Great start to the day from Basilisk.
Plenty to mull over and in Basilisk’s trademark style, a theme to boot! the best kind of theme there is – a phantom theme. (This intro has been edited after Basilisk confirmed there was no intentional theme to the puzzle… If a setter doesn’t include a theme, but you find one anyway, is there a theme or not?)
Of course I only looked for one once the grid was complete but enjoyed trying to find the scorers (composers). I’m sure there are a few more lurking in the grid so do share ones you’ve found in the comments. To be clear, as some of the shaded words overlap, the ones I have found are: Laver, Ritter, Linder, Orman, Rover, Lund and Read.
DIS (underworld) + MEMBER (person who’s part of)
HAS (bears) + [lates]T [ceasefir]E (terms of)
(C (carbon) + TAX)* (*new) on E (energy)
IN FORM (performing well); ANT (social worker)
DESK* (*having been sacked) + ADDLED (got in a muddle)
VOTE (pole) exchanging O[n]E sides, i.e. switching O and E
Cryptic definition
A CRIT-TER may be one who crits (or critiques/reviews). A CRITTER is a living animal, so a wolf of anywhere would be a critter. Of course the setter uses the name of a well-known film for the surface.
SA (South American) + USAGE[s] (customs, ultimately confiscated)
WORK (go) on L (line) + E.G. (say)
Double definition
CHAR (daily) cycling
IN (popular) + QU (question) + I SIT [f]OR (I pose for, missing F (fellow))
SOLID (firm) to adopt CITE (name)
GP (doctor) nurses RUM (strange)
RE (in connection with); DAD (parent) drinking
Double definition
I suppose ‘post’ is doing double duty here
Cryptic definition
DR (doctor) + ESS (suffix denoting a female, e.g. countess, actress etc)
SLAVE RING (labour clique)
Cryptic/double definition
The setter is playing on the meanings of ‘birth’: descent (extraction) and physical birth
Double definition
R (right) + AFTER (behind) + S[ales] (head of)
[s]HARE (part of company, dismissing S (second))
Double definition
EXTRA (unusually), making A (answer) OVERT (obvious)
For extra/unusually think: he’s being extra friendly today
(SOUGHT TO I[nfluence] F[ollowers] (primarily))* (*force)
COLD (complaint) about LAPSE (failure)
RUCK (fight) behind WASTE* (*ground)
[p]ICKETIN[g]* (unlimited, *organised)
PL (place) + UN, DER (articles from France, Germany)
[tacti]CAL VE[hicle] (section of)
‘Lower’ being one who lows, i.e. a cow
23. Rent about to go up is more suitable for consumer? (5)
RIPER
RIP (rent) + RE< (about, <to go up)
[me]DICA[tion]< (found in, <revolutionary)
Thanks Basilisk and Oriel!
Nice puzzle. Great blog as usual.
Top faves: DRESS and EXTROVERT.
I love these cryptic defs. Difficult to guess but once in place, many of them
give you a lot of satisfaction and make you admire the setters.
CRITTER
Referring to The Wall Street Journal in the cryptic (& whimsical) reading?
CARETAKER
Def 1 may be just ‘temporary’ (as in a CARETAKER government).
18D Hermann Ruck (1897′-1983) German composer.
14a CRITTER – Wolf of Wall Street (book 2007, or film 2013) maybe also functioning as a US indicator?
Oed.com’s first citation is ‘1815 Cooking for the crew, and taking care of the dum critturs. D. Humphreys, Yankey in England 41′. …
… That expands as ‘David Humphreys (1752–1818) • The Yankey in England, a drama in five acts • 1815.’
And he was an ‘American Revolutionary War colonel …’ and the ‘… first U.S. presidential speechwriter.’
Quite a challenging puzzle, particularly the cryptic/humorous clues. I am not at all familiar with any of these (relatively obscure???) composers, so even though I looked for the customary theme, I had no hope of spotting it. Do they have anything in common, or are they randos in the classical section? Oh, well. I agree with KVa@1 on CARETAKER and FrankieG@3 on CRITTER.
Agree with KVa@1 on 28a CARETAKER as a DD, split “Temporary” || “post responsible for building”.
[No clue on the theme – Thought there might be tennis players: Rod LAVER… (but couldn’t find anyone else).]
Thanks B&O
After a little digging, I am still struggling to figure out who these people were and why they might be memorable, meriting a theme, no less. Not that my music appreciation education ran all that deep. If they wrote thrilling compositions, I am interested to learn more, though.
CRITTER
Chambers mobile app
critter or crittur /kritˈər/ (dialect and informal; now esp US)
I stand corrected thanks to FrankieG@3
Thanks for the blog, very neat set of clever clues .
A difficult theme to spot , I had no idea until I read the blog.
Maybe some of our musicians will provide more enlightenment later .
I too looked for but failed to spot the theme… I know of (and enjoy) Ritter but don’t recognise the other names here. Good to have one’s horizons expanded!
A tricksy puzzle as expected from Basilisk; GRUMP and DRESS made me smile, and it was nice to see SKEDADDLED. I wondered if SCALE might be a triple def, with ‘climb’ and ‘range’ as two of them, but couldn’t make sense of the middle part. Thanks Oriel and Basilisk!
