This was quite a bit tougher than normal for a Monday.
Some of the clues had me scratching my head for a long time but I think I worked them all out in the end. There were some great surfaces – 5A, 11 and 17 were all excellent – and 26 was a great bit of Trump-baiting. You can imagine Donald fuming all day about that if someone pointed it out to him.
| ACROSS | ||
| 1 | PAPACY |
Church office secretary no slouch (6)
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PA(=personal assistance) + pacy(=no slouch) |
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| 5 | ACCURATE |
Truthful answer given by Conservative minister (8)
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A{nswer} + C{onservative} + curate(=minister) |
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| 9 | PLEASANTER |
More charming petitions before king (10)
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Pleas(=petitions) + ante(=before) + r(=rex, king) |
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| 10 | LAWN |
Heading west through Cornwall’s green and pleasant land (4)
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Hidden, rev in Cornwall |
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| 11 | CARDINAL WOLSEY |
Lord Chancellor Labour consider a wally (8,6)
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(Consider a wally)* – labour as the indicator |
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| 13 | NEGLECT |
Government bound by new vote for oversight (7)
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G{overnment} in (n{ew} elect) |
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| 14 | PAWN |
Hand nannies primarily offer as security (4)
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Paw(=hand) + n[annies] |
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| 16 | GLAD |
Pleased the worst grade ignored in clearing? (4)
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Glad[e]. E is usually the worst grade in exams. |
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| 17 | TOCCATA |
Piano piece old double act put in the wrong order (7)
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(O{ld} + act act)*. The clue makes an oblique reference to Morecambe and Wise, who played "all the right notes not necessarily in the right order". |
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| 20 | GROUNDBREAKING |
Revolutionary toasted aged monarch after Spooner (14)
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Spoonerism of "browned grey king". |
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| 22 | MAXI |
Chinese leader after Mao, almost as long (4)
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Xi(Xi Jinping, the current Chinese leader) after Ma[o]. Maxi in this sense could refer to a maxi skirt, which is a long length skirt. |
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| 23 | AEROBATICS |
Risky flying BA when carrying blue bags (10)
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Seems to be as(=when) around (erotic around BA), although the ordering is difficult to work out from the clue. You'd have to interpret it as "when carrying (blue bagging BA))". |
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| 25 | ADHERENT |
Disciple following Jesus around with Matthew, Mark, etc (8)
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AD(=following Jesus i.e. anno domino) + here(=around) + NT(=New Testament, of which Matthew and Mark are parts) |
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| 26 | SCRUFF |
A man who’s not at all smart, namely Trump (6)
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Sc(=namely in legal documents) + ruff. Ruff and trump both seem to be names for an old card game. |
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| DOWN | ||
| 2 | AFLOAT |
Fatal shot bags duck on the water (6)
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Fatal*(shot as the indicator) around 0(=duck) |
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| 3 | ABANDONED |
Advanced clue for bid rejected (9)
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Took me a while to work this one out but it's A{dvanced} + "B and 1 D"(which spells bid, so could be construed as a clue for bid) |
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| 4 | YEA |
All months not ending in R? Agreed (3)
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Yea[r](=all months) |
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| 5 | ASTILBE |
It’s able to develop a flower (7)
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(It's able)* |
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| 6 | CAR BOOT SALE |
Where there’s traffic when there’s traffic (3,4,4)
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CD, traffic in the sense of trade |
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| 7 | ROLLS |
Baps in topless posters giving offence (5)
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[T]rolls. Trolls here referring to people posting hateful internet content. |
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| 8 | TAWNY OWL |
Silent predator bats want to screech (5,3)
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Want*(bats as indicator) + yowl(=screech) |
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| 12 | NIGHTINGALE |
Singer in audio dubbing storm (11)
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Hom of knighting(=dubbing) + gale(=storm) |
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| 14 | PRANKSTER |
Concealing king, rummy partners trick player (9)
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Partners* around K{ing} |
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| 15 | SLUGGARD |
Idler sentry forgetting uniform needs belt on (8)
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G[u]ard with slug(=belt, as in hit) on top |
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| 18 | CABARET |
Show lion perhaps crossing plain (7)
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Cat(a lion being an example thereof) around bare(=plain) |
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| 19 | UNICEF |
Well-meaning concern for children having fun cycling around rocks (6)
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Fun with f "cycling" to the end around ice |
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| 21 | OLIVE |
Pipe fitting is round, as it happens (5)
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O(=round) + live(=as it happens). I struggled to find this in dictionaries but a Google search brings up olive as another word for a ferrule used to create a water-tight seal in pipes. |
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| 24 | BUS |
Broken down old Ford model, a large vehicle (3)
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Bus[t] (signalled by the word bust being down by a letter T i.e. the old Model T Ford). |
This was right up my street, cryptic and full of craft and misdirection.
I had embarrassingly few in in first sweep through though with the aid of a few checkers it came together in reasonable time. Have to confess to a couple of bung-ins though (ABANDONED and SCRUFF)
I liked the reverse lurker at 10a but felt the clue could have benefited from a question mark?
