There were a couple of tricky ones that delayed me at the end. Thanks Bonxie. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
9 I ate lunch drunk — wicked! (9)
UNETHICAL : Anagram of(… drunk) I ATE LUNCH.
10 Popular place for data (5)
INPUT : IN(popular;trendy) + PUT(to set in place).
Defn: … put into a computer, say.
11 Sort out will (7)
RESOLVE : Double defn: 2nd: …, or willpower;determination.
12, 20 Insect makes monk sit up (7,6)
PRAYING MANTIS : PRAYING MAN(a whimsical defn. for a monk) + reversal of(… up) SIT.
13 The spirit of Ireland (4)
ELAN : Hidden in(of) “Ireland “.
14 Refuse to do jumps like a mountain goat? (4-6)
SURE-FOOTED : Anagram of(… jumps) REFUSE TO DO.
16 Cloying smoke envelops orchestra (7)
FULSOME : FUME(smoke) containing(envelops) LSO(abbrev. for the London Symphonic Orchestra … and symphony orchestras in a few other places too).
17 Provided backing before churchman’s slip, perhaps (7)
FIELDER : Reversal of(… backing) IF(provided;conditional on) plus(before) ELDER(a presbyter;priest;churchman).
Defn: An example of which;perhaps, is a slip, in cricket.
19 Resident has no time to pack case (10)
NOMINATIVE : NATIVE(one resident in, say, a country or region) containing(has … to pack) [O MIN](letter representing 0;no + abbrev. for “minute”, a period of time).
Defn: … in grammar.
22 Mineral starts to transform and loses colour (4)
TALC : The 1st letter of(starts to) “transform and loses colour “.
24 Fleet left before first light (7)
LANTERN : RN(abbrev. for the Royal Navy, the British fleet) placed after(… first) [ L(abbrev. for “left”) + ANTE(prefix indicating before in time or position, as in “antedate”) ].
25 Food for Roman artist, one carrying instrument (7)
RAVIOLI : [ RA(post-nominal letters for a member of the Royal Academy, an artist) + I(Roman numeral for “one”) ] containing(carrying) VIOL(any of a family of stringed musical instruments).
26 Refuse second preference (5)
SWILL : S(abbrev. for “second” in time notation) + WILL(a preference;an inclination towards, as in “girls will be girls”).
27 Last kipper tie in range is exaggerated (9)
OVERDRAWN : [ The last letter of(Last) “kipper ” + DRAW(a tie in a competitive match) ] contained in(in) OVEN(a range in the kitchen).
Down
1 One of 8 left house to spot endless celebs (7-8)
QUARTER-FINALIST : QUARTER(to house;to provide with lodgings in a particular place) + “find”(to spot;to detect) minus its last letter(endless) + A-LIST(a real or imaginary list of the most celebrated or sought-after celebrities).
Defn: … in, or going into, a knock-out competition.
2 Forces people to take food here (4,4)
MESS HALL : Cryptic defn: “Forces people” refers to those in the military forces.
3 It’s a bit of a fiddle kicking animal out of shelter (1-4)
F-HOLE : “fox-hole”(a small hole dug in the ground in a battle area to provide shelter against enemy fire) minus(kicking … out) “ox”(a domesticated animal).
Defn: … viz. one of the f-shaped sound holes.
4 Arrange to return foil after school (8)
SCHEDULE : Reversal of(to return) ELUDE(to avoid and thus frustrate;foil someone from achieving his/her plans) placed below(after, in a down clue) SCH(abbrev. for “school”).
Defn: … a series of events into time slots.
5 Move along before she drops hot pasty on the counter (6)
ELAPSE : “she ” minus(drops) “h”(abbrev. for “hot”) placed below(… before …, in a down clue) reversal of(… on the counter) PALE(pasty;of the colour of paste, ie. whitish).
Defn: … in time.
6 Dresses prior to breaking legs (9)
PINAFORES : AFORE(before;prior to) contained in(breaking) PINS(slang for one’s legs)
7 Medical support left around noon (6)
SPLINT : SPLIT(slang for “to leave”, as in “let’s split before the cops arrive”) containing(around) N(abbrev. for “noon”).
