Thank you to Anto. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1. Exercise you must do to get higher with lift (5,2)
PRESS UP : Cryptic defn: You must press the “UP” button in a lift in a multi-storeyed building to get to the higher floors.
5. Composer in debt took on too much (7)
OVERDID : VERDI(Giuseppe, Italian composer) contained in(in) OD(abbrev. for “overdrawn”, the state you’re in, ie. in debt when your draw out from your bank account more than your credit balance).
9. Antelopes put back in container, when picked up (7)
REEBOKS : Homophone of(…, when picked up/when heard) “re-box”(to put back in a box, an example of a container).
10. Declare old partner’s demand for alimony (7)
EXCLAIM : EX(old partner, say, a divorced spouse)’s CLAIM(a demand for what’s rightfully the latter’s, in this case, alimony).
11. Try twice to swallow vitamin for painful condition (9)
HEARTBURN : [ HEAR(to try in court),TURN(a try/an attempt at something taken in rotation with other persons) ](Try twice) containing(to swallow) B(a class of water-soluble vitamins).
12. Complete fool when forgetting name (5)
UTTER : “nutter”(a fool/a person who behaves strangely) minus(when forgetting) “n”(abbrev. for “name”).
13. Chaucer’s first poems, which need deciphering (5)
CODES : 1st letter of(…’s first) “Chaucer” + ODES(poems addressed to a particular subject).
Defn: That ….
15. Master in a hurry becoming new resident of hospital (2-7)
IN-PATIENT : “m” in “impatient”(in a hurry/unwilling to wait) replaced by(becoming) “n”(abbrev. for “new”).
Strictly, 2 “ins” are required in the clue.
17. Financier on cocaine makes a chilly impression (4,5)
SNOW ANGEL : ANGEL(a financier/an investor in a business venture, say, a theatrical production) placed after(on) SNOW(slang for the drug, cocaine).
19. Teacher turning to take on very loud musical pieces (5)
RIFFS : Reversal of(… turning) SIR(form of address for a male teacher) containing(to take on) FF(abbrev. for “fortissimo”, a musical direction to play very loudly).
Defn: Short repeated phrases in popular music or jazz.
22. Ordered apprentice inside to make a sword (5)
BLADE : BADE(ordered/commanded to do something) containing(… inside) L(letter displayed by a learner driver, an apprentice, you might say).
The character and the sword:
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23. Put a leper through treatment that’s going on for ever (9)
PERPETUAL : Anagram of(… through treatment) PUT A LEPER.
25. Awkward suitor bearing ring is causing trouble (7)
RIOTOUS : Anagram of(Awkward) SUITOR containing(bearing) O(letter representing a ring or ring-shaped object).
26. Quiet by perimeter — until one shows up! (7)
SHOUTER : SH!(exclamation to tell someone to keep quiet) + OUTER(further away from the centre/by the perimeter/edge,).
Defn: …/one who ends the quiet.
27. Confederate arresting work unit causes a reaction (7)
ALLERGY : ALLY(a confederate/an accomplice) containing(arresting) ERG(in physics, the unit of work).
28. Contract makes cheat switch son for daughter (7)
DWINDLE : “swindle”(to cheat/to defraud) with “s”(abbrev. for “son”) replaced by(switch … for) “d”(abbrev. for “daughter”).
Down
1. Chirpy redhead devastated by such a victory, perhaps (7)
PYRRHIC : Anagram of(… devastated) [CHIRPY + 1st letter of(…head) “red” ].
Defn: Describing a kind of/perhaps, a victory that is won at a greater cost than is worthwhile for the victor.
2. Stone delivered from them by cockney messenger (7)
EMERALD : ‘EM(short for “them”, informally) plus(by) ‘ERALD(herald/a messenger, as pronounced in the cockney dialect).
3. Informer provides material for insider trading (5)
SNOUT : Double defn: 1st: Slang for an … to the police; and 2nd: Slang for a cigarette, something/material that can be used to trade for favours by insiders, those inside prisons, you might say.
4. Not quite top drawer coder is showing off (9)
POSTURING : Last letter deleted from(Not quite) “posh”(top drawer/upper class) + TURING(Alan, an English computer scientist, a discipline that includes the use of code, though his accomplishments were much more than that.).
5. OECD chief explodes at national leaders as this rises? (5)
OCEAN : 1st letters, respectively, of(… leaders) “OECD chief explodes at national“.
