definitions, does it?
Thanks, John. The theme is 80s bands.
There’s tons crammed into this. I wouldn’t say Sailor or Television (Marquee Moon – what a song…) were particularly 80s, or indeed Van Morrison’s Them – unless I’m missing something for WEEKEND or NATURE, all the across answers are bands (or nearly) – PREFAB SPROUT, TEARDROP EXPLODES, NIRVANA, CHEMICAL BROTHERS, EAGLES, PRETENDERS, (Adam and the…) ANTS, TELEVISION, SAILOR, NIRVANA, THEM, EUROPE.
Highly enjoyable, many thanks to Alchemi and John.
This was JAM packed but somehow they missed out.
Very good.
Not as taxing as Alchemi can be and very good fun. I actually spotted the theme but I’ve never heard of Sailor or Television. LUNULES was a new word for me but easily gettable from the wordplay and checkers.
Many thnaks to Alchemi and to John.
Thanks all. All the across answers are bands.
NATURE are a K-Pop outfit I’ve never heard and WEEKEND were an offshoot of the Young Marble Giants, and I actually have one of their albums.
Alchemi @6 on vinyl?
Copmus @7. Yes, vinyl was all we had back then.
found this a fairly gentle work-out helped by seeing the theme early (for once).
scoured the grid for Adam after finding the Ants but no luck!
Knowing prefab sprout definitely helped the NW corner though.
Nature and weekend were strangers to me however.
Thanks to Alchemi and John.
I’d only heard of about three of the bands so the theme, as usual, passed me by. Not to worry, I still enjoyed the solve and learnt a new word at 21d.
11a made me laugh so gets my vote for top spot.
Thanks to Alchemi and to John for the blog.
right up my Straße. No Glass of Champagne sadly, what with it being dry January. Thanks to Alchemi & John
We solved this pretty quickly with several write-ins, although we had to confirm LUNULES in Chambers. Then, it being Tuesday, we looked for a theme and saw EAGLES, PRETENDERS, NIRVANA and CHEMICAL BROTHERS; that was about the limit of our ‘wee ken’, though.
We wondered about the capitalisation for ‘Eye’ in 5ac; apart from providing a little misdirection was Alchemi possibly thinking of the Eye Brook and associated reservoir on the Leicestershire/Rutland border?
Thanks, Alchemi and John.
Theme completely lost on me, not my scene. Perhaps some kind setter will come up with one in which all the across answers are classical composers! Or maybe that’s been done? Despite which, I thoroughly enjoyed the puzzle and everything went in smoothly after a slow start. Thanks Alchemi and John.
Tatrasman @ 13
Finding that many classical composers whose names are ordinary English words would be quite difficult, I think. STAINER is the only one that I can think of off the top of my head.
Tatrasman@13: I’m of your persuasion. The problem with classical composers is that most of them are foreign names. But I suppose there’s Bach (something Welsh), Haydn (likewise), Britten (“Britain”), Elgar (Welsh again, also the cricketer), Sibelius (the computer program, although that’s a stretch and in any case it’s named after S), and I expect several more. Wood, perhaps, although not widely regarded as a composer.
But who cares? It was a good crossword that one could solve without knowing anything about these groups.
Well done, Mike.
Totally up my street, although I had to check Weekend and those K-poppers.
And yes, Ants is perhaps slightly impure.
All very nice despite having U = ‘uniform’ twice (12ac and 21d).
Apart from being a pop music lover, I am also very much into classical music.
I had a look at my CD collection (yes, they still exist in this age of streaming!):
Bliss, Barber, Field, Ravel.
There’s probably a bit more but not enough to create a puzzle similar to this one.
Many thanks to John & Alchemi.
One might do something with names split across the end of one word and the beginning of another, e.g. decibEL and GARish, larksPUR and CELLo, chinWAG and NERvous. reBEL and LINIment.
Sil @ 16
Well, Adam was (only) the singer, and the Ants were the band 😉
Look, I was aware that Ants was incomplete, but when you’re reduced to dredging up K-Poppers you’ve never heard of to fill the grid, it’s forgivable. (And you can imagine my relief at discovering them.)
Weekend were along the lines of This Mortal Coil but without the doom, gloom and drama. No more than mildly diverting, but pleasant.
I’d rather have this than another Fawlty Towers puzzle.
19 comments here, 56 there.
As I said, well done Mike.