It’s a real treat to see Brendan on a Monday.
A bit more of a challenge than usual, perhaps, but I hope those who prefer a ‘gentle start to the week’ won’t be put off. There are the usual ingenious and witty clues to enjoy – I’ll leave you to choose favourites. I found a few of the parsings a bit tricky but got there in the end, I think.
Brendan’s puzzles usually have a theme and this one seems to be beginnings and endings, firsts and lasts – but I think I may be missing something. [There are also a couple of acronyms {14ac.]
Many thanks to Brendan for a most enjoyable puzzle.
Definitions are underlined in the clues.
I hope you’re all keeping well and safe [and sane] in these weird times.
Across
9 Cruel dons trashed patriot in last resort? (9)
SCOUNDREL
An anagram [trashed] of CRUEL DONS – a reference to Dr Samuel Johnson’s famous statement, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’
10 Eventually rejecting extremes, everything being considered (2,3)
IN ALL
[f]IN ALL[y]
11 Prepare on course at Cambridge after first part of tripos, say (3,2)
TEE UP
UP [at Cambridge, say] after TEE [first letter of Tripos] – reference to a golf course.
12 My reason for being in league to begin with (9)
INITIALLY
IN IT I ALLY – my reason for being in league
13 Splurge in US city, initially with round of drinks (4,3)
LASH OUT
LA [US city] + SHOUT [round of drinks – as in ‘It’s my shout’, from the one paying]
14 Initial combination that’s familiar in a mass (7)
ACRONYM
CRONY [familiar] in A M [mass]
17 First characters assembled in military mess (5)
SNAFU
Army slang: initial letters of Situation Normal All Fouled Up [bowdlerised version]
19 Charge making sense with pound discounted at the end (3)
FEE
FEE[l] sense, minus l [pound]
20 Where shooting happens, for a start (5)
ONSET
A film is shot ON SET
21 Schedule disrupted by old male calling at first light (7)
ROOSTER
O [old] in ROSTER [schedule]
22 Pull lass back who’s last in line? (7)
LAGGARD
A reversal [back] of DRAG [pull] GAL [lass]
24 First in college, learner with highest place — being this? (9)
CLEVEREST
C[ollege] + L [learner] + EVEREST [highest place]
26 Like celebrity, observed to end badly (5)
NOTED
An anagram [badly] of TO END, with two definitions
28 Ultimately failing to reach time for world record? (5)
ATLAS
AT LAS[t] [ultimately] minus t [time]
29 Concluding provocation upset stalwarts (4,5)
LAST STRAW
An anagram [upset] of STALWARTS
Down
1 Starts off puzzle solving slowly, teaser that demands attention (4)
PSST
Initial letters of Puzzle Solving Slowly Teaser
2 Set of letters found in post, ultimately (6)
VOWELS
All five vowels [+Y] are found in pOst UltImAtElY
3 Ponder convoluted tube that’s finally manufactured (3,7)
END PRODUCT
An anagram [convoluted] of PONDER + DUCT [tube]
4 Initially without force, elevating King David, for example (6)
ARTIST
AT [f]IRST [initially] minus f [force] with the R [king] moved up [elevated] here’s the artist
5 Last short epistle used in university, after appropriate period (8)
ULTIMATE
TIM[othy] [epistle of Paul {in short} in the New Testament] in U [university] LATE [after appropriate period]
6 It’s briefly worn by female in dorm, initially (4)
MINI
Hidden in dorM INItially
7 Is prone to cover up trouble in final sections (4,4)
TAIL ENDS
TENDS [is prone] round AIL [trouble]
8 Terminate in small place (4)
SLAY
S [small] + LAY [place]
13 Optical device initially put together, first patented in 1960 (5)
LASER
An acronym [initially] for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation – see here
15 Regions are originally subject to new order (10)
REORGANISE
An anagram [subject to new?] of REGIONS ARE
16 Ship’s officer died, finished off on board (5)
MATED
Mate [ship’s officer] + D [died] – reference to a chess board
18 Almost ended within a social function, primarily (5,3)
ABOVE ALL
OVE[r] [almost ended] in A BALL [a social function]
19 Once in fashion, near the beginning, but not first of all (8)
FORMERLY
FORM [fashion] + E[a]RLY [near the beginning] minus the first letter of ‘all’
22 Like final person appearing, having left a big game (6)
LATEST
L [left] + A + TEST [big game]
23 Redesigned faster course one finally enjoys (6)
AFTERS
An anagram [redesigned] of FASTER
24 First or last word from Italian in Chicago, oddly (4)
CIAO
Odd letters of ChIcAgO
25 Affluence in some areas, eventually (4)
EASE
Hidden in arEAS Eventually
27 Miserable kind of clue this ultimately is (4)
DOWN
This is the last down clue
Thanks Brendan and Eileen
Yes, hard – the bottom went in OK, but the top took ages. I didn’t parse VOWELS, ARTIST, or ULTIMATE.
