An excellent crossword from Crosophile today: the clues are tight and some of them are very good, despite slight misgivings in places.
Definitions in rebeccapurple, underlined. Anagram indicators in italics.
The theme is Miles Davis and his friends, about whom I know a little but not much. No doubt experts on all this will be able to elaborate. There are also some other jazz players in the answers, and an exercise for you, dear reader, is to find them.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | BUDDY | Like producing flowers soon for a friend? (5) |
| If flowers are in bud, they might be said to be ‘buddy’; it doesn’t seem to be a proper word in this sense, but Crosophile has indicated the doubtfulness perfectly acceptably | ||
| 4 | AUTHENTIC | Genuine gold article, not ‘one carat’ (9) |
| Au the n’t 1 c | ||
| 9 | EASTERNER | Essentially fear more forbidding Asian (9) |
| {f}ea{r} sterner | ||
| 10 | RERUN | Show repeats about arguing off and on (5) |
| re [about] {a}r{g}u{i}n{g} | ||
| 11 | HOLIDAY | Country dance includes one in ancient festival (7) |
| h(ol(1)d)ay | ||
| 12 | ORNATE | Fancy lecture about Newton (6) |
| or(N)ate | ||
| 15 | STANDINGS | Reputations of understudies taking up golf (9) |
| stand-in(G)s | ||
| 16 | MILES | Look pleased after cycling – it’s a long way (5) |
| smile with its first letter cycling to the other end | ||
| 17 | COUNT | A noble matter (5) |
| 2 defs | ||
| 19 | EYELASHES | Look at what cat’s got – they might be fluttering (9) |
| eye (Look at) lashes — lashes as things that a cat or whip has | ||
| 22 | TREMOR | Turkey’s capital city recalled seismic shock (6) |
| Tr (Rome)rev. | ||
| 23 | SHORTER | More brusque out of anguish or terror (7) |
| Hidden in anguiSH OR TERror | ||
| 25 | ROACH | Fish in a butt (5) |
| 2 defs — Collins gives the second one as slang for the butt of a cannabis cigarette | ||
| 27 | OVERSTATE | Exaggerate aspect of proceedings from Lord’s gallery? (9) |
| overs [aspect of proceedings from Lord’s, the cricket ground] Tate | ||
| 28 | EXTREMIST | Emir texts with new order for zealot (9) |
| (Emir texts)* | ||
| 29 | DIZZY | Bewildering signs of sleep during course of home improvements? (5) |
| DI(zz)Y — I should have thought the signs of sleep were zzz — at least that’s what Collins says | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | BEECHES | Trees as coastal features say? (7) |
| “beaches” | ||
| 2 | DISPLEASURE | Raised pulse might result from this? (11) |
| (raised pulse)*, a nice &lit. | ||
| 3 | YIELDED | When out of whiskey wild-eyed crazy gave in (7) |
| ({w}ild-eyed)* | ||
| 4 | ANNOYANCES | A girl’s love can burst into an acceptance for troubles (10) |
| Ann 0 y(can)*es | ||
| 5 | TARN | Sailor joins navy in body of water (4) |
| tar N | ||
| 6 | EARDRUM | One of the tympani tried with lid removed – strange (7) |
| {h}eard rum — the tympani (a variant spelling of timpani) are not only instruments in an orchestra but also parts of the ear, although are they actually the eardrums? Evidently the tympanic membrane is the eardrum — one of the tympani? | ||
| 7 | TOR | Rocky outcrop beside river (3) |
| to [beside] r — two sentences please, where to and beside are interchangeable — I can’t think of any (the car came right up to me/the car came right up beside me doesn’t quite work) | ||
| 8 | CONFESS | Admit grift if heists regularly ignored (7) |
| con [grift] {i}f {h}e{i}s{t}s — only today I was watching Friday’s Countdown and had ‘grifting’ and wondered if it was acceptable: it probably would have been — Collins gives ‘to swindle someone out of money’, which was how I remembered it from The Sting | ||
| 13 | ALL THAT JAZZ | The output of 23 16 26 11 et al and such stuff (3,4,4) |
| Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, were members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the late 1950s and no doubt performed together on the album All That Jazz (or was that just the 1979 film? — you can see that I’m really rather ignorant about this and am using Wikipedia). The et al refers to the other jazz players in the grid, like Count Basie | ||
| 14 | ASSESSMENT | Appraisal idiots, people in the core of Ofsted (10) |
| asses s(men)t — the core of Ofsted is {Of}st{ed} — Oftsted are the school inspectors so this is rather rude about them, but quite funny | ||
| 17 | COTERIE | Camp bed set above a lake (7) |
| cot Erie | ||
| 18 | TROCHEE | A foot preserved in vitro – cheek! (7) |
| Hidden in viTRO CHEEk — a trochee is a foot, in Greek and Latin verse mainly | ||
| 20 | AROUSED | Revelled drunkenly but not caught up (7) |
| {c}aroused | ||
| 21 | SURGERY | Sudden rush on the lines for period of consultation (7) |
| surge [sudden rush] Ry [railway, the lines] | ||
| 24 | NORI | Sushi ingredient eaten by senorita (4) |
| Another hidden: this time in seNORIta | ||
| 26 | ART | Leave just the bottom half in painting (3) |
| {dep}art — a definition by example, which not everyone is comfortable with | ||
And for true aficionados, there’s ORNATE Coleman . . .