I know none of the composers and found the puzzle very challenging -I don’t want to be a 26ac but I was 2down by a number of the clues and look forward with 27ac to Basilisk’s next offering.As for Oriel – he/she played a 4down and I am suitably 16down
16D” “awestruck” does not mean “filled with fear”. It means “filled with wonder”.
This word belongs in the category with “noisome” which has nothing to do with sound but with smell.
Another misused phrase these days is “begs the question” which does not mean “suggests the question”. Instead it means a sentence that includes a phrase that has a statement that assumes a “fact” that has not been proved. When I was at university, the example used was “Have you stopped beating your wife”. Obviously that was inappropriate at the time and is even more inappropriate these days.
As a woman, I didn’t realise back then just how offensive this was.
Roz, I am a classical musician but I missed most of the names in the crossword. They are not exactly household names!
jvector@10: I marked SCALE as a triple definition, with “feature that splits” referring to the flaking property of (dermatogical) scales.
Unfortunately I don’t agree with Annabelle@12 on 16d.
Chambers says:
awestruck
filled with awe
awe
admiration, fear and wonder
…where the fear is to be understood as one of respect and not terror.
I don’t believe this falls under the same category as noisome who rather appears as though it could be misapplied whether its definition supports that or not i.e. noisome doesn’t have any potentially erroneous definition based on noise in the dictionary.
I agree with everything else you said though!
I didn’t spot any theme, but I don’t think it altered the fun of the solve, which was embellished by some interesting defs… Eg “in-house supporters” for RAFTERS, also laughed at the concept of an “in form ant”.. there were quite a few “births” in the clues, which led me to explore 3d as the use of forceps for child delivery… startled to find it was more of the dental variety..
Thanks Basilisk n Oriel
Another puzzle with variety and many great surfaces. I found this on the challenging side and enjoyed it for the most part.
Favourites were DRESS, CALVE, PROJECT, and DISMEMBER. I also like the word SKEDADDLED
There were some clever clues, but some seemed a bit too clever. For CRITTER, I got as far as Oriel but was not satisfied. I think FrankieG@3’s suggestion helps a lot. I needed Oriel’s help to parse EXTROVERT. I agree with jvector@10 that “feature that splits range” does not indicate SCALE. I am still processing Cineraria@13’s dermatological reference. I listen to a lot of classical music and I too have never heard of most of these composers. I am very impressed that Oriel was able to name them.
Thanks Basilisk for an enjoyable puzzle and thanks Oriel for a great blog and congratulations for spotting the theme
I don’t think the theme is composers – doesn’t “scorers” refer to sportspeople? E.g. Rod Laver, the Australian tennis player. I don’t think there’s any composer named Laver, or at least none as well known as Rod.
An alternate explanation for 1 D might be dress = a female outfit = doctor (as in to dress a wound).
The main feature of a SCALE, on a thermometer, say, is that it splits the range (of temperatures) into equal units, so that any temperature can be read off.
… Continued from @6: As well as 2d Rod SLAVERING, there’s 5d Pat RAFTERS…
Thanks Basilisk for a great set of clues as always. The theme was too obscure for me but that did not diminish my enjoyment. Thanks Oriel for the blog.
We’d agree that none of these composers are household names – of those listed only Linde and Ritter merit an entry in the Concise (but fairly comprehensive) Oxford Dictionary of Music, and in neither case is composing given as their principal activity.
Just as well that knowing the theme wasn’t necessary to solve this enjoyable puzzle. We liked INFORMANT and GRUMP.
Thanks, Basilisk and Oriel.
Thanks everyone for the input. I felt more confident about the theme this morning when I wrote the blog. The composers I found were not all known to me, but of course I checked the names pass as such. Perhaps we’ll be lucky and Basilisk will stop by to elucidate the original intention.
Looking in out of interest, I would like to ask why does the theme have to be composers or sports people, why can it not be a mixture of both, and possibly including any other meanings of scorers?
I retired as an official cricket scorer in first class cricket in 1979 at the age of 21. The last match I scored was at Lord’s when I was the Oxford University scorer. Cambridge won by an innings that year, but of course my job was just to record the runs scored. One of the proudest moments of my life was when I could open a door at Lord’s marked PRIVATE and legitimately walk through the doorway without needing to ask anyone for permission.
Many thanks to Oriel for the blog – excellent, as always – and to everyone who has taken the time to leave a comment.
I’m afraid there is no theme today. It is pure coincidence that SCORERS appears in that diagonal along with several names of composers in the entries.
For starters I take exception to anyone saying poor cluing in regard to JC. He takes great trouble.setting.
I was happy enough to finish this let alone look for a theme which I am usually on the look out for.
Only two of Oriel’s list made it into my 1985 Concise Oxford Music Dictionary
I was too exhausted after Vlad to overthink!
Thanks Basilisk and Oriel
I walked through a door at Lord’s once, labelled ‘PRIVATE PARTS’. What I saw bowled me over.