LASER was an odd clue – almost like a GK crossword clue, though I suppose the acronym secondary theme comes in.
Favourite was ROOSTER, for the definition.
At 15 I think the anagrind is “originally”. Nice to have something a bit gnarlier on a Monday. I was comprehensively double-bluffed by the acronyms having assumed there must be more to the parsing. Thanks &&E
Thanks both. In 5d, doesn’t the “short” refer to the abbreviation of Timothy to TIM?
I agree with bodycheetah about REORGANISE – I took the definition as “subject to new order”.
In 15d, I think ‘ORIGINALLY’ is the anagrind, and ‘SUBJECT TO NEW ORDER’ is the definition.
Thanks for a fine puzzle Brendan, and thanks Eileen for clearing up the definition in 9a.
Sorry @ 2 & 4 above. Too slow.
I don’t think “lash out” means the same as splurge. “Splash out” maybe?
You’d almost wonder if someone knew that this particular Monday would be grey and with an arctic chilly wind, and that we’d be in lockdown, so put this particular trickier than usual Brendan here for us to have an excuse not to go out for our permitted exercise just yet.
As enjoyable as ever, thank you Brendan, and also to Eileen
Sound the spam klaxon!
Shirl @ 5 – that’s what I meant: I’ll amend it to make it clearer.
Andy @7 – Chambers: ‘lash out – to spend extravagantly’
Liked in it I ally, had no idea who David was, and Tim in ulate was slow (biblically challenged). Waded through, except for vowels, d’oh; stared at it for ages. Fun though, thanks B and E.
Thanks Eileen for parsing of VOWELS, MINI and LASER. At least i worked out ARTIST-if this had been a puzzle with undefined clues i would have thought FIND for 6 and then go looking for DISCOVER etc but the crosser INITIALLY put paid to that and very cheekily supplied the embed.And great to have Brendan for Monday breakfast (or Brendan have me for Monday breakfast).
If this had been the comments section in the Guardian, I’d have replied to Tracy Matt @9 with “How many letters?”
Unusally for a Brendan, I found this crossword almost devoid of interest. The pleasure of thinking of synonyms for “first” and “last” didn’t last beyond a couple of clues.
Come on here today, not for the usual reason – i.e. ‘Help!’ – but just to celebrate how wonderful this puzzle and the composer’s achievement are. About half the clues could be a ‘favourite’ on most days.
My coment @13 referred to several lines of blatant and rather pathetic spam that had sneaked under the Akismet barrier and have now been removed. Please feel free to chop out that comment and this one as well.
A lot of stopping and starting, so to speak, which seemed to grate after a while. Boatman does this kind of thing better, imo.
Despite the inevitable repetitiveness required by this “theme”, I thought the similarities of 14a and 13d were a bit too much.
I did like the originality in VOWELS (2d) – what you had to do was not explicitly spelled out, as it were.
I’m not 100% sure 15d works. It reminds me of “Rearrange the following into a well known phrase or saying … “. Originally?
Andy @7 I thought the same about lash out, but some people do talk about ” going out on the lash”, which suggests the meaning used.
This was an interesting theme idea and very well executed. I thought it made it easier than many of Brendan’s puzzles – and yet it was still a dnf as I had an unparsed COVERS for the excellent VOWELS which I’m disappointed not to have had the pleasure of working out myself – definitely my cotd, along with ACRONYM and ROOSTER. Thanks for the explanation of the patriot reference in SCOUNDREL Eileen and for the rest of the blog, and to Brendan for the Funday puzzle.
Just to clarify – my comment @9 also referred to some now-deleted spam and not crypticsue’s post!
Does nobody remember this:
Distance definable, for me, as initially in four pieces (6)
for LEAGUE in Brendan’s puzzle 27,199?
It was essentially the same puzzle, though with different clues.
Thanks Brendan, Eileen
James @21 – I have absolutely no recollection of that puzzle but, looking it up, I see I commented, so I obviously did it. Oh dear. 🙁
This was a lovely puzzle! Brilliant, Brendan. The “beginnings and endings” theme was skilfully maintained, I thought, without compromising the quality of the clueing. I had to come here for explanations of the parsing for 2d VOWELS and 5d ULTIMATE: the “short epistle” foxed me and I simply couldn’t see the vowels.
Many thanks to setter and blogger.
I’m with Van Winkle@14 and Dr. WhatsOn@17. Undoubtedly clever, but I thought some of the surfaces rather strained as a result.