Defn: … for a broken bone.
8 Actors inside get moving with these (5,10)
STAGE DIRECTIONS : Anagram of(… moving) ACTORS INSIDE GET.
Defn: …, ie. inside the theatre and onstage. A WIWD (wordplay intertwined with definition) clue.
15 Indicated empty lavatory in a very obvious way (9)
POINTEDLY : POINTED(indicated the whereabouts of something) + “lavatory” minus all its inner letters(empty …).
17 Plant some after a hot spell (8)
FEVERFEW : FEW(some) placed below(after, in a down clue) FEVER(a period of high body temperature;a hot spell).
18 Crooked Shakespearean character enters country from the south (8)
DIAGONAL : IAGO(character in Shakespeare’s Othello) contained in(enters) reversal of(… from the south, in a down clue) LAND(a country).
On first pass, “crooked” doesn’t seem synonymous with “diagonal”. The former means bent or twisted, whilst the latter means straight but oblique, ie. neither horizontal nor vertical. But I suppose they could convey the same sense when used thus: “That picture frame on the wall is crooked.”
20 See 12
21 Cheap metal sink (6)
TINPOT : TIN(a metal) + POT(in billiards, to sink a ball into a pocket).
23 First Lady accepts Bill’s fudge (5)
EVADE : EVE(the biblical first lady) containing(accepts) AD(an advertising bill;poster).
Defn: …, which politicians do a lot of.
Enjoyable without too many difficult ones, though I couldn’t parse 2dn. Thanks setter and blogger.
Thanks scchua, I enjoyed this – PINAFORE was my favourite. But I had the same quibble as you with DIAGONAL.
In POINTEDLY, I think ’empty’ means you discard the inside letters to leave just ‘ly’.
Sorry for the typo in 15down. It should have been “all its inner letters” not “its last letter” of course. Thanks matrixmania for pointing it out.
Thanks Bonxie and scchua
I look forward to Bonxie’s rare appearances, but I didn’t think he was at his best here. I had question marks against 7 clues, but you have resolved some of these, scchua.
One remaining one I will mention – 2dn. This was like Rufus at his worst. Even if you spot the meaning of “Forces” (as I did), there are still several possible answers without the crossers being in place – MESS ROOM, MESS TENT (favourite!) and more. I know we have discussed this before, but I think that a clue that doesn’t have a unique solution without the crossers is a poor clue.
Favourite was 1d for the misdirection of “8” – I spent some time trying to find a stage direction to fit. However we had a very similar definition in Imogen’s puzzle two days ago.
Mischievous question – can a hole actually be a “bit of” something? It’s not there!
Fun and doable. I too tried to match 1d with 8 at first. V clever. Also had reservations about diagonal. And there is that ongoing worry about about reverse ageism in crosswords. 2d – not all solvers were conscripted in 1939. Are going to get NAAFI and SNAFU next? And while I know 19 (having had grammar beaten into me at school in the 60s) I doubt if young people would get this.
This must have been an easy Friday as I managed it without too much trouble! Didn’t parse lantern though. Same reservation as already mentioned re crooked/diagonal and I think diagonal is quite specific whereas crooked is anything out of true. Anyway, thanks to setter and blogger.
Thanks Bonxie & scchua.
Good crossword; some went in very quickly but others needed a lot more thought. I tried MESS ROOM at first for 2d and also thought of tent, but it is a crossword, so soon found the right one.
I liked the misdirection in 1d and the SURE-FOOTED goat.
Thanks Bonxie and scchua
We may have reservations about 18D, but it is supported by Chambers Thesaurus, which gives crooked as an alternative for diagonal.
Thank you Bonxie and scchua.
A very enjoyable crossword, SURE-FOOTED and STAGE DIRECTIONS were great.
muffin @4, never mind, you have the choice of 1 or 0.
Thank you Bonxie and scchua.
