A steady solve today – nowhere very hard, but not a giveaway either. Thank you Aardvark.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | YELLOW JERSEY |
Timid cow that’s seen at the front of the field? (6,6)
|
| YELLOW (timid) and JERSEY (cow) | ||
| 8 | PULL-TAB |
Opener, awfully tall, in The Cricketers Arms? (4-3)
|
| anagram (awfully) of TALL inside PUB (The Cricketers Arms perhaps) | ||
| 9 | NON-USER |
One’s clean load put in corner, half aired (3-4)
|
| ONUS (load, a burden) inside corNER (only half visible, half aired) | ||
| 11 | RALLIED |
Participated in demo song with artist and student (7)
|
| LIED (song, by Schubert etc) following (with) RA (Royal Academician, artist) and L (learner, student) | ||
| 12 | OTHELLO |
Play the empty local when in bands (7)
|
| THE LocaL (no middle letters, empty) inside O O (two circles, bands) | ||
| 13 | ARGON |
Element of technical language Jack ignored (5)
|
| jARGON (technical language) missing J (jack) | ||
| 14 | MEMORANDA |
Joggers Mike and American circling Italian city in recession (9)
|
| M (mike, phonetic alphabet) AND A (American) containing (circling) ROME (Italian city) reversed (in recession) – things that jog your memory | ||
| 16 | HEADLINES |
Part of newspaper’s front page wrinkles? (9)
|
| HEAD-LINES are wrinkles | ||
| 19 | TRENT |
English stream divided on Beckett ultimately (5)
|
| RENT (divided) following (on) becketT (last letter, ultimately) – a river (stream) in England | ||
| 21 | BOHEMIA |
Snake around border with India, finding ancient kingdom (7)
|
| BOA (snake) contains (around) HEM (border) with I (India) | ||
| 23 | OXIDISE |
During Noel essentially detectives on team become rusty (7)
|
| DIS (Detective Inspectors) following (on) XI (eleven, a team) inside (during…is…) nOEl (middle letters, essentially) | ||
| 24 | EARBASH |
Harry’s personal audio system complements party (7)
|
| EAR (one’s personal audio system) with (complements, adds to) BASH (party) – to attack verbally | ||
| 25 | INFERNO |
Wise perhaps to interrupt dope creating flames (7)
|
| ERN (Ernie Wise perhaps, former comedian) inside (to interrupt) INFO (dope) | ||
| 26 | ARCTIC CIRCLE |
Freezing underground line, a line on some maps (6,6)
|
| ARCTIC (freezing) CIRCLE (The Circle Line on the London Underground) | ||
| DOWN | ||
| 1 | YULE LOG |
In auditorium, second person will record cake (4,3)
|
| sounds like (in auditorium) “you’ll log” (second person will record) | ||
| 2 | LATVIAN |
European’s muscle getting unit inside truck (7)
|
| LAT (muscle) then I (unit) inside VAN (truck) | ||
| 3 | OMBUDSMAN |
Quiz man Richard introduces Mike, friend and moderator (9)
|
| OSMAN (Richard Osman, TV quiz show presenter) contains (introduces) M (mike, phonetic alphabet) and BUD (friend) | ||
| 4 | JINGO |
Devout patriot, on disc, telling gags? Not OK (5)
|
| following (on) O (a disc) is JokING (telling gags) missing OK | ||
| 5 | RANCHER |
Cowboy builder’s latest alteration extremely dear, according to Rene (7)
|
| last letter (latest) of buildeR then outer letters (extremely) of AlteratioN and finally CHER (dear in French, according to Rene) | ||
| 6 | EPSILON |
Character in Marathon that follows delta (7)
|
| cryptic definition – in Marathon indicates in Greek | ||
| 7 | APPROACHABLE |
Open program by fish expert (12)
|
| APP (computer program) with ROACH (fish) and ABLE (expert, as an adjective) | ||
| 10 | ROOM AT THE TOP |
Maybe study leading novel of the 1950s (4,2,3,3)
|
| ROOM (the study maybe) then AT THE TOP (leading) | ||
| 15 | MUSSOLINI |
Problem lifting lino’s bothered one supremo in the past (9)
|
| SUM (problem) reversed (lifting) then anagram (bothered) of LINO’S and I (one) | ||
| 17 | ADHERER |
