Apologies for the late and hurried post – I was stumped by a few of these, frustratingly, while most of the answers went in very fast. Thanks for the puzzle, Philistine!
Unfortunately, I don’t know “Under Milk Wood”, so there may well be other references to it that I’ve missed, but I’m sure our erudite community will point some out!
Across
1. Rugby formation picking up a bone (6)
SACRUM
SCRUM = “Rugby formation” around A
Definition: “bone”
4. Spend a penny gathering mud ants (8)
PISMIRES
PISS = “Spend a penny” around MIRE = “mud”
Definition: “ants” (too obscure, I think “pismire” is “an archaic or dialect word for an ant” according to Collins)
9. Abundance of reflected light before first sign of dawn (2,3)
NO END
NEON = “light” reversed (“reflected”) before D[awn] = “first sign of dawn”
Definition: “Abundance”
10. Proponent of a doctor drinking vodka ends with separation (9)
ADVOCATOR
A DOCTOR around V[odk]A = “vodka ends” but inserted separately (“with separation”)
Definition: “Proponent” (I got stuck a bit here thinking, “isn’t the word just advocate?” which I think is much more commonly used.)
11. Invasive species weren’t far out (5,4)
WATER FERN
(WERENT FAR)*
Definition: “Invasive species”
12, 18. One doubted if Bob is leading poet (5,6)
DYLAN THOMAS
THOMAS = “One doubted” (referring to Doubting Thomas, the apostle) with DYLAN = “Bob” first (“leading”)
Definition: “poet”
13. Mandarin orange centre shown in Sir Clive TV broadcast (5,7)
CIVIL SERVANT
[or]AN[ge] = “orange centre” in (SIR CLIVE TV)*
Definition: “Mandarin”
17. A dishwasher may be good for the opposition (6-6)
LABOUR-SAVING
Double definition: “A dishwasher may be” and “good for the opposition”
20, 24. Dressage de lycée? (5,5)
HAUTE ECOLE
Cryptic definition: it’s a type of dressage – the cryptic bit here is that “haute ecole” literally would translate as “high school” and an American high school is roughly equivalent to a French Lycee. So this works well and it’s very clever, but it’s a tough clue for an answer that not many people who don’t own a dancing horse will know.
21. Chrysler or Ford or a Team UK assembly (9)
AUTOMAKER
(OR A TEAM UK)*
Definition: “Chrysler or Ford” (it’s nice the setter has chosen US car makers since “auto” is an Americanism)
23. Mean Girls damned by harsh critics (9)
MALIGNERS
(MEAN GIRLS)*
Definition: “harsh critics”
25. Like operating surgeons having clean place to sleep (8)
SCRUBBED
SCRUB = “clean” + BED = “place to sleep”
Definition: “Like operating surgeons” – the coverings surgeons wear when operating are called “scrubs”
26. Trade cycle report (6)
PEDDLE
Sounds like “pedal” (“cycle”)
Definition: “Trade”
Down
1. Somehow banks on the first person in Germany to provide food (8)
SANDWICH
S AND W are the “banks” of “Somehow” (i.e. the letters on either side) + ICH = “the first person in Germany”
Definition: “food”
2. React badly on Philistine’s becoming artistic (8)
CREATIVE
(REACT)* + I’VE = “Philistine’s”
Definition: “artistic”
3, 15. Foreign articles take advantage of court record’s ultimate drama (5,4,4)
UNDER MILK WOOD
UN + DER = “Foreign articles” + MILK = “take advantage of” + WOO = “court” + [recor]D = “record’s ultimate”
Definition: “drama”
5. Half invoke All Saint’s Day parody about truth after a few (2,4,7)
IN VINO VERITAS
INV[oke] = “Half invoke” + I NOV = “All Saint’s Day” followed by SATIRE = “parody” reversed (“about”)
Definition: “truth after a few”
6. Comedian running a country until recently (9)
MACEDONIA
(COMEDIAN)*
Definition: “a country until recently”
7. Informer regularly talked to confuse (6)
RATTLE
RAT = “Informer” + T[a]L[k]E[d] = “regularly talked”
Definition: “confuse”
8. From Caesar on Gaul: it’s a wrap! (6)
SARONG
Hidden in [cae]SAR ON G[aul]
Definition: “it’s a wrap!”