I enjoyed this – normally I expect to get “skewered” by Bonxie, but as with Imogen and Brummie this week it was on the easier side. A response to the recent letters, or preparation for a fiendish one tomorrow (Paul perhaps)?
I knew that 1dn would be a misdirection, but I went through all sorts of collections of eights (rowing, rugby etc) before the realisation dawned.
Favourite clue was praying mantis (in itself a homophone insect).
I enjoyed this; solidly within my range. A few good misdirections, notably in 1d of course, and nice surfaces such as 23d. But I do share the concern about the ambiguity at 2d; I had various alternatives to go with MESS before HALL fitted.
Thanks to Bonxie and scchua. MESS HALL was my first choice (so not a problem for me – maybe it’s the standard US term) but I struggled with ELAPSE (“on the counter” fooled me) and the “will” in SWILL. TINPOT as a billiards term was new to me as was FEVERFEW but were accessible from the clues. All in all, lots of fun – and STAGE DIRECTIONS have been a major interest for me for some years.
Always a pleasure to see Bonxie; thanks to S&B
Last kipper= “r” eh!
Thank you Bonxie and Scchua. I totally agree with Muffin regarding 2d my husband is ex army and I’ve never heard the mess called a mess hall before.
Took far too long to solve this and missed some of the parsing so thanks to scchua for the explanations.
I did like 12a PRAYING MANTIS, and also the way IAGO fitted into 18d DIAGONAL, despite others’ reservations.
I may have missed something but I thought the “Last kipper..” clue was a bit nonsensical? Sorry to be critical as I found a lot to like here, so thanks to Bonxie.
Many thanks Bonxie and scchua
I missed 1d and 2d, argh. My favourites were the nicely crafted anagrams SURE FOOTED and STAGE DIRECTIONS
Sorry just saw your comment, ezzie (we crossed). I filled in MESS HALL 2d without hesitation. Maybe from “Mash” or another US TV show? Maybe a more American term?
I see ACD also had no problem with MESS HALL reinforcing the likelihood that it is more of a US term.
Quite a lot of gentle starters for a Bonxie, but there were a few tricky ones and I found this one quite satisfying. My web connectivity may be quite limited next week so I may not be commenting as much as usual.
Thanks to Bonxie and scchua
MESS HALL was first thing that came to me and have neither American nor army connections – maybe picked up from TV.
QUARTER FINALIST took waaaay too long, esp. given I solved FINALIST quite easily earlier in the week.
FEVERFEW was new.
FOI INPUT
LOI DIAGONAL (keep forgetting to try LAND or NATION for country and start going through a list of actual countries – and same reservations about being synonymous with CROOKED)
Thanks to B&S
Thanks both,
Nice to see ‘fulsome’ given its proper meaning.
This was a great mixture of reasonably gettable and very tricky.
Julie in Australia: I thought the surface of 27a was fine, the kipper tie being the 60s & 70s fashion item.
No problem with DIAGONAL- the S character seems always to be IAGO- but I thought MESS HALL a bit naff. I suppose this was rather an easy BONXIE. I came to the puzzle late because my little dog had to have surgery today and I got a bit stressed. She’s ok now but wearing an inverted lampshade!
Back at the plot: I liked POINTEDLY,NORMATIVE and FEVERFEW although the latter was new to me, but it took me an age to parse LANTERN.
Thanks Bonxie.
I’m a long way behind with crosswords after a few of busy weeks (and another week or so just as busy still to come), but I decided to do today’s rather than playing catch-up. I’m glad that I did, as this was at a nice level for me.
I too thought that the 8 in 1d could well be misdirection, but for a long time I couldn’t see any link to the number 8. FINALISTS was my route into the solution. That and the other long answer were my favourites, along with SURE-FOOTED.
Thanks, Bonxie and scchua.
