Peto gets the grey cells working this morning.
I struggled with this one, taking nearly an hour to complete the puzzle, although most of the top half went in fairly quickly. SPOKEN, SLIVER and the parsing of DOGTROT took me ages to see, but I think I got there in the end.
I didn’t really enjoy writing up the parsing as there seemed to be a lot of convoluted clues here, many of which required the omission or reversal of letters. I also thought that (to misquote the movie Amadeus) there were too many words in 27 ac, and the enumeration of 1dn was wrong (the hyphen indicates that SET-ASIDE is an adjective, whereas both indicators in the clue are for a verb).
Thanks Peto, although I may now be late for work.
| Across | ||
| 1 | SPOKEN | Oral surgeon’s first name revealed in Punch? Just the opposite (6) |
| POKE (“punch”) in S(urgeon) [‘s first] + N | ||
| 4 | LAMBASTE | Whip animal to gain speed? Not at first (8) |
| LAMB (“animal”) to gain (h)ASTE (“speed”, not at first) | ||
| 10 | THEREFORE | Thus deleting conclusion of article before getting a word of warning (9) |
| [deleting conclusion of] TH(e) (“article”) + ERE (“before”) getting FORE (“a word of warning”) | ||
| 11 | NONET | Not one tenor in this group of performers (5) |
| NONE (“not one”) + T (tenor) | ||
| 12 | SO-SO | Indifferent when sailor’s grabbed by drunk? Not entirely (2-2) |
| OS (ordinary seaman, so “sailor”) grabbed by SO(t) (“drunk”, not entirely) | ||
| 13 | GET A MOVE ON | Hurry up with denial over backing pal employed by Gove earlier (3,1,4,2) |
| <=NO (“denial” over) + [backing] <=MATE employed by GOVE earlier, so G(ETAM)OVE-ON | ||
| 15 | DOGTROT | Jog right around in turn stopping to take rest at the end (7) |
| <=Rt. (right, around) in GO (“turn”) stopping DO (“to take”, as in “to study” e.g. to take English, to do English) + (res)T [at the end], so DO-G(tR)O-T | ||
| 16 | EVINCE | Reveal fellow needing no introduction at church (6) |
| (k)EVIN (“fellow”, needing no introduction (i.e. first letter)) at CE (Church (of England)) | ||
| 19 | STIFLE | Prevent small fairy taking it back (6) |
| S (small) + <=(ELF (“fairy”) taking IT) back, so S(TI-FLE) | ||
| 21 | STRANGE | Unusual compass found on street (7) |
| RANGE (“compass”) found on ST (street) | ||
| 23 | LASCIVIOUS | Girl in retrospect almost lay with old American wanton (10) |
| <=SAL (“girl” in retrospect) + [almost] CIVI(c) (“lay”) with O (old) + US (American) | ||
| 25 | NOVA | Star turn close to Virginia (4) |
| [turn] ON (“close to”) + Va. (Virginia) | ||
| 27 | VILLA | Taken from weevil larvae discovered in house (5) |
| Hidden in [taken from] “weeVIL LArvae” | ||
| 28 | OBSTINATE | Persistent noise bat produces over time (9) |
| *(noise bat) [anag:produces] over T | ||
| 29 | REDEEMED | Soldiers considered being paid off (8) |
| RE (Royal Engineers, so “soldiers”) + DEEMED (“considered”) | ||
| 30 | BEAT IT | Scarper when up to something criminal on the borders of Belize (4,2) |
| AT IT (“up to something criminal”) on [the borders of] B(eliz)E | ||
| Down | ||
| 1 | SET-ASIDE | Save or discard? (3-5) |
| Double definition
The hyphen in the enumeration is wrong, as it changes the solution from a verb (which would match the clue) to an adjective (which does not) |
||
| 2 | OVERSIGHT | Concerned with anything that is seen as supervision (9) |
| OVER (“concerned with”) + SIGHT (“anything which is seen”) | ||
| 3 | EVER | Always part without a hint of sadness (4) |
| (s)EVER (“part” without [a hint of] S(adness)] | ||
| 5 | AVERAGE | Mean to prevent missing the last time (7) |
| AVER(t) (“to prevent”, missing the last) + AGE (time) | ||
| 6 | BANDOLIERS | Reportedly forbidden to use lorries right away as ammunition carriers (10) |
| Homophone of [reportedly] BANNED (“forbidden”) + *(lories) [anag:to use] (being LOR(r)IES with R (right) away) | ||
| 7 | SENSE | Letters from Amundsen seditious in opinion (5) |
| Hidden in [letters from] “amundSEN SEditious” | ||
| 8 | EXTEND | Without getting minister to reach out (6) |
| EX (“without”) getting TEND (“minister”) | ||
| 9 | COVERT | Knight leaving to switch allegiance in secret (6) |
| N (knight, in chess) leaving CO(n)VERT (“to switch allegiance”) | ||
| 14 | PROFLIGATE | Wildly extravagant design of fragile pot (10) |
| *(fragile pot) [anag:design of] | ||
