Schadenfreude seems to be appearing about every other month this year.
Preamble: 13 clues each have a misprint in the definition. The correct letters can be arranged to form the phrase to be written beneath the grid. When the answers have been entered there will be 28 empty cells. These must be filled to complete a cryptic representation of the phrase. Numbers in brackets give the lengths of final grid entries, all of which are real words, including some proper names.
I made a decent (if not fast) start with this one – enough in the top left quadrant and a few in the bottom left to convince myself that the empty cells would form a radially symmetrical shape, loosely octagonal. This was progressively confirmed as more of the grid became filled – again not quickly, but satisfyingly so, in that if you put enough effort into solving (most of) the clues, then they yielded in a reasonable time … with a fair amount of checking in a dictionary, either words not in my ordinary vocabulary, or known words with less common alternative meanings. 
As is usual with this sort of puzzle (misprinted definitions), when I had just the last seven or eight clues left to solve, all bar two of them were of the ‘misprint’ sort. But most of them yielded in their own good time, and then I wrote down the 11 that I had along with 2 question marks – CUCIIIOLSEC?? – and tried to make some sense of them. VICIOUS CIRCLE looked promising if my two unknowns became V & R (now soon located in 12a & 28a), and also the empty cells were as close to forming a circle as a grid of squares would allow.
But it was quite late, and if were to start trying to fill them now it would take me well past bedtime, so I left it till the following day.
Next evening, I studiously wrote out the possible ways of filling the blanks – some were singletons, several had a number of completions, but IMMORALITY stood out. Most likely this was preceded by …ING TO and succeeded by OR …. Hmm. The next word could be VICE, and finally (or indeed initially) I could see PERTAINING. So the cryptic representation became PERTAINING TO IMMORALITY OR VICE: a good enough definition of VICIOUS in a CIRCLE within the grid, and I was done. (As to the title of the puzzle, Bad is a synonym of VICIOUS, Company is a synonym of CIRCLE.)
All in all, a moderate puzzle in terms of difficulty, enjoyment, and reward. Thanks Schadenfreude, keep ’em coming.
| Across | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Clue | Answer | Correction | Wordplay | |
| 1 | Adult novel stocked by Folio Society troubles Scots (6) | FASHES | A(dult) SHE (novel, ref.: author Rider Haggard) in F(olio) S(ociety) | ||
| 6 | Stale quart in the morning is covered in it (6) | SQUAMA | C | scale | QU(art) AM (in the morning) in SA (sex appeal, it) |
| 10 | Last of beet’s removed from cultivated soil (5) | ÂME | U | soul | TAME (cultivated) − (bee)T |
| 11 | Attacked forward turning on German (5) | GOT | TO< (forward) after G(erman) | ||
| 12 | Fat earl overcome by drink (4) | KEIR | V | vat | E(arl) in KIR (drink) |
| 13 | Delay for resistance backing (4) | ROT | C | decay | TO (for) R(esistance) all< |
| 14 | Large vessel left with antique possessions (6) | LAVER | L(eft) AVER (possessions, obs) | ||
| 16 | Abandon about five protected by shelter (6) | LEAVE | A(bout) V (five) in LEE (shelter) | ||
| 17 | Without discarded letters (5) | SANS | double definition | ||
| 18 | Glasgow’s full-length film director (5) | LANG | double definition | ||
| 21 | Dutch lecturer with brilliant exterior (5) | DELF | I | ditch | L(ecturer) in DEF (brilliant) |
| 23 | Trees volunteers planted in Iceland (5) | ITAS | TA (volunteers) in IS (Iceland) | ||
| 27 | Turn red (5) | SHOT | I | rid | double definition |
| 30 | Seven weeks more at sea (5) | OMER | [MORE]* | ||
| 31 | Poet’s ornamental fabric apparently displayed during eastern festival (6) | TAPET | AP(parently) in TET (eastern festival) | ||
| 34 | Strong hands from the East (6) | STRAP | I | string | PARTS< (hands) |
| 36 | Active live father of many (4) | ABE | A(ctive) BE (live) | ||
| 37 | Prize-winning Irish physicist stripped an instrument (4) | ALTO | (w)ALTO(n) (Irish physicist, ref.: Ernest W.) | ||
| 38 | Take a pack (5) | REC | R | park | REC (recipe, take) |
| 39 | Soft letter font (5) | PES | O | foot | P (soft) ES (letter) |
| 40 | An alive and prospering woman has worked always locally at the front (6) | AYESHA | [HAS]* after AYE (always) | ||
| 41 | Decline began to develop, limiting posh New Style (6) | SUNSET | SET (began to develop) around U (posh) NS (new style) | ||
| Down | |||||
| No. | Clue | Answer | Correction | Wordplay | |
| 1 | Drop every short streamer (6) | FALLAL | FALL (drop) AL(l) (every) | ||
| 2 | Pay money into American institute (4) | AMI | L | pal | M(oney) in A(merican) I(nstitute) |
| 3 | Reason for some to decide (5) | SEAL | S | season | double definition |
