Apart from my complete blank with 18dn, and one or two very slight misgivings (27ac, 28ac, 1dn) the clues here are very pleasant and this is one of Eccles’s (you may notice Eccles’s not Eccles) typical good productions. The clues at 9ac and 6dn are very nice.
Definitions underlined and in maroon.
I’ve become rather slack over the matter of hunting for Ninas. Probably because I seldom seem to find them, as here.
| Across | ||
| 1 | PRIOR | Former port in Puerto Rico (5) |
| P(Rio)R | ||
| 4 | BODY BLOWS | Old boy’s empty bungalow being damaged leads to setbacks (4,5) |
| (old boy’s b{ungalo}w)* | ||
| 9 | LUBRICANT | Oil spill in Cuba ends in all out war (9) |
| (in Cuba {al}l {ou}t {wa}r)* | ||
| 10 | LLAMA | Andean native lives next to American mother (5) |
| l l A ma — l = live (as in live rather than neutral in the wiring of a plug, I suppose) doesn’t seem to be in Chambers but is in Collins | ||
| 11 | THIRD DIMENSION | It makes flat stand out (5,9) |
| CD it seems | ||
| 13 | OFFENCE | Old fellow saw guide attack (7) |
| o f fence — a fence is a guide for a cutting tool such as a saw | ||
| 15 | IMPULSE | Urge current politician: keep pound in operation (7) |
| I MP u(L)se | ||
| 17 | SUBJECT | Discipline underling (7) |
| 2 defs | ||
| 19 | GRANDMA | Nan with marg spread over it (7) |
| and [= with] in (marg)* | ||
| 21 | DRESS REHEARSAL | Groom tries again, completely forgetting one line, in final run-through (5,9) |
| dress [= groom] rehears al{l} | ||
| 25 | OPERA | Ring for an ambulance, primarily for show (5) |
| O per a{mbulance} — opera = show seems a bit odd but OK I suppose | ||
| 26 | ATTRIBUTE | Characteristic quality of a dry joke: subtle, regularly ignored (9) |
| a TT rib {s}u{b}t{l}e | ||
| 27 | POLYTONAL | Cunning NATO ploy to hamper opening of lock with many keys (9) |
| (NATO ploy)* l{ock} — |
||
| 28 | GASPS | He possibly pilfers skirts and pants (5) |
| gas p{ilfer}s — He, helium, is the gas — a slight quibble here: it isn’t so much pilfers as pilfers’s; I’m not really comfortable with X skirts to indicate the skirts of X | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | PILOT HOUSE | Peterhead 1, Heart of Midlothian 0 – exploit room for control (5,5) |
| P{eter} 1 loth 0 use, so long as you accept that Peterhead means Peter’s head | ||
| 2 | IN BRIEF | To sum up wearing singular underwear? (2,5) |
| in brief — but at first I confidently entered ‘in short’ — however, Eccles gets away with it because ‘shorts’ is an American usage for ‘underpants’ and he’d surely have indicated this fact | ||
| 3 | RAIN DANCE | Ritual Native American people displayed outside, wanting a bit of irrigation (4,5) |
| CD so far as I can see, although it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that there’s something clever there [Yes, Hovis@1 immediately points out that it’s def: ritual; ra(Ind{i}an)ce, the i being ‘bit of irrigation; indeed very clever; thanks Hovis] | ||
| 4 | BHAJI | I blow up eating hot food (5) |
| (I jab)rev. round h | ||
| 5 | DITHERING | Some discredit her in government for being indecisive (9) |
| Hidden in discreDIT HER IN Government | ||
| 6 | BELLS | Calls boyfriend, at first, on landlines after splitting up four times (5) |
| b{oyfriend} e(l l)s — ‘landlines’ split up into ‘l and l in es’, five bits, four splits | ||
| 7 | ON A ROLL | Where you might find poppy seeds, with luck (2,1,4) |
| You might find poppy seeds on a roll — I had doubted whether ‘on a roll’ meant ‘having good luck’ rather than ‘in a run of good form’, but the dictionaries seem to show that Eccles is right | ||
| 8 | SCAN | Closely examine sulphur-tin compound (4) |
| S can [= tin] | ||
| 12 | DEFAULTERS | Fed up over changes involving Union, they won’t pay the fees (10) |
| (Fed)rev. a(U)lters | ||
| 14 | ENTERTAIN | Consider internet wrong about answer (9) |
| (internet)* round a | ||
| 16 | PLACATING | Soothing and unpretentious German guards? About time! (9) |
| pla(ca t)in G — you must disregard the question mark so that it reads … guards ‘about time’ | ||
| 18 | BARBELL | Bishop visits Andalusian city naked, displaying piercing (7) |