| 17 | CONSONANT | In agreement with social worker about working with boy at first (9) |
| ANT (“social worker”) with C (circa, so “about”) + ON (“working”) with SON (“boy”) at first, so C-ON-SON-ANT | ||
| 18 | DECADENT | Morally corrupt rebel feeding a negative effect (8) |
| (Jack) CADE (English medieval “rebel”) feeding DENT (“a negative effect”) | ||
| 20 | EPITOME | Abridgement of largely impressive book (7) |
| [largely] EPI(c) (“impressive”) + TOME (“book”) | ||
| 21 | SQUASH | Humiliate in game (6) |
| Double definition | ||
| 22 | SLIVER | Split up mischievous sons before start of recital (6) |
| (<=EVIL (“mischievous”) + S (sons), up) before [start of] R(ecital) | ||
| 24 | SOLID | Large raise to join top firm (5) |
| [raise] <=OS (oversize, so “large”) to join LID (“top”) | ||
| 26 | MINE | A rich source of Vitamin B? Not half (4) |
| MINE(rals) (“vitamin B?”, not half) | ||
*anagram
Wouldn’t have enjoyed blogging this either. Some very convoluted stuff in there.
For MINE, btw, I had half of ‘thiaMINE’, = Vitamin B1.
Still, an enjoyable sole, even if skipped over a few of the parses. Thanks to Peto, & well-played, loonapick.
Grant Baynham @1 – thanks for the “well played” (much appreciated), but also for your interpretation of 26dn whihc makes more sense than my own one.
Thanks Loonapick. I too went for (thia)MINE. I realised I hadn’t properly parsed SLIVER, so thanks for your explanation!
Thanks to Peto and loonapick. Tough going for me. I did not get MINE, did not parse NOVA, and was not sure about the SAL in LASCIVIOUS.
Thanks Loonapick for parsing. Got DOGTROT only from the crossings — the wordplay was too byzantine for me. Missed SPOKEN because I had puT ASIDE instead of SET ASIDE. Thanks Peto — enjoyed 4, 10, and 23 especially.
I too failed on 1a, because I had PUT instead of SET in 1d, and gave up trying to parse DOGTROT.
Convinced myself that half of the letter B gave me the letter E, if I erased the curves on the right.
Gave up with a few to go. Having put aside in 1d didn’t help, but dogtrot also did for me.
All too convoluted and too many answers were achieved from the definition rather than deciphering the mudded cryptic part of the clue.
I also remembered that liver was a rich source of vitamin B. I couldn’t get out of my head that the answer to 26d was live, but I couldn’t see why.
Not an enjoyable solve at all for me. After drowning in the rivers on Wednesday I was hoping for something more uplifting. Fingers crossed for today’s Alberich.
Thanks Peto & loonapick.
Without the hyphen in the numeration of 1 down, put aside would be a possible solution. I suspect that Peto included it because set-aside is a recognised word but put-aside is not. He was trying to be helpful.
thanks Loona! tough puzzle to land. In fact, I didn’t. I had PUT ASIDE for 1d indeed and got stuck – didn’t leverage the “hyphenation” hint . Thanks for explaining!
I did not complete this one: thank you, Ioonapick, for the articulate blog!
I failed to get MINE, and I must say that neither of the parsing efforts above works. (A good source of group B vitamins is marmite, so for a moment I thought of mite, but obviously that was not half of marmite). Vitamin B is a group of vitamins, one of which – vitamin B1 – is thiamine: therefore thiamine is not a source of it, but a synonym. As for minerals, they cannot certainly be a source of vitamins!
However, I did like 10ac and 23ac.
Thanks Peto and loonapick
Didn’t get to this one until Sunday night and was trying to do it before during and after our PM was giving the latest corona virus address to the nation which basically shut down most group things here. So whether it was hard or not, it still took over 2 hours to get it completed including the many distractions.
Was able to get it correctly completed and fully parsed and didn’t envy the blogging of it as some of them were very (nearly overly) complex to unravel.
Hi Lucio, ‘a rich source’ is the definition – the cryptic play is just the half of [THIA]MINE, as you say, vitamin B1. It was one of my early entries and thought it quite clever.
Finished in the SE corner with CONSONANT (where I had to check on the ‘in agreement’ definition), the tricky NOVA (hard to see, harder to see why) and DECADENT (which took a while to see ‘rebel’ Jack CADE).