Clever setting; it’s very difficult to do repetitive word clues without getting too monotonous.
I ticked CLEVEREST, VOWELS and LATEST. I couldn’t parse the epistle, so thanks to Eileen for that and for the rest of the blog. The clue for LASER seems to be largely a definition, and I was looking for some wordplay in ‘first patented in 1960.’
Thanks Brendan for a Monday stretch.
Like Robi I was trying to find something cryptic with LASER other than ‘initially put together’. Is this what is called an &lit?
Brendan at his best is brilliant and fiendishly clever. This was maybe not at that level but still diverting and perhaps more suitable for the Monday slot. It was certainly clever to get the beginnings and endings theme into every clue. I liked the simple but effective 16d MATED in particular.
Eileen @10: I’m surprised that Chambers has “spend extravagantly” for LASH OUT. I’ve never heard it in that sense, only to mean to react angrily. I agree with Andy @7 that “splash out” is the appropriate phrase.
Thanks Brendan and Eileen.
For quite a while I couldn’t get answers to 2d, 3d, and 4d that might fit into 9ac, so was wondering whether SCOUNDREL was in fact a huge misdirection, even though an obvious enough anagram. I just didn’t know the Dr Johnson quote. Therefore the NW corner was a slow solve compared to the rest. Liked AFTERS and VOWELS, (finally, LOI)
Hi Pedro @26, I don’t think the clue is an &lit; that is when ALL the clue is both a description and wordplay. At best, you could say it is an extended definition clue, but I don’t think the ‘initially put together’ gives much of a wordplay, IMHO.
Lord Jim @27 – that was my reaction, too. That’s why I looked it up. 😉 I now see that Collins has it, too.
Thank you Brendan for an enjoyable puzzle and Eileen for an interesting blog.
The COED gives for LASH OUT “Brit. spend money extravagantly, be lavish”.
–
Definitely lash, not splash, in this neck..
I still can’t read 15d to make it work for me. By the time I came back to 2d I was so used to manoeuvring individual letters, the solution came straight to me. I didn’t much like TEE for first part of tripos, I thought I was missing something. Otherwise great and I’ve finished before lunch!
Thanks Eileen and Brendan
apologies Eileen, I type slowly – just checked my little compact Collins and even that gives it.
I breezed through most of this with none of my usual need for Collins or wikipedia, but the last few in the NW corner brought me to a screeching halt. I took an eternity to get LASH OUT (not generally used in that sense over here) and ARTIST, then couldn’t see VOWELS even with all the crossers in (shrugged and guessed COVERS like WhiteKing @19). Thanks to Brendan for keeping me humble and to Eileen for the blog, especially the parsing of ULTIMATE.
Well I would have said that all the dictionaries are wrong, but grantinfreo @32 if you actually use it in that sense, fair enough!
Fun to solve and lots to enjoy. I did not know the quotation so 1ac was a mystery to me till coming here. VOWELS was LOI and together with ULTIMATE, my penultimate one in, my favs.
Thanks to Brendan for the fun and Eileen for the blog.
I always enjoy tackling a Brendan crossword, but this was a particularly splendid one with its beginnings-&-endings/best-&-worst theme. I have no problem with LASH OUT, btw, which I use pretty much equally with “splash out”.
My only quibble is with 13d: surely all that’s needed is the first part? Adding “first patented in 1960” removes much of the cryptic element – the fact that lasers got their name from an acronym being well-enough known, surely?
However, this pales to insignificance beside the wealth of classy and clever clues, my faves being ROOSTER and ULTIMATE – and I loved the misdirection in ATLAS.
Thanks to Eileen for an entertaining blog and huge thanks to Brendan.
Julia @33 (and others) re 15d
I think “subject to new order” for REORGANISE works if you read “subject” as a verb.
I enjoyed this. A bit tougher than normal for Monday, but seems fair given it is a bank holiday. I think my favourite clue was 4 down. I liked the misdirection, and have long been a David fan (pronounced: Daveed, I think, so obviously wouldn’t work as a read out clue). Thanks to all.
Thanks for the clarification Robi. I thought it was the whole clue being the def but only part needing to be the cryptic.
As Wellbeck says, for me the final part of the clue seems to take away the cryptic element and somehow spoils it.
Btw, although I was unable to solve and parse all of this without aids, I did enjoy it and appreciate that in addition to the theme in every clue, there were a few in the answers (ten I counted).
I didn’t know the patriotism quip was Dr. Johnson’s, but it’s not surprising. Thank you for the blog, Eileen, and for the entertaining puzzle, Brendan. I found it harder than usual. I filled up the right half last night and the NW quarter this morning, but needed help to fill in the SW. LOI ATLAS. Haven’t we had the AT LAST/t clue recentily?