Aphid @1 OUCH! CHERRY-O
Also BUDDY RICH; ART TATUM; DIZZY GILLESPIE.
My first Crosophile and I found it fairly straightforward with plenty to like – especially ORNATE EYELASHES ROACH and COTERIE. I did see some jazz related theme but as it’s not something that I know anything about I didn’t follow through on it. Thanks to Crosophile and John.
There’s also Max ROACH (drummer), and BUDDY could also be Buddy Bolden, one of the forerunners of New Orleans jazz.
We guessed the theme from 13dn but it tok a while to identify all the ‘et al’ musicians.
Our first thought for the parsing of 27ac was OVER + STATE with ‘gallery’ as a misdirection towards the House of Lords – but your parsing is no doubt correct.
Thanks, Crosophile and John.
I enjoyed trying to identify the jazz references, though came up SHORTER than I should have. I like to think I would have picked up the theme without the help of 13d – DIZZY might have just got me over the line.
Favourites were the DISPLEASURE &lit and the crossword-land TROCHEE.
Thanks to Crosophile and John
The theme is actually ALL THAT JAZZ
Count Basie, Max Roach, Art Farmer Wayne Shorter (who was is Miles’ band)
Plus the aforementioned.
Welcome to…JAZZCLUB….NICE!
Thanks copmus – saved me a job. In fact there are a lot of people called Buddy, a lot called Art, and at least two called Dizzy. And Wayne Shorter had a trumpet playing brother, Alan. As for Aphid’s outrageous pun, words fail me! (I met Ornette Coleman once, and hung out for a while with his bassist Charlie Haden. Probably too much information, but heigh ho.)
Thanks Crosophile, and also to John, whose ‘dear reader’ is appreciated.
Managed to finish this and enjoyed it but…
I too was unsure where ‘to’ and ‘beside’ are equivalents
I wasn’t entirely happy about the ‘s at the end of Turkey nor the superfluous A at the beginning of 4D.
Wasn’t aware of HAY as a country dance either (which I assume is how the clue works from John’s explanation).
Still these were minor 4Ds and didn’t spoil my enjoyment so many thanks to John and Crosophile.
Spotted the theme easily enough, but don’t know much about it, so a couple of names mentioned above were unknown to me. But of course, it didn’t in any way detract my enjoyment.
Thanks very much John, and for all the kind comments. I’m glad people liked the Jazz theme and all were safely found – plus Ornate Coleman! Thankyou, Aphid 🙂 .
A couple of really very minor points.
‘Buddy’, somewhat surprisingly, is an actual word in the flower sense according to Chambers, though even so I preferred the ‘?’
#9 Turkey’S. I think of it as ‘has (next to it)’ but maybe that’s a stretch. I think 4D needs that ‘A’ since ‘girl’ doesn’t really lead to the example ‘Ann’ whereas ‘A girl’ can. But HAY!
zz is probably just a quick snooze rather than a proper sleep!? 🙂
Tympanum, according to Chambers, is [amongst other things] both the middle ear and the membrane itself, so I think we’re OK.
Again, Chambers gives one meaning of ‘to’ as ‘beside’, though I admit offhand I can’t think of an example where that works!
14 down. As a long retired teacher this is an example of revenge being best served cold! 😀
Thanks to John and Crosophile
Nice. I thought I might need to know more about jazz but ignorance wasn’t a problem.
“‘s” for “has” is fairly standard and 4d relies on it too.
One thing I’m not sure about – both Chambers and Collins have the plural of “tympanum” as either “tympanums” or “tympana”
@12 Dansar I see you are quite correct, that a kettledrum is a tympano/timpano with plural as tympani/tuimpani whereas the tympanum is a different thing with different plurals. Oops!