My goodness that was hard. But not for any reason I can see — all the clues make perfectly good sense in retrospect and seem quite straightforward. It was a really good crossword, the sort of thing that the speed merchants drool over, but which is quite a struggle for people like me.
The grid is not to my taste: 9 out of 29 answers have <50% checking, and although my grumble with this is not a problem for some people, it does become rather hard to solve a clue when you have _E_E_ and no hope of getting any of the other letters. There was a reason why Ximenes stipulated 50%+ checking.
Definitions in maroon, underlined (I’ll stick with maroon for the time being because last time I also used it and nobody complained). Anagram indicators in italics.
There was a time when Radian’s crosswords referred to famous speeches in Shakespeare, but I can’t see anything of that sort here. Mind you, my knowledge of Shakespeare’s speeches is a bit thin. Perhaps the long word down is an indication of the fact that there are plenty of accoutrements in the grid.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | YASHMAK | Go on about quiet mum’s cover-up (7) |
| ya(sh Ma)k — a cover-up in the sense that it covers you up | ||
| 5 | STETSON | Don’t change this boy’s headgear (7) |
| stet son’s — ‘stet’ is the proofreading instruction which means ‘don’t change this, despite all the marks that have been made which might suggest otherwise’ | ||
| 10 | COMB | Search through what grows on layer (4) |
| A comb here is the fleshy growth on the heads of birds like chickens (which lay eggs) — generally larger in the male but they do appear on females — I suppose you could see this as 2 defs | ||
| 11 | MACKINTOSH | Architect Charlie enters, generating endless rubbish (10) |
| C in makin{g} tosh — Charles Rennie Mackintosh is the architect — generating = making — disregard the comma (something I don’t really like — couldn’t the clue have perfectly well omitted it?) | ||
| 12 | BOATER | Heartless braggart and sailor (6) |
| boa{s}ter — a sailor, who goes on boats, could be defined as a boater — I was fixated on tar for the sailor and only got this at the end | ||
| 13 | OVERAWED | Intimidated woman was indebted to banks (8) |
| o(Vera)wed — ‘banks’ a verb indicating going on the outside | ||
| 14 | LOINCLOTH | Scant cover left over in hospital to hide lump (9) |
| l o in (clot) H | ||
| 16 | BERET | Deprived female lost cap (5) |
| bere(F)t | ||
| 17 | DHOTI | Sort of 14 popular in Delhi inside out (5) |
| Since 14 is LOINCLOTH, this is clearly the Indian word for one — one mustn’t be misled by ‘inside out’, which is not in its obvious sense but indicates that the inside (elh) is thrown out; it is replaced by hot [= popular] | ||
| 19 | BEDIZENED | Denizen briefly entangled in plot, gaudily dressed (9) |
| (denize{n})* in bed — I saw this but it didn’t seem to work so abandoned it, not being 100% sure what ‘bedizened’ meant | ||
| 23 | STARLIKE | Funny A-lister entertains King’s Head, twinkling? (8) |
| K{ing} in *(A-lister) | ||
| 24 | VESTRY | Where ministers change top lines (6) |
| vest ry | ||
| 26 | PROSTHETIC | F1 driver I see keeps article about replacement parts (10) |
| Pros(the)t I c — the F1 driver is Alain Prost — c is spelt ‘see’ | ||
| 27 | BARE | Having nothing on except end of programme (4) |
| bar {programm}e | ||
| 28 | JERSEYS | Island’s milk suppliers are the tops (7) |
| 3 defs: (Channel) Island’s, Jersey cows, the things like a sweater | ||
| 29 | COSTUME | Charge us cryptically for outfit? (7) |
| cost U and me — U and me, or you and me, can be regarded as us | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 2 | AMOROSO | A mostly gloomy outlook primarily for drink (7) |
| a moros{e} o{utlook} — amoroso is a sherry between Amontillado and Oloroso | ||
| 3 | HABIT | Some addicts kick this rather hard at first (5) |
| a bit [= rather] with h at first | ||
| 4 | ADMIRAL | One engaged in drama at sea leading at the front? (7) |
| 1 in (drama)* l{eading}, &lit. | ||
| 6 | TOILET | John the estate agent’s sign impresses paper (6) |
| i in (to let) — the crosswordland paper, which used to be the FT, now seems to be the i | ||
| 7 | TETE-A-TETE | Repeatedly copied note about a private talk (4-1-4) |
| (te te (a) te te) | ||
| 8 | OBSCENE | Crude English crime writer’s given up taking cocaine (7) |
| C in (E Nesbo)rev. — the crime writer is Jo Nesbo, who was not new to me but not the first crime writer I thought of | ||
| 9 | ACCOUTREMENTS | First of two soldiers reports capturing equipment (13) |
| accou(t{wo} REME)nts | ||
| 15 | NATURISTS | Article about lovelorn trippers, those who enjoy being 27 (9) |
| (an)rev. t{0}urists — 27 is BARE and those who enjoy being bare are naturists | ||
| 18 | HAT TREE | Henry, old PM, swops sides, making a stand for 5 and 12 (3,4) |
| H Attlee with its L replaced by R — 5 and 12, STETSON and BOATER, could be put on a hat tree — is Attlee an old PM? I think of old PMs as people like Pitt and Walpole — I suppose that at any rate he’s an ex-PM (but would we say that Cameron was an old PM?) | ||
| 20 | IN VACUO | No gas here to cook coq au vin Queen wanted (2,5) |
| *(co{q} au vin) — there’s no gas in a vacuum, or ‘in vacuo’ | ||
| 21 | EARDRUM | Heard rumours about listening device (7) |
| Hidden in hEARD RUMours — is it quite OK to say ‘about’ rather than something like ‘contain’ (although the surface would of course be impaired)? It seems to me that the English is a bit unsatisfactory: ‘Heard rumours’ are about ‘listening device’ | ||
| 22 | NIGHTY | It’s typically put on in the dark near outskirts of Torbay (6) |
| nigh T{orba}y — I’d always thought it was a nightie but this seems to be an alternative spelling | ||
| 25 | SABOT | Drunkard pinching sailor’s footwear (5) |
| s(AB)ot — this is a sabot, although a sabot can also be a firearm or a dinghy | ||
Maybe the planets are aligned or something, but I didn’t find this too hard. It took me a while though to get MACKINTOSH for ‘Architect’ (makes a change from ‘Wren’) and I relied on a lucky dip in the consonant lottery for BEDIZENED, which was new to me.