Thought this was going to be easy after UNETHICAL FOI – actually nice mix of easy and hard – I was bamboozled by the 8 in 1D – I have no problem with DIAGONAL – I was slow parsing a number of answers – had entered them (online) and then deleted (e.g. 5D, 24A, 27A) – had DOMINATIVE at one stage for 19A although couldn’t match with (erroneous for the parsing) definition – had to cheat on two – have never heard of FEVERFEW so had the hot bit but “some” for “few” eluded me – and LOI was F-HOLE (never heard of it) – I had realised it was “HOLE” – was obsessed with “there are no athiests in a …” but kept thinking of priestholes – which on reflection is daft as of course priestholes don’t contain athiests so must be another word – d’oh 🙂
Very easy for a “Bonxie”.
However I must strongly disagree with Muffin @4
…but I think that a clue that doesn’t have a unique solution without the crossers is a poor clue.
As this is a crossword I’m afraid this statement is utter tosh! (The clue is in the name).
Consider the origins of the cryptic puzzle in which the clues are merely definitions (What I suppose we know call a “quick” crossword or something similar). Part of the fun of completing the grid was that several answers would satisfy the clues but only one combination (hopefully) of the possibilities would actually successfully fill the grid.
Where is it stated that the move to more sophisticated cluing which became the “cryptic” crossword removes the possibility of several answers satisfying one clue? As far as I am aware the only real stipulation is that there is a unique solution to the completed grid! Hence the name “Crossword”.
If we must have unique solutions without crossers why bother with the grid?
BNTO
It would be possible (though quite a challenge) to construct a grid in which each solution depended on crossers to decide on the answer – where would that leave us?
(I wonder if that has been attempted in one of the more esoteric puzzles – that I ignore?)
I do find “Quick” crosswords (at least in the Guardian) more difficult than cryptics, for the very reason that there is usually more than one possible answer. I use crossers in cryptics to help, of course, but I really think that they shouldn’t be essential to the correct solution.
I think we must agree to differ on this (though of course you are wrong 🙂 )
Thanks to Bonxie for a pleasant Friday evening and scchua for the blog.
Following only two days after Imogen’s “one of only two left” [FINALIST], and in the second week of the US Open, 1d was a gimme. Surely it must have rung a bell for others.
At the risk of infuriating BNTO (and I probably will, once more), I cannot else than support what muffin said @4 (and @27).
…but I think that a clue that doesn’t have a unique solution without the crossers is a poor clue.
As this is a crossword I’m afraid this statement is utter tosh! (The clue is in the name).
Certainly in this case, where it was just a cryptic definition you can’t have several options, I’m afraid.
If you were the setter, BNTO, delivering a clue like this you would be criticised about this by the editor.
Bonxie should have been too but he wasn’t.
Just like yesterday’s Brummie which gave us ‘Trim back legs’ for SNIP.
It works both ways but intuitively PINS works even better.
That is poor clueing and should be avoided.
Clues should indeed lead to a unique solution if possible.
Many liked Bonxie’s recent crosswords (I did too), some even talked about Bonxie being a benchmark for crossword setting.
Not today, I am afraid.
My PinC was saying “that’s not very good” a bit too often today.
Tin = Tin, Pointed = Pointed, Hole = Hole.
‘Fox-hole’ ditching an animal? It should be an ox to have letters the right amount of letters left but a fox is also an animal.
This is just not really good clueing, in my book of crosswords.
Believe it or not, I found solving this crossword overall still enjoyable.
But when I see a thing that baerchen @13 mentions, my heart stops.
Luckily, not for too long.
Thanks to JimS @ 27 for your post. I have never heard of a kipper tie (neither in my lexicon nor in my wardrobe!), so I apologise unreservedly to Bonxie for my ill-informed criticism.
Now that I think about it maybe “kipper” has appeared before in a puzzle with part of the answer being “TIE”? I am sure beery hiker could confirm, but I see (@ 19) he is likely to be offline.
Glad your little dog is okay, Peter Aspinwall @ 23, despite having to wear her “kipper tie”!
(JimS: After checking the wonderful www, though, I can report that most men I went out with in the 70s wore those bad ties, although more often they wore love beads….!)
I came to this and the previous two days’ crosswords very late but somehow found the time to complete them – and they were all well worth the effort. I tackled them without references or aids (always my preferred mode of solving) and found them all quite testing but enjoyable. I was nearly successful too – I was stuck only on 3d F-HOLE in today’s crossword. (I’ve never heard of this word, so even though the clue itself was easy to de-construct, I just couldn’t guess the answer or either of the part-words.)