| 4 | Secure nuclear shelter (6) | HAVEN | HAVE (secure) N(uclear) | ||
| 5 | Attend to the needs of Victoria standing up in bishop’s office (6) | SERVE | VR< (Victoria) in SEE (bishop’s office) | ||
| 6 | In some areas did bucket shops set up? (6) | SILED | DELIS< (shops) | ||
| 7 | Practice once with a litre of water’s main component (6) | UREAL | URE (practice, obs) A L(itre) | ||
| 8 | Low fine for de Villiers is reduced (4) | MOO | MOO(i) (fine, S Afr) | ||
| 9 | Affirm by oath in critical trial (6) | ATTEST | AT (in) TEST (critical trial) | ||
| 11 | Earth during glacial stage comes back to life (6) | RISES | E(arth) in RISS (glacial stage) | ||
| 15 | Gun belonging to opponent short of energy (4) | INFO | E | gen | IN (belonging to) FOE (opponent) − E(nergy) |
| 19 | God protects one million places (4) | AIMS | AS (god) around I (one) M(illion) | ||
| 20 | Harrow sent up by a polite member (6) | GARDA | C | police | DRAG< (harrow) A |
| 22 | Timber-producing conifer beside bracken (6) | TOTARA | TO (beside) TARA (bracken) | ||
| 24 | Nurse stops to fix up old injuries (6) | TENES | EN (nurse) in SET< (fix) | ||
| 25 | Jock’s fix doesn’t finish with a tablet (6) | STELA | STEL(l) (fix, Scot) A | ||
| 26 | Father and son cherishing quiet early lives (6) | PASTS | PA (father) + S(on) around ST (quiet) | ||
| 28 | Tenor acting with this bird can make another happy (6) | HERON | [ANOTHER − T(enor) − A(cting)]* | ||
| 29 | Malarial fever remains with tense bureaucrat (6) | TAPIST | TAP (malarial fever) IS (remains) T(enor) | ||
| 32 | Argument about military funeral accompaniment (5) | TAPS | SPAT< (argument) | ||
| 33 | Oscar leaves to comply with the governor (4) | BEY | OBEY (comply) − O(scar) | ||
| 35 | Stringed instrument not unknown in this bar at Fort Knox (4) | ZEE | ZEZE (stringed instrument) − Z (unknown) | ||
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Well, I have to disagree with you on your penultimate sentence, HG. I thought this was at the top end of difficulty and highly rewarding, though I’m only saying that now after the memory of the mental strain is beginning to fade. What a remarkable construction it is too – every clue apart from the perimeter ones a word before and after the addition of the circle.
I didn’t have a lot of time over weekend, but even so found an hour or two to work on it with scant reward – a handful of answers and only one, 1A, confidently entered. I picked it up on and off over the week and chipped away at a rate of about one clue a day and would have given up defeated if circumstances hadn’t unexpectedly imposed a quite evening on me on Friday. By this time I had most of the top left filled in, but was delayed by having SELE (some of select) rather than SEAL at 3D, which steered me away for some time from the otherwise circle-like shape emerging. Lots of definitions seemed just outside my range of knowledge, but every clue yielded with patient application and once seen there was no doubt about any of them. Top quality cluing throughout and lots of cleverly hidden misprints.
I’m not sure I’d wish for one a month, but for me a brilliant puzzle that, if the memory of the pain keeps fading, may well be in my top three for the year. Thanks Schadenfreude.
Too brilliant for me, alas. I made it nearly to the end, with all the tough-but-fair clues solved, the blanks placed as indicated and VICIOUS CIRCLE ready to write beneath – but just couldn’t see the hidden cryptic clue. Perhaps too many possible letters in some places for my tiny mind to parse.
Another great puzzle from our prolific IQ setter.
Unlike HG, I derived ALTO at 37a wrongly, from [D]ALTO[N]… listed as a physicist in Bradford … without checking his country of birth … lucky it wasn’t a reverse parsed 6-letter answer, WALTON !
I was also intrigued for a while by the possibility of shops in 6d being DEPOTS, rev. = STOPED, since STOPE = bucket, thus STOPED might = did bucket. But STOPE was only a noun, and STOPED was one letter too long anyway, so I dropped that particular bucket and, a lot later, was relieved to find DELIS/SILED.
From the “correct” letters as they emerged, I guessed at a “circle” being involved, and highlighting a 28 cell circle on my rough made the rest a lot easier.
Talking of vicious circles, let’s hope the current longstanding one of “misprints/extra letters leading to instructions” is broken before too long.
A rarity for me, in that it’s the first time I can recall not enjoying a Schadenfreude puzzle. Not really sure why but it all felt a little overworked and tricksy. I don’t have Chambers 2016 – which I assume has reinstated boys’ and girls’ names – so although I felt sure AYESHA was correct I couldn’t verify (and thus enter) it. Google was little help either as the definitions I could find on there didn’t really match ‘alive and prospering woman’. Harumph, as they say.