Thanks Brendan and Eileen, although I’m more in the Van Winkle/Dr WhatsOn/Wiggers corner.
I’m still not sure 9a quite works: isn’t patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel, rather than scoundrelosity the last refuge of a patriot?
Sorry to say I found this dreary. I thought the constant first-of-this, last-of-that quite tedious at first (ha); when I realised this was in fact the theme it became even more irritating.
Going to check out Dave Gorman’s debut in the Indy.
I always found the Patriot/scoundrel quote puzzling given that Sam Johnson was an arch Tory. I realised later that the patriots he was referring to were(say) American or Irish or any other group revolting against the Brits on patriotic grounds. Clearly they’d be scoundrels to him!
Not the best Brendan I’ve seen. Mind you,I failed on it having put TOP UP in for 11ac thus making VOWELS impossible to get.
Thanks Brendan, in a begrudged sort of way.
This was the most frustrating crossword experience I’ve had for a while. I had to give up on quite a few, and I came here with queries about the parsing of 13 clues, which is more than I’ve had since my very early days solving cryptics. Many were my fault: I seem to have been having an off day. But I still don’t understand the parsing of 12ac (INITIALLY), and the cryptic indications for 17ac, 13dn, and especially 2dn seem wholly inadequate.
My initial joy at seeing a Brendan crossword was quickly dashed by the NW section — not knowing that David was an ARTIST and that LASH OUT means splurge (and “shout” is a round of drinks) made this a DNF exercise. CLEVEREST and ATLAS were my favorites. Thanks Eileen for your parsing — as always, a top notch learning experience.
I didn’t enjoy this as much as most Brendan puzzles. The use of some of the solutions in the clues (ULTIMATE, INITIALLY), even though necessary here, doesn’t seem right to me.
Generally, the cluing is top notch, but I also think LASER was too non-cryptic and didn’t need the last bit. Talking of which, the “say” at the end of 11 (TEE UP) seems unnecessary as well. SNAFU could equally well have been NAAFI, my first guess, but then, that’s what crossers are for. I missed VOWELS altogether and didn’t parse ULTIMATE or INITIALLY. I don’t remember the previous version, but I bet I struggled then too! OTOH (being in keeping with the situation!), I liked ATLAS and FORMERLY very much.
Strange solve. I think my poor form today spoiled the puzzle as much as anything.
Thanks anyway, Brendan and Eileen.
Brendan must have been clutching at straws when it came to composing a clue for 17Ac., because in no way whatsoever does the clue actually indicate S.N.A.F.U.
13Ac. is either an incomplete clue, or is badly thought out. I question the validity of ‘LASH OUT’ as a definition of ‘splurge’. ‘SPLASH OUT’ would be a valid definition of ‘splurge’.
Other than that, a pretty good, if steep start to the week.
Thanks to Eileen and Brendan
If I hadn’t already had S___U I would have almost certainly have entered “naafi” at 17a.
I don’t understand that clue, or 13d. With many other setters I would just assume that they are poor clues. With Brendan I assume I’m missing something.
Very late (perhaps last!) to this online party due to technical difficulties (my printer had conniptions yesterday Oz time which could have been the 29a LAST STRAW in these testing times). But all fixed this morning with a new ink cartridge and only half an hour now until I can start on today’s offering (it appears at 10.00 am Aussie time). Just to say I enjoyed this one even though I am not the 24a CLEVEREST, so I wanted to thank Brendan and Eileen. I had fun with the already discussed 28a ATLAS and my LOI at 16d MATED. Thanks also to all contributors. And I want to say how grateful I am to The Guardian for the online provision of the cryptics and the news service (Guardian Australia): such a gift over these past weeks and I certainly get value for money as a subscriber.
[Agree with gif@32: in Oz we often use the phrase in such contexts as – “Let’s lash out and get take-away.]
I have just remembered, “a dessert with lashings of cream” for example – the COED gives “lashings” (Brit. colloq. plenty; an abundance.) separately to the long entry for “lash” (which includes “lash out”), but …
Thanks Eileen and Brendan,
As I can’t get out and get today’s paper for another hour or so (only allowed to shop once a day, and want to get booze as well – 10 am licensing hours in Scotland) I was looking forward to a lengthy solve. Took a long time to get started as it was difficult not to think of first and last words as definitions not cryptic instructions. Had to check that TIM was an abbreviation for one of the epistles. LASER and SNAFU took a double-take. Thought TRY UP rather than TEE UP to start with, but happier with the latter.
Cookie @53
I was reminded of the Famous Five’s “lashings of ginger beer“, but apparently Blyton never wrote that!