10. Canine exchange to follow this legal framework? (2,3,3,2,3)
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
An “eye tooth” is a canine, so “an eye for an eye” is a “Canine exchange” Thanks to those who pointed out that there’s a better reading of this, which is that since the full saying is “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, the “canine exchange” is “a tooth for a tooth”, which follows “this” (i.e. the answer: “an eye for an eye”). Presumably that was what was intended and it’s just a nice coincidence that eye teeth are canines?
Definition: “legal framework?”
14. Zip up seaside town in play (9)
LLAREGGUB
BUGGER ALL = “Zip” (nothing) reversed (“up”)
Definition: “seaside town in play” – it’s from Under Milk Wood
16. Wrong man needed to fashion graven image (8)
AGGRIEVE
Compound anagram (man + AGGRIEVE)* makes “graven image”
Definition: “Wrong”
19. Nevertheless, tell the officer finally who did it! (6)
BUTLER
BUT = “Nevertheless” + [te]L [th]E [office]R = “tell the officer finally”
Definition: “who did it!” referring to the whodunit cliche, “the butler did it!”
22. I don’t buy this setter’s issue of contention in 10 (2,3)
MY EYE
MY = “setter’s” + EYE = “issue of contention in AN EYE FOR AN EYE”
Definition: “I don’t buy this”
Not very familiar with Dylan Thomas, but enough to get 14d. Most of the clues were enjoyable and challenging enough by my modest standard, but I needed a word filler to get 4a ‘Pismires’, and a French dictionary to remember ‘Haut(e)’. My irritation with the (well-indicated) foreign language solution evaporated when I finally got it, and finished the puzzle, so oddly that became my favourite clue. Even know now a bit more about dressage, not that I really wanted to.
I’ve read through a copy of UNDER MILK WOOD and I’ve listened to a recording of the original radio performance,and it’s a wonderful work, but that was some time ago and the only references I spotted were the author and of course I remembered that the town was the reverse of bugger all. I was quite chuffed to work out HAUTE ECOLE, which I guessed must be a dressage term. All in all, I remember feeling that this puzzle matched my particular random set of general knowledge, but that this was mostly luck. Having said that, both SACRUM and PISMIRES were new to me, but we’re clearly clued. I particularly liked MACEDONIA, with its misleading hint of Zelenskiy Thanks Philistine and mhl.
SACRUM was my FOI which helped me get UNDER MILK WOOD which I had thought was a book.
Favourites were DYLAN THOMAS, BUTLER, SANDWICH as well as AN EYE FOR AN EYE and MY EYE for the surfaces.
Never heard of PISMIRES but got it from the wordplay and crosses. Also never heard of and didn’t get LLAREGGUB and failed to get SCRUBBED.
Thanks Philistine and mhl
Pismire was one of my early entries. My grandfather used to use pismire as well as other phrases such as “Ah fund an attercop int alegar” – Lancashire dialect, Pilling variety.
Thanks mhl and Philistine
Failed on Llareggub. But will now remember it forever! The theme hinted that it was a Welsh town name eith a ‘Ll’ start but my efforts to track it down were limited to real places.
Thanks philistine and Mhl. My favourite was SCRUBBED.
Failed to get 14d – even tried to use a word search and I had all the crossing letters! For 6d you need to add a to the anagram of Comedian to get the answer. Thanks to mhl and Philistine
I got everything apart from PISMIRES (new to me) eventually.
Minor point on the parsing in the blog: my interpretation of 10d was based on “a tooth for a tooth” being the second half of that particular phrase (“to follow”) rather than the ‘eye teeth’ connotation.
Good work both though, thanks.
