An excellent and absorbing puzzle with lots of very subtle touches.
There was a nice mixture of easy and difficult clues, so no-one would be entirely left out but nor was it quick to complete. 18 down particularly impressed me.
| Across | ||
| 1 | TITANS | This regularly thrashes giants (6) |
| Odd letters of ThIs + tans | ||
| 4 | DECIMATE | Ravage partner after start of month (8) |
| Mate after Dec I | ||
| 10 | NONPAREIL | About to cut into love without compare (9) |
| On + pare in nil(=love) | ||
| 11 | CROUP | Disorder in court following short cut (5) |
| Up(=in court) after cro[p] | ||
| 12 | CARTS | Carries constant gifts (5) |
| C(onstant) + arts | ||
| 13 | UNPOPULAR | Happy about entering Arctic perhaps after peacekeeping force gets out (9) |
| Up< in polar after UN | ||
| 14 | TAFFETA | Material round round cheese (7) |
| Fat< + feta | ||
| 16 | EVIL | Pantomime villain’s secret vice (4) |
| Hidden in patomimE VILlain | ||
| 19 | ODDS | Likelihood of excessive drug intake by police officer (4) |
| OD (overdose) + DS (Detective Sergeant) | ||
| 21 | SYNERGY | Offender pronounced extremely guilty offers co-operation (7) |
| Hom of sinner + g[uilt]y | ||
| 24 | VERSATILE | Resourceful relatives adapted (9) |
| Relatives* | ||
| 25 | AWASH | Area used to be hot and covered in water (5) |
| A(rea) was h(ot) | ||
| 26 | LINGO | Popular attempt to follow Latin argot (5) |
| In go after l(atin) | ||
| 27 | DECEPTION | Unfortunate, poetic end to story (9) |
| (Poetic end)* | ||
| 28 | ENDORSED | Got behind in final round getting bothered without leader (8) |
| End + [h]orsed, I think | ||
| 29 | CANNED | Is able to study when head-over-heels drunk (6) |
| Can + den< | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | TENACITY | After tax rises American banking centre showing resolve (8) |
| Net<(=amount after tax) + a(merican) city | ||
| 2 | TENERIFE | Number teeming around European island (8) |
| Ten + rife around E(uropean) | ||
| 3 | NEARS | Earns ridiculous advances (5) |
| Earns* | ||
| 5 | ECLIPSE | Cover-up at a high level? (7) |
| CD | ||
| 6 | INCEPTION | Opening of clumsy packaging caught one performing (9) |
| Inept around (=packaging) c(aught) + I on(=performing) | ||
| 7 | APOLLO | Heads of armed police outlaw ladies licentiously ogling handsome youth (6) |
| Initial letters of “armed policy outlaw ladies licentiously ogling”. | ||
| 8 | EMPIRE | English judge lacking proper authority (6) |
| E [u]mpire, the U referring to U and Non-U, a classification system for words used by different social classes. | ||
| 9 | NEBULA | Crab maybe unable to move (6) |
| Unable* | ||
| 15 | ENDEAVOUR | Try charm to overwhelm very old unionist (9) |
| Endear around v(ery) o(ld) u(nionist) | ||
| 17 | CROATIAN | Split personality‘s seedy raincoat (8) |
| Raincoat*, def referring to Split in Croatia | ||
| 18 | HYPHENED | Added appropriate punctuation to pop up advertisement involving female on date (8) |
| Hype around hen + d. The correct spelling is pop-up, so a hyphen would be appropriate to add. | ||
| 20 | SPINDLE | Turning point in short car journey led all over the place (7) |
| Spin + led* | ||
| 21 | SKETCH | Comic scene featuring soprano on boat (6) |
| S(oprano) on ketch | ||
| 22 | EVOLVE | Spun endlessly to unroll (6) |
| [R]evolve | ||
| 23 | IRONED | Decreased desultory derision is misplaced (6) |
| Der[is]ion* – def in the sense of de-creased | ||
| 25 | ALPHA | A as in Athens (5) |
| CD | ||
*anagram
I always enjoy Vigo’s puzzles and one of the challenges is to figure out “what’s going on underneath”. Having seen the theme in one of her puzzles published elsewhere over the weekend, I believe I can see a few words in the grid which have something in common.