Defn: “this” in the defn.
(And, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) assresses, among other things, climate change, an effect of which is the rise in sea level as a result of global warming.)
6. Meet with French chap upset about matter he ingested (9)
ENCOUNTER : Reversal of(… upset, in a down clue) RENE(an archetypal name for a French chap) containing(about … he ingested) COUNT(to matter/to be effective).
7. One forced to join up — that sounds chilling (7)
DRAFTEE : Homophone of(that sounds) “draughty”(chilling/allowing in currents of cold air).
Defn: … into the military, say.
8. Black mark put me into same boring old spin (7)
DEMERIT : ME contained in(put … into) reversal of(… spin) TIRED(describing that which is the same old boring thing).
14. Erect foundations to accommodate old actors’ entrance (5,4)
STAGE DOOR : Reversal of(Erect, in a down clue) ROOTS(foundations/origins) containing(to accommodate) AGED(old/advanced in years).
16. Loser paid for breaking into two camps (9)
POLARISED : Anagram of(… for breaking) LOSER PAID.
17. Colder than Coventry for those sent into isolation? (7)
SIBERIA : Cryptic defn: If one is “sent to Coventry”, one would be treated coldly/ostracised. Being “sent to Siberia”, is to be banished/to be sent into isolation, from when Russian criminals were literally sent into Siberia, a much colder and more remote region than Coventry, as their punishment.
18. Where Frankfurter might be found doing well? (2,1,4)
ON A ROLL : Double defn: 1st: A frankfurter sausage might be found on a roll/a small loaf of bread, as a food item; and 2nd: …/on a winning streak.
20. Turfed out when retaining information that’s productive (7)
FRUITED : Anagram of(… out)TURFED containing(when retaining) I(abbrev. for “information”, as “IT”).
Defn: …/producing fruit.
21. Rangers are part of what leads press to reveal overspending (7)
SPLURGE : SPL(abbrev. for the Scottish Premier League, of which the Rangers Football Club from Glasgow are a part) plus(what leads) URGE(to press/to encourage).
23. Share rating at upper limit? That’s annoying (5)
PESKY : P/E(abbrev. for “price-earnings ratio”, a measure/rating of a commercial company’s shares) plus(at) SKY(the upper limit/the highest level of achievement you can possibly attain).
24. Pathogen that turns up regularly in gill pouches (1,4)
E COLI : 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th letters of(regularly in) reversal of(that turns up, in a down clue) “gill pouches“.
Thanks Anto and scchua
Having seen the parsings of several clues that I thought very loose, this was better than it first appeared. I liked SNOW ANGEL.
Enjoyable and not too taxing, although there were a few I couldn’t parse until I came here, inclduing 15a. And I didn’t know what SPL stood for in 21d.
I found that surprisingly OK for a Thursday, I must be ON A ROLL this week 🙂
As usual I didn’t parse everything, got a few from crossers and definitions and came here to decipher the wordplay. Liked UTTER, DWINDLE, SNOW ANGEL, PERPETUAL.
Thanks both.
Fingers crossed Friday doesn’t defeat me!
An interesting combination of the mostly accessible with the odd tricky parsing. I thought SPLURGE was clever, though recondite for some. I think it works better if you have “Rangers are part of what” = SPL leads press = Urge.
Inventive Stuff from Anto. Took me a while to parse IMPATIENT and SPLURGE as I was trying to jam PL into SURGE thinking it was QPR
SNOUT brought back fond memories of Norman Stanley Fletcher 🙂
Cheers all
Agree with Bodycheetah, inventive stuff, much of which I failed to parse.
I have a question tre IN-PATIENT, where in seems to be doing double duty. If it’s the includer – master in a hurry, then impatient has to be “a hurry” which seems to be the wrong part of speech…
…I’ll get my coat.
I found that relatively easy for a midweek puzzle. Maybe I was just on Anton’s wavelength. 🙂
As an aside why do setters always pick cockney as the accent / dialect for dropped aitches? Others are available. Ask anyone from ‘uddersfield, ‘ull or ‘ezzle.
Thanks to both.
… failed to mention what an excellent blog we have today. Many thanks, scchua.
Mark @7: I’ve often thought the same, but I fear if a setter chose something like Yorkshire as his indicator, we’d all be looking for flattened vowels etc.