Good fun and I fondly recall listening to the record of UMW with Richard Burton heading an all-Welsh cast. My reading of 10 was a bit different – the expression is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” so I read it as a canine exchange (“tooth for a tooth”) following this as a cryptic clue to the first part of the expression.
Many thanks mhl and Philistine.
And naturally Rob T and I crossed as we posted!
@9 Great minds 🙂
I had problems with nearly every clue in this puzzle, so I’m not going to go through them. Whatever, it was made very difficult indeed by some poor writing, which according to my experience is not what we normally get from this compiler. Disappointing.
There’s only one comment in (will be more before I post, no doubt). Amazing! It must be that everyone else is still tackling the much-delayed two-weeker from before.
I enjoyed this, but only got LLAREGUB this morning, even with all the crossers. Thinking of English spelling conventions I thought the missing second letter had to be A or O, and what kind of word ended with G_B? Eventually saw the backward spelling and realized the Welsh words can begin with LL (Spanish ones can too). But it didn’t occur to me to connect it to the other Welshnesses in the grid.
Under Milk Wood was intended to be a radio play, but I saw a lovely staged version of it decades ago at Trinity College — no, not that one, but the one in Hartford Connecticut. I can still hear the vicar saying, “Thank God we are a musical nation!” on hearing somebody’s tuneless rendition of something.
Thanks to Philistine and mhl. This was a pleasure.
Thinking, this is a test of ability to figure things out rather than general knowledge, I went looking in the Wikipedia article on Under Milk Wood for a Welsh town beginning L-A-, and I thought I’d speed the search by presuming it was LLAN-. Of course that found nothing that fit, but a couple of inches from Llansteffan my eyes lighted on LLAREGGUB. A happy accident.
I thought this was an enjoyable puzzle, particularly HAUTE ECOLE, though I can see that might not appeal to all.
Worth it just for the superbly constructed 5dn, which received a double tick.
Single ones for CIVIL SERVANT, UNDER MILK WOOD, MACEDONIA (brilliant surface), LLAREGGUB, AGGRIEVE and BUTLER.
Many thanks to Philistine and mhl.
Quite a clever puzzle, thanks Philistine.
And thanks, mhl. One point, MACEDONIA is (COMEDIAN)* + A (from the A in the clue).
The story of LLAREGGUB is that it looks vaguely Welsh (though I do not think ‘Llar’ is a Welsh word), so Thomas invented it, with its naughty reversal, to see if it would get past the po-faced BBC broadcasters, and of course it did.
I spent some fruitless minutes having decided 12a/18 was SAINT THOMAS (S = shilling = Bob, who AIN’T (so is doubted to be) the poet THOMAS!), before eventually realising the words crossing were wrong. Eventually found the plainer cluing of Bob. An enjoyable puzzle.
Unusually for me, I actually noticed the possibility of a theme after solving Dylan Thomas and Under Milkwood.
Failed to solve 14d.
Liked SANDWICH, IN VINO VERITAS.
New: PISMIRES, SACRUM.
Did not parse: 16d.
Thanks, both.
Thanks mhl, I couldn’t unravel the end of IN VINO VERITAS and again missed the subtractive/additive anagram of 16D, though I agree with Rob T@7 and thezed@8 on the ocular exchange. HAUTE ECOLE is one of those clues that grew on me having had to read up on Dressage to encounter the term, but PISMIRES on the other hand, a lovely jorumphal feeling on entry, was diminished when I read that the word derives from the same source as one of the wordplay components, for some reason I never like those clues but can’t work out if I am being unfair. Anyway I did enjoy the challenge so thanks Philistine.
UMW was on the family shelves, not far from Shaw, and was spoken about (and I can hear himself intoning Do not go gentle…). Even so, I remember, er, nothing about the text, and needed all crossers, and then a bit of guess and check, before the lights finally went on in loi Llareggub. Rage, rage …. ! A bit too much vino perhaps, about which the answer was also slow, given that crusty old heathens know more about what went down on 5 Nov than on 1 Nov. All part of life’s rich tapestry, thanks both and all.
