I found this difficult in places and finished it in a stop/start fashion.
Most of the clues seem quite reasonable except for 14, which left me cold. It seems to be a very weak CD but was completely unhelpful to me in ID’ing the answer. Otherwise, there were some quite nice devices on offer – the neat use of the two short words to clue 25 and lots of cunningly expressed containment indicators.
| Across | ||
| 1 | INSOMNIA | Inability to retire successfully when you’ve worked as minion (8) |
| (As minion)* | ||
| 5 | SCAMPI | Second course at meal starts with very good seafood (6) |
| Initial letters of “second course at meal” + pi | ||
| 10 | MATINEE | China cups in eastern show (7) |
| Mate around (cups) in E(astern) | ||
| 11 | ENDORSE | Fictional moon leading to extremes of space and back (7) |
| Endor + s[pac]e. Endor was a moon in Star Wars. | ||
| 12 | THONG | Strip of cloth on garment (5) |
| Hidden in cloTH ON Garment | ||
| 13 | YARDSTICK | Police beats putting South first (standard) (9) |
| Yard + ticks with S moved to the front | ||
| 14 | TROUBLESHOOT | ID problem? (12) |
| Seems to be a weak CD – to troubleshoot is to identify (ID) a problem | ||
| 18 | STEREOPHONIC | Multi-channel tech I designed with Spooner (12) |
| (Tech I Spooner)* | ||
| 21 | EAVESDROP | Monitor what happens in autumn after going lead-free? (9) |
| Leaves drop without the leading letter | ||
| 23 | UNITE | Football club that’s removed Dutch link (5) |
| Unite[d] | ||
| 24 | TORPEDO | Projectile shot over president’s party (7) |
| Tore around p + do. I imagine that’s tore as in “he tore/shot along the road”. | ||
| 25 | TOASTER | Kitchen appliance for when time’s short (7) |
| To(=for) + as(=when) + ter[m]. I’m never totally confident about the interchangeability of these short words, but they are so widely used there must be contexts where they have similar meanings. | ||
| 26 | SHERPA | One leading hotel opening after French Revolution (6) |
| H(otel) in (=opening) apres<. | ||
| 27 | GRUESOME | Horrible soup a few left out (8) |
| Grue[l] + some | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | INMATE | Convict fashionable couple (6) |
| In + mate (mate used as a verb) | ||
| 2 | SITCOM | Yes, it comes across something funny (6) |
| Hidden in “yeS IT COMes”, although I have to say I’ve seen a few that weren’t funny. | ||
| 3 | MENAGERIE | Male badger stuffed amongst weird collection of animals (9) |
| M(ale) + nag in eerie | ||
| 4 | I BEG YOUR PARDON | What poor guy bared in pants? (1,3,4,6) |
| (Poor guy bared in)* | ||
| 6 | CEDES | Gives ground to favourites coming out of trap (5) |
| Hom of seeds (as in seeded players). Coming out of trap means coming out of mouth. | ||
| 7 | MYRMIDON | Subordinate mayor at odds with centralised working (8) |
| Odd letters of mayor + mid + on | ||
| 8 | ICE SKATE | Society princess that’s beneath cool, sporty footwear (3,5) |
| S + Kate (somebody who acquired a title by marrying some bloke who’d beeen given one when he was born) below ice | ||
| 9 | NEURAL COMPUTER | PC working on intelligence set more nuclear bombs outside (6,8) |
| Put in (more nuclear)* | ||
| 15 | STIMULATE | To arouse old model, put on trousers (9) |
| T(=model) in (trousered by) simulate | ||
| 16 | ASBESTOS | A heavy-drinking footballer in cry for help? It may be dangerous ground (8) |
| Best, as in George, in a SOS. The def is referring to that the fact that asbestos is dangerous if ground up. | ||
| 17 | PERVERSE | Obstinate, essentially, over topless bars (8) |
| [O]ver in (=bars) per se. | ||
| 19 | BISTRO | Restaurant recipe used in gravy? (6) |
| R in Bisto | ||
| 20 | HEARSE | Practised driving off revolutionary vehicle (6) |
| [Re]hearse[d] | ||
| 22 | SWEEP | Goes around skirting with brush (5) |
| Pees< around(=skirting, the around in the clue being used to indicate reversal) w(ith) | ||
*anagram
I wasn’t thrilled with 14a either – ended up OneLooking it. Otherwise top stuff.
Many thanks S&B both.
Not impressed with 14ac, nor with 15dn, both of which I biffed. But there were others I liked, including EAVESDROP and ASBESTOS. And I liked the misdirection in 26ac, suggesting that H (‘hotel opening’) would be the last letter (‘after’) of the answer – it took a while for the penny to drop.
Thanks, Lohengrin and HealH
It took a lot longer than usual, so an enjoyable challenge although I fell for the Spooner trick in 18ac and spent too long jumbling words before the penny dropped.
Reaction to 14ac was ‘Well I suppose so’
Thanks to S & B
Thanks, Neal.
I did mostly enjoy this but found the last few really hard to pin down. Another one who wasn’t keen on TROUBLESHOOT and I thought MYRMIDON was really obscure for a daily cryptic. And not that I give a crap, but I thought KATE was a duchess and not a princess?
Maybe not Lohengrin’s best so far, but he has set himself very high standards.
Yes some of this was extremely difficult. I ground to a halt and used aids to finish. Never heard of a neural computer. Didn’t like 14ac. But did like 15dn.
Thanks for the blog, comments and all.
I must apologise about 14ac, but to me, I would never read ‘ID problem’ as anything other than a problem with one’s ID, which in my head, made it a nice CD.
Lohengrin
With you on that, Lohengrin. That’s how I read it, and I thought the CD clever when I tumbled to it.
Thanks Rog,
Glad someone read it the right (wrong) way!
ID Problem = Trouble is a problem. The American police ID black suspects by shooting them?