A nice Monday workout which was generally on the easy side with a lot of those sort of clues where you feel the answer should have been obvious immediately but it actually takes a bit of working out.
There were one or two I was slightly uncomfortable with, mainly in the word association.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SHALLOW | Appear to assume everybody’s lacking intellectual subtlety (7) |
| Show around all. I think show is used here in the sense of “show up” which is often abbreviated to just show, as in “he never showed”. | ||
| 5 | MUSTARD | Celeb overwhelmed by damaging allegations is hot stuff (7) |
| Star in mud | ||
| 9 | ACT UP | Malfunction leads to Bill getting deposit back (3,2) |
| Ac + put< | ||
| 10 | REPRESENT | State aim to stand by soldiers (9) |
| Seems to be present (which can mean to aim or point a weapon) + RE(=Royal Engineers). Not sure about represent for state, although as a verb state means to set forth a position, which is similar to represent. | ||
| 11 | TIMEPIECE | Single article on period watch (9) |
| Piece after time | ||
| 12 | DODGE | Party, for example, doing an about face over duke’s dishonest act (5) |
| Do(=party) + eg< around D(uke) | ||
| 13 | STAB | Go crazy on the way back, for instance (4) |
| Bats<. Not entirely sure why we need the “for instance” unless it’s a triple def and instance is the second def. | ||
| 15 | TRAVESTY | Playwright ignoring one rule with extremely tacky parody (8) |
| I think this is Trave[r]s + t[ack]y. Not entirely sure who the Travers is. The obvious would be PL Travers, but she doesn’t seem to have written many plays. Possibly it’s Ben Travers | ||
| 18 | ODDMENTS | Repaired end with Tom’s daughter finding bits left over (8) |
| (End Tom”s d(aughter)* | ||
| 19 | LEES | The worst part? General Grievous’s close (4) |
| Lee (= Robert E, US Civil War general) + [Grievou]s. The lees are the dregs, so might be considered the worst part. General Grievous, if you were wondering, is a character from Star Wars. | ||
| 22 | WRONG | Whatever is not just wide of the mark (5) |
| Not sure about this. I decided in the end it must be a DD with “whatever is not just” being a synonym of wrong. | ||
| 24 | PRIVILEGE | Special pleasure for puritan to seize loathsome drug (9) |
| (Prig around vile) + E(=drug, Ecstasy) | ||
| 26 | BALLERINA | Surprisingly liberal American taking in pole dancer (9) |
| Liberal* + A(merican) around N(=North pole) | ||
| 27 | SCORE | Not entirely prepared to accept my grievance (5) |
| Se[t] around cor (=my!). Score used here in the sense of a score to settle. | ||
| 28 | TIPSTER | Starts to produce several texts during row with purveyor of inside info (7) |
| Initial letters of “produce several texts” in tier | ||
| 29 | THESEUS | She set out to take possession of The Head of Ulysses a mythical hero (7) |
| (She set)* around first letter of Ulysses. | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | STARTS | Begins cutting within seconds (6) |
| Tart in SS | ||
| 2 | ATTEMPTED | Tried to find a time to risk provoking newspaper boss (9) |
| A t(ime) + tempt + ed | ||
| 3 | LAP UP | Delight in friend elevated into prominence (3,2) |
| Pal< + up(=into prominence) | ||
| 4 | WORM-EATEN | Old team owner ruined (4-5) |
| (Team owner)* | ||
| 5 | MAPLE | Miles needs to remove source of pathogens from fruit tree (5) |
| M(iles) + ap[p]le | ||
| 6 | SPEEDWELL | Advantageously placed by drug producing plant (9) |
| Well placed by speed | ||
| 7 | AMEND | Correct graduate over the last point (5) |
| MA< + end | ||
| 8 | DITHER | Be uncertain about turning up with it in the middle of Oldham (6) |
| It in [Ol]dh[am] + re<. | ||
| 14 | BE MY GUEST | Stay in the same place with the person I invited – please do (2,2,5) |
| DD | ||
| 16 | ASSAILANT | Attacker of Alsatians beaten up (9) |
| Alsatians* | ||
| 17 | THEREFORE | As a result Whistler has nothing to enter at that point (9) |
| Ref(=whistler) + o in there | ||
| 20 | TWO BIT | Worth next to nothing a short time after? I hear likewise (3-3) |
| Bit(=short time) after hom. of too. | ||
| 21 | LEVELS | Makes flat 50 finally available to golfer after the third of November (6) |
| L(=50 in Roman numerals) + [availabl]e + (Ernie) Els after V(=third letter of November) | ||
| 23 | ORLOP | Deck hands meeting over stopping work (5) |
| RL (right/left hands) +(=meeting) o(ver) inside(=stopping) op | ||
| 24 | PRIOR | Previous priest admitting endless unrestrained revelry (5) |
| Pr(iest) around rio[t] | ||
| 25 | ISSUE | Topic of interest for children (5) |
| DD | ||
*anagram
I also had a grimace or two about some of the wordplay, such as 10A, 22A and 20D.
Nevertheless there was some nice stuff and it was a generally straightforward and pleasant introduction to the week.
The playwright is certainly the prolific Ben Travers, whose plays were almost exclusively farces (a sort of synonym in some situations for travesties). Not even sure that P L Travers wrote any plays.
Thanks to Poins and NealH.
Thanks Poins for an entertaining crossword.
Like NealH, I was a bit unsure about REPRESENT. However, my ODE has ‘state or point out clearly’ for represent and ‘hold out or aim a firearm’ for present, so I guess that is OK then.
I struggled to get started on this, and in the end I needed a word search to get 23dn, which I don’t think I’ve come across before.
Certainly Ben Travers was the first name I thought of when I got 15ac.
A nice steady solve (thanks Poins), though was dubious about the parsing for seven of them, so thanks too NealH and others for explanations. Agree Travers must be of the Ben variety.