Yes, I took the ‘Tuesday theme’ to be the items of clothing and headwear scattered about the grid, held together by the central ACCOUTREMENTS. Don’t know if there’s anything more to it than this.
Thanks to Radian and John.
Very nice puzzle and theme. Thanks all
Like WordPlodder, I found this pretty straightforward. I also had to guess BEDIZENED then check it was a word. Not seen that spelling for nightie before.
Wasn’t sure about the definition for IN VACUO. Space is a vacuum but has a lot of gas in the gas clouds. I’ll let other, more knowledgeable solvers, say if this is correct or not.
Thanks to Radian and John.
Thanks Radian and John
John, I think mine was the original request to use a different shade for definitions, and I forgot to thank you for it when you next blogged. Maroon is very clear.
I wonder if we could add the linked solutions BARE and NATURISTS to the theme? They are both defined in terms of clothing, or lack of. But I can’t remember which of Shakespeare’s works contained a YASHMAK and a DHOTI…
It’s nice when the theme isn’t intrusive and I barely spotted it. It took me a while to get onto Radian’s wavelength so I can see why our blogger found it tricky. But then, like Hovis and Wordplodder, I found things fell into place. MACKINTOSH, my penultimate, resisted until I got the excellent ADMIRAL to give me the opening letter and then seemed so obvious. Other favourites included BERET, PROSTHETIC, BARE, OVERAWED and EARDRUM. (I’m OK with the, admittedly terse, English in 21d and it certainly didn’t stop me solving.)
Thanks Radian and John
The first three theme answers I got were STETSON, BOATER and BERET, so I supposed that the theme was hats, especially since we had a HAT TREE and it was quite a surprise when the loincloths and yashmak emerged. I certainly thought of BARE and NATURISTS as part of the theme, PostMark.
I hadn’t heard of the crime writer, so couldn’t parse 8dn – thanks for that, John. I smiled at John the estate agent and the lovelorn trippers. I had no problem with Attlee as an old Prime Minister (he was born in 1883 and died just a year after Cameron was born).
Thanks to Crucible for another enjoyable puzzle and to John for the blog.
Thanks John. And as for Radian, what can I say? This was nothing short of magnificent. One of the best puzzles I have seen in years. A masterclass in misdirection. I am raising a glass of The Famous Grouse in congratulation.
BTW Jo Nrsbo’s detective Harry Hole is well worth a look.
Sorry, that should be Nesbo’s
I meant Radian (not Crucible), of course.
On a first pass we got nothing till 23ac, but then 24, 27 and 28 fell quite easily, followed by the downs from 3 to 8, and we made steady progress thereafter, helped by the emerging theme and the cross-references. We too had to check the existence of BEDIZENED in Chambers, and the meaning of AMOROSO which we only knew in the musical sense.
PROSTHETIC, ADMIRAL and IN VACUO were among our favourites.
Thanks, Radian and John.
Our initial solving experiences were quite different. Joyce found the puzzle quite straightforward and Bert found the misdirections difficult to get to grips with at first.
The theme helped us to guess a few before sorting out the parsings – BERET in particular our LOI.
Agree with Conrad about Jo Nesbo.
Thanks Radian and John.
My first three, randomly glanced at while I ate breakfast, were sabot, tete a tete and beret, so I thought it was all going to be a bit French. Which held me up for a while. Didn’t know the crime writer, but Mackintosh is one of the few architects I’m familiar with and bedizened is a lovely word. Thanks to Radian and John for a good deal of fun and enlightenment
On the whole, not too difficult, I found, except for 16ac where my mind went completely blank for items of headgear that could fit. And a wordsearch was no good – far too many words returned to go through.
In vacuo is Latin used by physicists such as the phrase “the speed of light in vacuo” which is defined precisely in the SI standard and gives rise to the definition of the metre. It means on a perfect vacuum.
The speed of light in air is a tiny bit lower and can vary, hence mirages.
I really enjoyed the crossword.