Thanks for the blog , loved this. SANDWICH and IN VINO VERITAS are put together so well and ZIP UP is priceless.
It is spring , moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black ……
……….down to the sloe-black , slow, black ,crow-black fishing boat bobbing sea.
As mentioned , the Richard Burton version is probably the best.
Thanks Philistine for the challenge. I needed too much “outside help” to make this truly enjoyable but there were clues I did like including DYLAN THOMAS, SANDWICH, and BUTLER. There were many gaps in my parsing so thanks mhl for a much needed blog.
I love Under Milk Wood, but lent out my copy and never had it returned and didn’t keep the tape of Ricbard Burton reading it when that technology became redundant, so couldn’t check anything. Nor could I check much as was away with only a phone to solve this. Some of the vocabulary was reminiscent of the verse, but nothing to check it against.
I found it on the easier end of prize crosswords. But I too went checking HAUTE ÉCOLE in dressage terms and had to check PISMIRES
Looking at comments above, I suppose that this was a lucky puzzle for me in that I remembered 14d for its humorous reversal, and recognised ‘Veritas’ in 5d from the consonants and knew the Latin phrase (from wine labels possibly?). 5d had no indicator for Latin, and so it would have been difficult for some. I googled ‘dylan thomas play seaside town’ just now and found the answer straight away, so 14d was solvable without prior knowledge.
4ac Didn’t know PISMIRES, but got it fairly easily once I was prepared to accept P might use ‘piss’ as part of an answer.
20, 24ac Haven’t got a dancing horse, but came across HAUTE ÉCOLE when looking into dressage. Obviously the answer. P likes to put a bit of French in his puzzles, doesn’t he?
25ac, also, the verb ‘to scrub’:
3. (intransitive; foll by up)
(of a surgeon) to wash the hands and arms thoroughly before operating
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/scrub
Hence, SCRUBBED
6dn I did wonder whether this was a (wrongly) predictive clue about Ukraine written some while ago. President Z was, famously, the leader of a comedy troupe whose biggest TV role was as … what he actually is now. Not as funny as he used to be, I imagine.
10dn Took me a while to see the significance of ‘canine’, even after I’d got the answer I thought it was something to do with Canaan (Philistine territory, once?) to start with. I, also, finally understood it to mean ‘preceding “a tooth for a tooth”‘.
19dn I recently enjoyed seeing a Gary Larsen cartoon on the Far Side website (gone now) of a detective looking down at the body of a butler who had been stabbed in the back. In the background were dozens and dozens of butlers in front of a sign announcing the Annual Butlers’ Convention. The detective was saying something like “I hate Monday mornings when they start like this”.
@Mhl, typo in 1ac: SCRUM, not CRUM
Btw, anyone who hasn’t heard Richard Burton narrating Under Milk Wood should try to find time to. Looks like Amazon have sabotaged the first episode on YouTube(?) but “to begin at the beginning” there’s Vimeo.
I remembered PISMIRES from this poem – a interesting exercise in finding where the missing punctuation should be.
I parsed the canine exchange like RobT@7 and thezed@8 did.
Thanks to Tony Collman @23 for the Annual Butler’s Convention. Hilarious 🙂
As for the crossword, I found it mostly a write in, unusually for me, with PISMIRE not first in only because SACRUM was 1a. LLAREGUB was barely cryptic, as the construction of the clue was exactly the same as Dylan Thomas’s way of naming the place, as described by sjshart @15, and has stuck in my memory for that reason.
The French clue, on the other hand, held me up for the whole week, as I don’t have any interest in, never mind own, a “dancing horse”, as our blogger says. I was pleased to get the answer this morning before the blog was posted, without recourse to Google (until after I’d written it in the grid 🙂 ). It’s one of those clues with nothing much to go on if the GK doesn’t immediately point you in the right direction.
But, hey, I’m not complaining. At least I knew PISMIRE!
Thanks to setter and blogger.
tlp @11: your really are a miserable REGGUB, and I hope that, this comment aside, you will be ignored as usual.