Also tripped by DELF – I had DELFT (Deft = brilliant, around L) and wasn’t familiar with TAP meaning a form of malarial fever.
I do hope Schady returns in more benign form soon but thanks anyway
bingybing, Ayesha is a reference to the Rider Haggard novel, the follow up to She, which itself appears in 1A.
…and I also made the same mistake initially with DELF and DELFT, but I think this was a particularly mischievous bit of misdirection from Schadenfreude.
I must agree with OPatrick: I thought this was at the tough end. Initially, I made good progress, and was able to see the ring, but got quite stalled in the SE corner. Plus I never got enough misprinted letters to see a circle (or a circus, which would have been my guess), and couldn’t make out any words from the unfilled cells (too many options / obscure words).
It didn’t help that I was sure 12A was ‘vein’ (when the definitions are misprinted, all kinds of errors can follow…)
Can anyone explain what the ‘happy’ is doing in the clue for 28D?
It’s very ingenious when solved. Thanks to Schadenfreude and HolyGhost.
Neil, I think the happy in 28D is an anagram indicator – T + A + HERON can be anaground (?!) into ANOTHER. I was expecting it to become ‘harpy’ for a long time.
Had a long hard tussle with this weeks Schadenfreude. Filled most of the flight time to Florida. What an amazing Grid construction and end-game. Like OPatrick at 1 above I disagree with HG’s final summary, I thought that this was an absolutely cracking puzzle and so far one of my nominations for POTY. On the Use of happy in 28D I think that it is suggesting an anagram of another = heron + a & t.
Like others, I didn’t think this was a ‘moderate’ puzzle. The mix of misprints, obscure words and definitions and empty cells (and not realising where these were until quite late) made it towards the top end of my personal difficulty scale. It took me a long time to finally get to grips with it.
And like Bingybing @4 I found it curiously unsatisfying in the end- a grind without any PDMs.
However….as they say on Great British Menu….a ‘moderate’ Schadenfreude puzzle still ranks better than most others so my judgment is based purely on his previous, superb efforts. So many thanks to the setter and to HG for the blog.
Re #7 and #8 … With HERON – T & A clearly having to be an anagram of “another”, the indicator had to be “happy”. I hadn’t met this one before , but assumed it was via Chambers’ def. of “mildly drunk”. Has anyone come across similar ebriose anag. indicators, e.g. rat-arsed, blotto, stinko, Brahms & Liszt, wasted, shickered ? There are so many synonyms that topery-expert Chalicea might consider filling a complete grid with them for a future puzzle ?
I was looking for words like – pirhana, venus fly trap, shark, to make a vicious circle of teeth for the endgame. Pertaining to … didn’t seem quite so much fun, but did enjoy the puzzle.
@5 – thanks for the clarification. I think that makes the clue even more unfair than I originally thought!- I’ve never read the book and as I said, not even Google could help
@8 and 11 – thanks for the explanation. I think I still feel that the words ‘ can make’ were already sufficient as an anagram indicator and therefore the ‘happy’ is redundant and misleading. But I’m sure you’re right, and I guess misleading is permitted.
I’ve sung the praises of Schadenfreude several times on here and agree with those who rate this as one of his tougher ones. Many of the clues were tricky, but fair as always, and it was particularly difficult to fill in the blanks at the end with so many real-word options available. Having ruled out a diagonal arrangement of blank cells this time, we soon established that half of column 2 could be left blank and we then tried a symmetrical arrangement of 24 cells, which fortunately worked and allowed us to insert several cold-solved answers, and then saw that leaving the 4 “corner” cells blank would complete the 28.
So far so good, but the next stage took far too long because we had not read the preamble carefully enough and got bogged down trying to make the corrected letters spell a phrase. Surely not Latin two weeks in a row? Once the word “arranged” was spotted in the intro, the anagram was easy enough, but – as stated earlier – the endgame was a real challenge.
I make that five this year from Schadenfreude and they have all ranked very high on my personal marking system.
Another fine Schadenfreude puzzle – tough but fair as you’d expect from this setter. My solving experience sounds very similar to that of Terrier’s, column 2 revealing the pattern of 28 and the endgame taking AGES with all the possible permutations providing a lot of mental gymnastics. Great stuff with all real words, respect to the setter.
Thanks HG for the blog and to Schadenfreude of course.
bingybing re Ayesha – a quick Google gives a whole host of Muslim baby names sites all giving the meaning of Ayesha (also spelled Aisha) as variants on “living, vivacious and prosperous”. “An alive and prosperous woman” is a straightforward definition.
Ayesha was one of the prophet Mohamed’s wives and a significant figure in Islamic writing. Out of interest, I wonder if a reference to the meaning of a Christian name in a crossword would have caused any accusations of unfairness?
See Wikipeia and Muslim Name Info
I’m another one who found this right up there at the tough end of the spectrum. Got it nearly finished but a couple of mistakes prevented me from justifying VICIOUS CIRCLE. I also failed to find the hidden cryptic message, there were too many possibilities for the choice of letters and their positions.
Thanks to HG and Scadenfreude.