The argument about whether a clue in a cryptic crossword chould have a unique solution often comes up – for the obvious reason that it quite often occurs now (there was another one very recently with PINS and SNIP), whereas that was one of the things that used to distinguish (quality) cryptic crosswords from non-cryptic crosswords. I used to consider a dual solution a blemish, but I now think it’s only a ‘weakness’ in the same way that a word with too many unchecked letters is a weakness. If a setter has, say, a dual solution crossing a word with fewer than half of its letters crossed, that could easily detract from the quality (and enjoyment) of the puzzle as a whole.
Thanks to Bonxie for a fine puzzle today. (For me, the multiple choice answer at 2d did not detract from it!) And thanks to scchua for the blog.
Can anybody please quote the source that a cryptic clue should have a unique solution?
As long as the grid has a unique solution the puzzle is solvable. Stop being lazy!
I’ve told you the rules before and thery’re simple.
a) A setter takes an empty grid and fills it with words which cross each other.
b) He then presents the empty grid to the solver who has to recreate the filled grid the setter came up with.
c) The setter also provides some clues and possibly instructions to enable the solver to come up with exactly the same grid as the setter.
All this nonsense such as “last kipper isn’t ‘r'”, “clues should have unique solutions”, “cryptic grammar”, etc etc is just personal preference and twaddle.
Sil, I loved your comments about the “editor”. Very droll!
BNTO
I chose my word carefully – I said it was a “poor” clue, not an inadmissable one. I don’t think you could take exception to that (or perhaps you could?)
I had dispose in at 11ac, which totally messed up 1 and 3 down. It could have been dispose, but it wasn’t. Just saying.
Late as ever. I enjoyed this and finished it apart from F HOLE which, without a crosser, I put in as S HOLE. I knew what it was and what it looked like but tend to think that looking it up is in a way cheating, at least in non-themed puzzles. If I had got it right I wouldn’t have parsed it. While attempting 15d my first thought was that “empty lavatory” might be MOTIONLESS but quickly though reluctantly had to discard it.
Well, I guess I can report partial success. In other words, partial failure.
Glass half full: enjoyed the long fills on the left and right, I got to QUARTER FINALIST in a VERY roundabout way: 1 of 8 is a fraction; QUARTER is 2 of 8 and also a fraction, and it fits; fill it in and take a look. Then the penny dropped.
FIELDER: knowing nothing about cricket seems to be a handicap in cryptics, I did fill it correctly and had a hunch that the correct parsing would involve wickets and batsmen…. F-HOLE was also filled but I failed to parse it, too.
PRAYING MANTIS: the monk was a very clever bit of wordplay, I thought.
For DIAGONAL I tried to find a way to shoehorn the crooked S. character RICHARD in there for a while but he wouldn’t bend to my Will. Then I started thinking of other roles and IAGO is always a likely suspect as mentioned above.
Glass half empty: I had OUTWARDLY for POINTEDLY and so I had no hope on some of its crossers: LANTERN, NOMINATIVE, FULSOME.
Re: MESS HALL, I could only think of “MEN” for “Forces” and so failed to fill that one.
FEVERFEW – never heard of it.
So I wear the Cone Of Shame on this one. But I’d say my rudimentary cryptic-solving skills are coming along bit by bit.
Thanks to all for the illuminating commentary!
Thanks Bonxie and scchua
Found this easier than the normal Bonxie – if you ignore the tough post-parsing of 12a-20d, 19a, 24a (which I didn’t), 1d and 3d.
Thought that PRAYING MAN was cute and the misdirection of 1d very clever (since I’m so far behind and do these puzzles so far apart – the Imogen reference was never going to be remembered!)
Finished in the NE corner with FULSOME (hadn’t seen that definition before), MESS HALL (I’m in BNTO’s philosophy corner – not in his delivery one though) and F-HOLE (a new word well learnt from a great clue) the last few in.