Fan heard reworking by Queen (7)
|
| anagram (reworking) of HEARD then ER (Elizabeth Regina, the Queen) | ||
| 18 | LAMBAST |
Business graduate participates in final lecture (7)
|
| MBA (business graduate) inside LAST (final) | ||
| 19 | TRIFFIC |
Fabulous plant pruned by constant champion (7)
|
| TRIFFId (fabulous plant) missing last letter (pruned) then C (constant) – definition is an exclamation, informal shortening of terrific! champion! | ||
| 20 | EMIGREE |
Old record company detailed immature female expatriate (7)
|
| EMI (old record company) then GREEn (immature, de-tailed) | ||
| 22 | AD HOC |
Improvised band she once observed regularly (2,3)
|
| every other letter (observed regularly) of bAnD sHe OnCe |
Some work needed to get this out. The last two – TRIFFIC (echoes of Monty Python) and TRENT – held me up at the end and I hadn’t seen PULL-TAB for ‘opener’ before. Favourite was the surface for EARBASH.
Apologies if I’ve mis-read your explanation, but I think it’s just ROME that’s reversed in MEMORANDA, not all of the rest of the wordplay.
Thanks to Aardvark and PeeDee
Thanks for spotting that error WP. Fixed now.
Best of the day from the first in the dictionary
Also missing M in the explanation of 21a and HE in 10d. Otherwise, a very helpful blog, explaining a few answers I didn’t understand. Thanks PeeDee for the help and Aardvark for the challenge.
I agree with PeeDee’s description of today’s grid which I greatly enjoyed. I’ve had my struggles with Aardvark in the past but this one was quite accessible.
Favourites were EARBASH, YELLOW JERSEY and APPROACHABLE, my last one in, because I wasn’t thinking of ‘open’ as the definition until all the crossers were in.
TRENT was a gimme as I grew up in the area. Wasn’t sure of TRIFFIC but didn’t see what else it could be.
Just a couple of small slips, PeeDee, in your blog: for BOHEMIA where ‘border’ gives HEM and in 10d where ‘leading’ gives AT THE TOP.
Thanks for parsing a few, such as Richard Osman, unknown to me, and ‘onus’ in NON-USER.
Cheers Aardvark – it was fun.
Sorry, EDK, you got there first!
Thanks again for spotting the all the typos. Hopefully I have got it all there this time.
Aardvark’s always a setter I like to see and this crossword reinforced that. I had many favourites including YELLOW JERSEY, OTHELLO, RANCHER, APPROACHABLE, ADHERER, LAMBAST, and EMIGREE. I needed a word finder for TRIFFIC. I had problems parsing RALLIED (Lied = song was new to me), NON-USER, and I had to look up Osman to confirm his identity. “Improvised” as a definition for AD HOC was questioned in a recent blog (the poster thought AD LIB was more accurate) but another poster had justification from Chambers, of course. Thanks to both.
Another I finished with breakfast coffee this morning. With Aardvark I think working out the definition often takes as much time as the word play. But it is all gettable – eventually.
Thanks Peedee, I needed your explanations for a couple.
Anyone else try to fit “pas” into something in 24a? Thanks for the fun Aardvark.
Thanks Aardvark and PeeDee
Only got to this one yesterday in a busy lead up to Christmas and enjoyed it a lot. Not all that difficult to finish, but lots of things going on to fully understand what was going on with many of the clues. Typical of these was OMBUDSMAN – a generic definition for it, a personality that I didn’t know and a three part word play to put together for it. Others like YELLOW JERSEY and ARCTIC CIRCLE had simpler word play definitions but craftily disguised. Liked the construction of JINGO.
Finished in the SW corner with BOHEMIA (didn’t realise it was a kingdom once, just a region) and ADHERER (that was originally an unparsed ADMIRER).