A good mix of fairly easy and somewhat harder clues. I did pause over 9A as I thought rhebok is the animal, in contrast to the trainers; but I see you can use either spelling. Anyway, I managed to get all but four. One I didn’t, but should have, and is rather good, is 17 D. One or two on the theme of cold: just to rub it in (!) With thanks to both.
Thanks for explaining SNOW ANGEL (never heard of), SNOUT (didn’t know the colloqualism for cigarette) , STAGE DOOR (the reversal was too much for my AGED brain) and PESKY (didn’t know the price-earnings ratio bit).
All in all quite a challenging puzzle but I enjoyed parsing what I could and learning a bit along the way.
Thanks to scchua and Anto
Failed to parse SNOW ANGEL because I couldn’t be bothered looking up Angel=Financier. Also Also STAGE DOOR and SPLURGE (what is “what leads” doing in there apart from the surface).
I did like DWINDLE and SNOUT (I’m with Bodycheetah @5 with Norman Stanley Fletcher – WordPlodder @11 you need to check out Porridge, a Pommie classic).
Favourite was HEARTBURN for two very misleading definitions of “try”.
SPL was a football term too far for me, so I didn’t parse SPLURGE though it was obviously that. Everything else fell in fairly easily. Liked HEARTBURN, IN-PATIENT and DWINDLE. Not too fond of SHOUTER. Perfectly legitimate of course, but these agent nouns often feel very awkward.
Thanks Anto for the diversion from the heat. Already scorchio in my back garden. And scchua for the lovely illustrated blog.
Fun crossword with some clever clues. LOI HEARTBURN. Failed to parse SPLURGE, but maybe should have thought a bit harder.
Thanks scchua and Anto.
Thank you very much scchua, especially for STAGE DOOR. Agree about in X 2 needed for IN-PATIENT.
Message to self, be careful for what you wish for. After a couple of themed crosswords this week I was hoping for ‘just’ a crossword. The days have all got mixed up.
I was stumped by a couple of Anto’s clues. In my defence there was some UKGK which I didn’t get eg SNOUT and SPL – URGE. PESKY .. what’s Anto’s day job? I’ve got a better chance of solving Philistine. No idea of financial stuff.
Not too tricky, but a few parsings eluded me, 3d, 21d, so thanks for that.
I did find the implied connection between Siberia and Coventry in 17d odd, Siberia was the Gulag and incarceration, being sent to Coventry is just being ostracised.
3d was my fav…thanks both.
Nice and straightforward, on the whole, today. Same slight query as William/Paddymelon re IN and shared with HIYD the sense of surprise at the Siberia/Coventry combo but it was clear what Anto was aiming at. My own question – genuine query rather than nitpick – is at what point someone in training stops becoming indicated by the letter L. Learner, novice, trainee, student are all time-proven; I’ve encountered apprentice = L on a couple of occasions recently and, for some reason, found myself wondering whether it’s in the same camp? SNOW ANGEL, PYRRHIC, POSTURING and PERPETUAL were my somewhat alliterative favourites today.
Thanks Anto and scchua
I had SCOUT at 3d, which seems to work. In football a scout is employed by a club to watch other clubs’ players and report back. Based on this information the manager may decide to try to get the target player into his own side, with ‘insider trading’ a cryptic way of describing the buying of another club’s player. (A football player is just as much “inside” as a prisoner!)
As has been commented, there was a certain amount of looseness about Anto’s cluing today, but I enjoyed the solve none the less.
Thanks to Anto and scchua.
Thanks for the suggestion re “Porridge”, Tim C @12. I remember watching and enjoying the show back in the 70’s, but can’t recall details such as the term SNOUT for a cigarette. It might not reflect well on me, but I had a bit of a soft spot for Mr. MacKay as well as for Norman Stanley Fletcher!
At last! A straightforward puzzle in what has been a trying week. Nonetheless, several that I couldn’t parse – thanks scchua for the illumination. Thanks Anto.
I did have a bit of the same feeling as HIYD @16 and PM @17 about SIBERIA, but on reflection I think it’s just playing on different senses of “sent into isolation”.
I anticipated people complaining that DRAFTEE and draughty have different stresses but I liked it! (And I think you could say either of them the other way.)
Re OVERDID: I think the OD stands for overdraft (= debt) rather than overdrawn. Otherwise the “in” seems to be doing double duty. And I agree with Petert @4 that “Rangers are part of what” = SPL.