| I have said that ‘piercing’ is the definition, but goodness knows why: I can see no connection whatever between piercing in any sense and a barbell (and I think there is only one sense of this); it is only the fact that the wordplay seems to be B {M}arbell{a} that leads to this by a process of elimination [Yes, there it was, thanks again Hovis@1, it’s to do with body piercing] | ||
| 20 | DISCUSS | Track and field competition requires second review (7) |
| discus s | ||
| 22 | SHAFT | Quiet at the back, Ray (5) |
| sh aft | ||
| 23 | HOTEL | Prostitute allowed back in temporary accommodation (5) |
| ho (let)rev. | ||
| 24 | LOOP | Toilet paper’s beginning to twist (4) |
| loo p{aper} | ||
*anagram
OMG. Crossword of the year imo. Too many great clues to mention all of them. BELLS was superb: L and L in ES for ‘land lines’ split 4 times – fantastic. RAIN DANCE, GRANDMA and GASPS were also stand out clues. LUBRICANT was my LOI and yet another great surface. Thanks to Eccles for an awe inspiring puzzle. Btw, RAIN DANCE is INDiAN (less i a bit of irrigation’) in RACE (people). Thanks also to John for the blog. I had to google BARBELL to see that it is indeed a type of piercing.
In 27A, I think the “opening of lock” is supposed to be the first L of POLYTONAL, so it’s being hampered (surrounded) by the anagram. Impressed by BELLS, like Hovis.
Thanks Hovis@1, both your points have resulted in my updating the blog. I suspected something clever was going on with RAIN DANCE.
And also thanks Jason, blog amended. I wonder how many more mistakes will be pointed out.
thanks to Eccles for a most enjoyable puzzle, rounded off quite brilliantly by GASPS.
Many thanks to John for the blog
Loved it, loved it, loved it, Eccles – even though I did fall into the ‘short’ trap at 2d and couldn’t for the life of me parse 6d.
The saw guide was new to me as was the piercing – fortunately the latter was the only word that would fit – apart from a rather unfamiliar tree!
Thought 5d was well hidden and my leader board – for the penny-drop moments – comprises 1&28a along with 1,2,4,7 and 8d.
Thank you so much for the fun, Eccles – even though I made the mistake of printing this off as soon as it came online and then couldn’t resist staying up until stupid o’clock to finish it!
Thanks also to John – particularly for the sterling efforts to explain that pesky 6d.
Extra thanks to Hovis for the explanation of 3d – I was another who had missed the cleverness of that one.
All very enjoyable and mostly straightforward, though I missed the parsings of BELLS and RAINDANCE, and took far too long to see LUBRICANT. The BARBELL piercing was new to me too…
Thanks to Eccles and John
Brilliant, really excellent stuff Eccles. And thanks John
Enjoyable stuff from Eccles as always. Easyish solve that beat me by a couple in the end (25a & 18d – should have got the former, though). Honours go to the interesting constructions and the overall solve so thanks to The Man on the East Anglian Map for the puzzle and to Tudor Jacks’ American cousin for the blog.
Thank you for the blog, and the comments. I accept that pilfers skirts etc isn’t strictly Xim – the justification for it comes from, I think, things like ‘city boundaries’ where such constructions mean the boundaries of the city, and Peterhead is certainly pushing it that little bit further. I try to be reasonably Xim, but everybody has slight differences in what they think is fair.
Interestingly (to me, if no-one else) I wrote 1d a while ago assuming the match wasn’t a likely one, given that Hearts are 3 divisions above Peterhead, let alone that it would be played a week before this puzzle appeared, let alone that Peterhead would go 1-0 up (and then go on to win), but this did indeed happen last Tuesday.
I did realise that 3d could be read as a straight definition – this can be a problem with &lit and semi&lits when the wordplay is trickier than the definition (I remember someone, probably Steveran, discussing it when judging on DIYCOW), but figured it didn’t matter too much.
I did miss In Short being an alternative to 2d, though – sorry if it unfairly held people up.
Peterhead, yes: and is ‘Heart of Midlothian’ really LOTH, and not OT? Strictly speaking, of course!
Very nice puzzle.
More than an hour of struggle and even then had to come here to see some of the more intricate explanations for some unique and clever devices. Thank you, Eccles for the torture and John and Hovis for some enlightenment