I loved the “Split personality” idea, but I must admit I did really struggle with the NE corner, which seemed dramatically harder than the rest of it, to me at any rate.
Thanks to S&B
Thanks for the blog, Neal H. I agree with your preamble and with baerchen’s comments. I, too, loved the split personality and had a big tick against 18dn.
I parsed 28ac as END [final] O [round] + [a]RSED [as in ‘can’t be arsed’] which made it my favourite clue. 😉
Many thanks to Vigo for a super puzzle.
Wot everyone else said (wiv a little sugar sprinkled on top). Thanks to Neal for the blog and to Vigo for an enjoyable challenge.
22d I think there should be a ‘D’ on the end as well, to distinguish spun from spin.
Almost completed – failed to spot the ‘de-crease’ trick in 23dn, and 11ac/8dn took longer than they should because the C from 6dn had me fixated on CT for ‘court’ for a while. And I agree with Paul A’s parsing of 22dn.
A tie for CoD between NEBULA and CROATIAN.
Thanks, Vigo and NealH
I’m used to Split personality by now but I enjoyed this-and nice to see another lady setter-too few of them, in my view.
I think 22d should be parsed as [R]EVOLVE[D], which answers Paul A’s point, and also gets round the objection that “endless” surely can’t mean removing the first letter, whereas removing both “ends” is fine.
I just realised my poorly-worded comment@1 could be taken as a suggestion that Vigo has replicated the theme from another puzzle, so before she engages Carter Ruck I’d like to say that isn’t the case. I think the ghost theme of this puzzle is the name of teams used in the UK version of The Apprentice (which I have watched; Frau Bärchen is addicted)
Well spotted, baerchen. There is a full list of the team names here: Vigo has managed to include 11 out of the 24. Sadly the list omits “decadence”, which was temporarily chosen by one team in the 10th (2014) series in the belief that it had something to do with “decade”.
baerchen, you are quite correct. I did indeed populate the grid with Apprentice UK team names. You are also correct in spotting that its American cousin appeared in Big Dave’s NTSPP slot on Saturday. Glad I’m not the only one to watch it. The picking of names is my favourite bit of the first episodes. Tenacity, of course, were originally Decadence but were persuaded to change it when they realised they hadn’t truly understood the meaning. Thank you to NealH for blogging and to all who took the time to comment.
And Eileen, you’re right, I was thinking bothered/arsed (though it’s obviously not a term I use myself).
Thanks
Victoria
[@Vigo
Some years ago, Frau Bärchen was working in a bank in London; her English was at that time excellent, but not perfect. Her boss (a minor member of the English aristocracy) asked her to perform a task, but she was at that moment very busy. She replied “I can’t be arsed to do that now”, having misunderstood the expression as “I can’t be asked to do that now” as in “I’m busy; please dont ask me”.
It was many years later that he told me how fesity he thought she was]
Thanks, Vigo @10.
Nor me! – I thought twice about commenting. 😉
*feisty, even
Many thanks Vigo, enjoyed this a lot. I also did the ntspp and I apologise I failed to spot themes in either, but then I never watch the program. In fact I get annoyed when my kids watch it enthusiastically ( the uk version) since I imagine it presents a warped set of values – but hey, what tv doesn’t.
I particularly liked alpha, taffeta, canned, Apollo, nebula, and i loved ironed – I always enjoy new takes on old chestnuts. I hadn’t come across split personality before and I loved it.
So thanks for both treats (this and ntspp)
And many thanks nealh – I missed the parsing for 10a and 28a (thanks also Eileen)
Andrew@9 our posts crossed. (Children’s tennis lessons finished before I could work out the sum) did have Decadence on my list but couldn’t quite fit it in. Glad you also remember the episode.
V
The top right corner almost completely defeated me. I got 7dn and that was all, although I now see I’d guessed 11ac correctly but didn’t enter it because I couldn’t convince myself it was the right answer.
This was a clever and enjoyable puzzle. My fave was the Split personality.
Alas! I got well and truly stuck with 11a — having got as far as ‘crop’, I still missed the answer. Having the correct answer for 28a, I was at a loss as to how to parse the last four letters. So ‘arsed’ was the missing word! Not a term I use… Mind you, I have occasionally heard it used in the context of ‘don’t arse about’ for ‘don’t mess about’.
Many thanks to Vigo for an entertaining crossword and to NealH for the explanation.