Maybe the clue for ENCOUNTER could have done without “he ingested”? “About” already provides an inclusion indicator.
Many thanks Anto and scchua.
Ah! Just read Anto on Meet the Setter. He was a banker in his prevIOUS incarnation. That explains PESKY and OVERDID.
Found this tricky to get into at first, but my toehold in the SE corner soon became the whole of the right half/side of the puzzle. In fact I might term it a game/puzzle of two halves, leading on from what I thought might be a bit of an obscure reference for some to the Scottish Premier League with reference to 21d. Though Ibrox Park attendees might not think so. Last one in was PESKY, not a word I use as much as I used to…
Ronald @23 – “I would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky kids”.
I did have a thing about Daphne as a kid…
Reasonably straightforward, although I needed a few of the explanations above for the parsing. So “snout” means a cigarette in prisons, eh? That’s something I’ve learned today. Thanks Anto and scchua.
I think in 5a the ‘OD’ s meant to stand for ‘overdraft’ (debt) rather than ‘overdrawn’ (in debt).
A minor quibble: Rangers are now in the SPFL (established in 2013) so the use of the present tense 21d seems wrong.
The top half went in quite quickly but the bottom half needed some further thought, and some help with parsing from scchua, thanks!
M = master is in Chambers, but not I = information (and not in other dictionaries). I think we’ve discussed this before where the I on a booth is used for information; I don’t think the IT derivation is kosher – like, as has been said before, using B = broadcasting because it’s in BBC.
I liked REEBOKS, and the TILT for me was SNOW ANGEL.
Thanks Anto and scchua.
I’m getting to like Anto. Didn’t know the PE(sky) or SPL(urge) abbreviations, but the one I ended up revealing was DEMERIT. I liked the SNOW ANGEL and the EX CLAIM.
Anyone else try D (top drawer) IS POSING for what turned out to be POSTURING? No, it doesn’t really work, but it looked quite plausible for a while.
Ian@25: the point about snout(tobacco) is that it is, or was,
used as the unofficial currency in British jails, thus material for insider trading.
Ditto pdm @15, I wouldn’t guess PE from ‘share rating’ in a fit.
Thanks for the blog, I got snout from Dennis Waterman and his informers from several programmes and of course the other from Porridge. As Gladys@29 says it is more often tobacco and is also widely used in gambling. I remember Fletcher betting an ounce of snout etc.
Robi@27 the Tourist Information sign is often a single i .
I liked STAGE DOOR and DWINDLE.
btw the ERG (which came up in another puzzle recently) isn’t the unit of work in physics; it’s a unit. The SI system uses the very much larger “joule” as the unit of work.
I think of NUTTER as not so much foolish as mildly crazy.
William@6 I’m with you, and you don’t need your coat. For the word play to work it would have to read “Master in in a hurry,” but then the surface is wrong.
scchua, you have a typo (“assresses”) in the blog for OCEAN@5d.
SPL and P/E ratio were new to me, though I think I’ve heard of the Rangers.
Am I the only one who remembers making snow angels as a child? A surprising number of commenters hadn’t heard of them.
This was pleasant and easygoing. Thanks to Anto for it and scchua for the usual good blog and for pictures that spruce it up.
Very enjoyable, parsed most of them, but never heard of SNOUT for informer, or the phrase ‘sent to Coventry’
Thanks both,
Among Turing’s claims to fame was his role in breaking the Enigma machine code, so ‘decoder’ would be more accurate in 4d.
Robi @ 27: a lot of companies these days have a CIO – Chief Information Officer. As dictionaries record usage, I guess it hasn’t made the transition yet.
Nuntius@10 – I also thought of RHEBOKS first for 9A, and it is at least as good a homophone as 7D, where I (but not necessarily everyone) would place the stress differently in the two. In its defence, 7D leaves no doubt (to me) of the intended solution once the pair of words is identified.
Mark @7: I ‘d love for the Hull accent to be more widely known. It would give setters the “o” to “er” conversion. “Er Ner!” and “I’m smerking a fag.”
Very enjoyable, thanks to setter and blogger.
…Or, as I suspect Ronald@23 knows, Castle Greyskull, the preferred name for Ibrox among those of us on the other side of the Glasgow divide.
Bit picky, but I don’t think draftee is a good homophone for draughty to be honest. Otherwise, no quibbles!
HoofItYouDonkey@24…Scooby Doo was never my kind of show, though…and Bhoyo@39, Castle Greyskull a completely new term for me, I’m afraid!