Flat Cap @26. 🙂 I almost said something, but your very apposite post has saved me the trouble.
I watched a somewhat pared down stage production of UMW on a cruise once. Not many actors, and they each took several roles, indicated by different headgear. It worked surprisingly well, but I’m afraid the non-Brits (mostly from USA) in the audience were completely bemused.
Thanks Philistine for reminding me, and mhl for blog.
Pismire Spring is a local wood, but I never knew what it meant, nice to find out. I’d agree with Gazzh @17 that it’s a bit disappointing to have the wordplay overlapping with the solution but it happens so often (eg in 25a) that it’s barely remarkable. I thought I’d never come across HAUTE ECOLE but it’s just turned up on page 30 of Doctor Zhivago, a dragoon intimidating protesters with some fancy horsemanship, so I must have seen it at least once before.
I remembered “pismires and warlocks” as the term used by Robert Smyllie, the legendary editor of the Irish Times, to address those importuning him on his daily arrival at the office but never knew what pismires are until made to check by this clue.
Not one of Philistine’s best, I thought. 17a for one is weak imho.
I tried for a long time to make 20/24 into HORSE DANCE (since I had the H…E), which delayed finishing.
[My English nieces have been doing dressage for several years. I was fortunate enough to watch a lesson about a year in, which helped me appreciate the sport/art.]
I had run into PISMIRE, probably in another crossword, a few years back.
PS. Shouldn’t the title of the blog be “Guardian Prize 28,775” ?
Tony @23: sorry to be posting a follow-up so late that it might not get read but Gary Larson is not quite as gone as we all thought, just not syndicated any more – see here!
Mostly fun crossword, finished with a bit of help. My favourite was SANDWICH, for its non-anagram “somehow”, sort of definition-within-wordplay “banks”, and vindication for choosing German over French as my high school foreign language elective. The latter completely undone by 20,24 which required me to translate the wordplay into English then translate the components back into French. I’m glad that one was so well appreciated by some, but I find foreign words familiar to just a few a bit hoha.
Thanks mhl & Philistine.
Thanks mhl. Coming in at this stage most of what I had to say has already been covered and probably more eruditely. I did wonder about ‘legal framework’ and furthered my education by finding out about lex talionis, the law of retaliation. Not sure about what is meant by the wordplay overlapping the solution, both 4a and 25a seem perfectly OK to me.
[Thezed@33
Yes, Mr Larson overcame his qualms about the internet and particularly about piracy therefrom a couple of years ago or so. Great news for Larson fans like us! The contents of the website include daily publication of a few cartoons, one of which, about a week ago, was the one about the butlers. After a number of days, though, they “drop off the end” as a new day’s selection comes on. It’s in that sense that the butler cartoon is “gone now”. I probably should have been a little clearer. Annoyingly, until very recently, it used to be possible to get a feed from the site, but no longer.]
There is a tenuous connection between WATER FERN and Thomas’ poem Fern Hill.
The word picture in the surface of the clue for PISMIRES made me laugh, and wince at the same time. That’s the last place I would be spending a penny. Brought back a memory of standing near an ant’s nest (humungous Aussie meat ants) and getting swarmed, while my male companion was untouched. He was a beekeeper and knew about these things. Reckoned it was my perfume.
I can still hear Richard Burton saying the words quoted by Roz@19 …. beautiful voice, slow diction and brilliant use of pauses and emphasis.
Favourite LLAREGGUB, although never having read the text didn’t know it.
Liked the definition of ‘legal framework’ for AN EYE FOR AN EYE.
Was aware it is from the Old Testament, in Judaism and Islam, but I see it’s from the Code of Hammurabi, Law196
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi#:~:text=The%20Code%20of%20Hammurabi%20is,the%20First%20Dynasty%20of%20Babylon.