Timsee@37 and Nuntius @10. I commented in the Grauniad blog that RHEBOKS would fit just as well and would be the English rather than the Afrikaans name, for the antelope. I think Anto had shoes on his mind! (or did he just put his foot in it?)
[Valentine @33
I didn’t have much opportunity to make snow angels when I was a child in North Devon – the only significant snow I remember was 1963. However here in the north I have encouraged my daughter and visiting children to do so!]
Hmmm… I agree with others that this seemed a little too loose, mainly because of double-duty use (in and breaking in 15 and 16) or the opposite, double-indication (about and he ingested in 6). For me it took the shine off some rather nice ideas.
I knew someone would find M = master somewhere in Chambers (thanks, Robi). I just wonder why i = information hasn’t made it in the same, as it is so obviously used ubiquitously in tourist information centres.
Simon @36, I think justifying the latter with CIO fails for the same reason that extracting single letters from any abbreviation fails (as in Robi’s BBC example).
Entertaining lunchtime.
Thanks, A & s
Some of the naming of clued parts I found less than rigorous, but not too bad a solve. Not much of a challenge for a Thursday for me, but Anto can’t be blamed for that.
15ac should be ‘master in in a hurry’ etc, really, which was one that jumped out as not passing TLP muster today.
[TLP @45
I twigged “The naming of parts”, but I would have bet that it was Wilfrid Owen. Wrong! Google tells me it was Henry Reed.]
I like many thought some of the clues were a bit loose until reading the blog. Only quibble is with 18d – I would expect a frankfurter to be in a roll rather than on a roll.
phitonelly @ 44 There’s a difference between offering a possible explanation and offering a justification.
HoustonTony@42. ” I think Anto had shoes on his mind! ” Or perhaps, like the majority here, I would guess, he was unaware of the alternative spelling with an H. Personally, I have no interest in antelopes from before 1960, so I was happy to go with the shoes.
I don’t know how many hours have gone by since scchua posted the blog, writing (with regard to the clue for IN-PATIENT), “Strictly, 2 “ins” are required in the clue”. Several other commenters have made the same point, or, like me, have simply remarked upon the looseness of the cluing, and not always while acknowledging either scchua’s having dealt with the matter, or the fact that the same point had also been made by an ever growing number of people . The last plantagenet @45 is merely the latest. Hopefully the last, too, if nominative determinism has its way. There are fewer than 50 comments, at the time of writing this, so it’s surely not too onerous a task to read what other people have written before grinding that axe until it’s dull.
Thanks Anto for a witty crossword. Except for SNOUT, I had little trouble getting the correct answers but I really needed scchua and the nicely illustrated blog for some of the parsings. Favourites were IN-PATIENT and DWINDLE.
Yes SNOUT eluded me too…can’t think why.
Otherwise pretty straightforward.
Thanks Anto and nice blog scchua
Like others, I had trouble understanding the “insider trading” part 3d SNOUT, but now i can see it was a clever clue, and as also canvassed in previous posts, I didn’t get the Rangers bit in 21d SPLURGE nor the P/E in 23d PESKY. But that’s okay – I’m learnign every day. I always find it interesting to have knowledge of the setter’s background to explain in part why we might find certain clues in a puzzle (thanks paddymelon@22 for your post re Anto’s background as a banker).
Basicalle I’m just here to echo the preceding thanks to scchua for the explanatory and colourful blog and to Anto for an accessible puzzle with some good clues like 11a HEARTBURN and 4d POSTURING.
[Forgive typos please – always check your work, JinA!]
Was a bit lazy, and assumed PE in PESKY was something to do with shares without checking. Couldn’t parse SPLURGE. So thank you sschua for helping out.
Mark@7 don’t choose Norfolk as an alternative to Cockney, as here we tend to hemphasise haitches that don’t exist!
A particularly helpful and detailed blog, so thanks scchua.
I’m a bit surprised that no-one picked up ‘sir’ as a synonym for ‘teacher’. It’s the second time I’ve seen this in a crossword recently and, even for a codger like me, it seems sexist and archaic. I know one shouldn’t get too aerated over usage in puzzle clues, which rely on looseness, ambiguity and often archaisms, for their very existence. But maybe when they’re over-used, alternatives could sometimes be sought for such chestnuts.
22ac I saw lad inside BE, Order of British Emire