I always learn something new from Philistine’s puzzles and in this one it was the unfamiliar and aforementioned 4a PISMIRES, the existence of an invasive species called 11a WATER FERN and the already discussed French term at 20a/24a HAUTE ECOLE. I enjoyed the references to 12a DYLAN 18d THOMAS and his works. My favourites have already been covered, though I have to say the three EYES at 10d and 22d were particularly fun! [BTW, thanks to paddymelon@38 for the reminder about my days teaching Hammurabi’s Law Code to Ancient History students.]
So it remains only for me to thank Philistine for the enjoyment and also to offer my gratitude to mhl for teasing out a few of the question marks I had in terms of parsing a couple of the solutions.
Just lovely. Dylan Thomas is (was) such a treasure. I remember visiting quite a few pubs – particularly in West Wales but also in London – with plaques saying “Dylan Thomas drank here” – probably all true. SCF @26 – hear, hear!
Being Welsh and having read (and heard) UMW many times, I finished the puzzle fairly quickly, though, like our blogger, some of the parsings were elusive.
I share the thoughts of others on the wonderful language in UMW and Richard Burton’s reading of it. Superb.
In the days when I was teaching French (many moons ago) haute école did not mean high school. I’m not sure if this spoils the clue or not.
Here in Finland, they have a sixth-form college system, the establishment being lukio. When translating this to English, Finnish people always say ‘high school’ which I always feel is quite inaccurate. Like a lot of the official ‘translations’.
to tlp @ 11
You have clearly taken over my role on this site. But if that is what you genuinely think, then you have my full support to say it.
Many thanks Philistine and mhl. Failed to parse AGGRIEVE and ADVOCATOR though knew they were right. Will try to remember the fascinating construction of the former. In the other, Dunk was defeated by never remotely considering that DOCTOR might appear verbatim in the answer. Hidden in plain sight! I had SHRINK (wrap) for a while but finally spotted SARONG. Some very neat clues.
Anna @41. The fact that HAUTE ECOLE does not actually equate to ‘lycee’ is covered by the question mark at the end of the clue, which still works – in my opinion.
To the hatter @ 43
Yes, you may well be right. A heavily charged question mark, indeed.
Ah, but HAUTE means High, and ECOLE means School. And Lycee is the equivalent of an American High School (I think – I would call it a Secondary School in the UK) so I find it quite acceptable.
As for whether it is unfair to expect us to translate to and from French, in the UK almost everyone is taught French in, ahem, Secondary School. And those are all words which would be common in School French. It may of course be different in other English speaking countries.
Oh, and I need to add my appreciation of the crossword generally. It completed a successful week for me, and I didn’t find it too hard. I needed to check WATER FERN and HAUTE ECOLE were what I needed them to be, and raised an eyebrow at ADVOCATOR, but otherwise they all fell into place smoothly.
Isn’t it strange how we all struggle with different things. This week I haven’t completed a single Guardian crossword successfully, despite a couple of them being declared easy by other people.
Very enjoyable puzzle. Managed to complete, though the parsing of SANDWICH, AN EYE FOR AN EYE, and AGGRIEVE were all beyond me. LLAREGGUB was a write in for anyone who knows the play, but I would guess pretty well impossible for those who don’t.
Incidentally there was a very successful poetry and jazz revival of the work in the 80s featuring a suite by pianist Stan Tracey based upon the play, with narration by Donald Houston. Houston was an actor who played the part of stereotypical hearty Welshmen in innumerable British film comedies of the 60s and 70s. A recording of the poetry and jazz suite should be available on the internet, and is worth a listen.
Biggles A@35
In 25a, the answer, SCRUBBED, has the same etymological root as the component of the charade, SCRUB. It’s a fine point, but this is considered stylistically weak and setters generally try to avoid it. Mhl’s interpretation of SCRUBBED (wearing ‘scrubs’) is a little more remote than mine (having ‘scrubbed up’), but they both go back to senses involving cleaning.
You would have to ask James for full details about PISMIRES (or, perhaps, consult a good dictionary).
Tony @ 48. Thank you, a fine point indeed and one that still eludes my limited understanding. I did consult a good dictionary but remain none the wiser.