PAPACY got us off to an excellent start, ACCURATE was very smooth, great anagrind and surface read for AFLOAT, YEA and BUS were very clever as was the use of “traffic” as a verb in the super CAR BOOT SALE but I think my favourite was the lol ROLLS.
Many thanks to Filbert and NealH.
Terrific puzzle. The clue for ADHERENT was really outstanding, I thought.
ABANDONED! Amazing. I was defeated by MAXI but I see that now. Favourites for me were AEROBATICS and PAPACY. A real treat for a Monday from the maestro. Thanks both. More!
The preceding three comments have set the tone: what a splendid puzzle for a Monday. Nicely chewy and, as for Stephen L, starting off slowly but everything eventually fell into place – except the parsing f OLIVE which is a nho in that context.. The parses for ADHERENT, SCRUFF and ABANDONED have, rightly, earned early plaudits. Others I particularly enjoyed include CARDINAL WOLSEY, YEA, PRANKSTER and BUS. What an evil Spoonerism!
Thanks Filbert and NealH
The now usual fortnightly Filbert Monday puzzle providing the expected degree of difficulty. Filled the grid OK (for that er…, wonderful online confetti moment) but had no hope parsing ADHERENT, NIGHTINGALE or BUS and needed to sleep on MAXI to solve it the next morning. Somehow I did manage to parse ABANDONED. OLIVE was new to me too but it sounded plausible, with the wordplay to back it up.
There have been plenty of ‘Trump’ clues over the years and SCRUFF was one of the best.
Thanks to Filbert and NealH
Phwoar, this woke me up. Absolutely cracking puzzle, full of misdirection, wit, and trickiness. I had ADHERENT written in for a while, but the parse took rather longer – my favourite PDM of several.
Thanks Filbert and NealH.
Spot on!
26 across. Ruff and Trump are not card games (that I know of), but verbs in the game of bridge, both meaning to play a trump card instead of following suit in a trick.
I loved the reference in TOCCATA. It’s strange how the mind works. I somehow knew that ASTILBE was going to be that plant that grows in my front garden, before I could remember it’s name.
Thanks both. Is it still only Monday? I felt I was never going to finish unaided, though only MAXI proved it in the end, wherein for me the definition is very vague, and I didn’t know about Xi. CAR BOOT SALE went in with a question mark, which remains as all the definitions of traffic relating to vehicles I was aware of suggest they are in motion, although my excruciating trip South on the M6 on Friday perhaps contradicts that
Lovely stuff, nicely challenging. PDMs everywhere. Inventive cluing, great surfaces.
COTD: SCRUFF. A long way from Trump’s own opinion of himself as an “extremely stable genius”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_Genius_Act#:~:text=The%20name%20of%20the%20act,as%20a%20%22stable%20genius%22.
Chewy, certainly, but we got it all, albeit with some answers unparsed. ASTILBE was worked out from the anmagram fodder but needed checking in Chambers.
SCRUFF, TAWNY OWL and PRANKSTER were our favourites.
Thanks, Filbert and NealH.
Andrew, my parsing was based on Chambers which says for trump “ruff, an old card game like whist”.
NealH, for what it’s worth, I looked up ruff rather than trump:
ruff2 /ruf/
noun
An old card game similar to whist or trumps (also called ruff and honours)
An act of trumping
transitive verb and intransitive verb
To trump
ORIGIN: Perh connected with OFr roffle, Ital ronfa a card game
All been said already, very good crossword.
I failed on SLUGGARD which I hadn’t heard of and chose SLOGGARD instead, SLOG/SLUG both mean to belt someone/thing.
Unparsed for a few but a great blog from NealH cleared those up for me. Quite surprised myself that I parsed MAXI correctly when it seems to have stumped a few regulars in the comments.
Thanks to Filbert for the Monday fun.
Loved a lot of this but nightingale doesn’t work for me.
It’s either nighting ale or nightin gale but definitely not nighting gale.
Would’ve been OK had the clue said dubbin’
Thanks to Filbert and NealH for an excellent blog
PS I had (when carrying blue) bagging BA for 23 – I think either works
Generally I enjoy the challenge that Filbert presents but this was a bit beyond my orbit. I never heard of a CAR BOOT SALE, I didn’t understand the elements of SCRUFF, and the parsing for ABANDONED, ADHERENT, and BUS were too convoluted for my brain. I did find a few clues to my liking e.g. TAWNY OWL, TOCATA, and PLEASANTER. Thanks to both.
reddevil @16. I decided to take the whole thing as a homophone, i.e. sounds like “knighting gale”.
I parsed the SLUG in SLUGGARD as:
slug = belt = hit, as in a swig from a bottle of drink, rather than the more violent alternative.
The SC in SCRUFF is short for the Latin word scilicet, usually abbreviated “Sc.”
It’s not just used in legal texts. Anyone interested in it and its cousin videlicet (“Viz.”) should go here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viz.#Scilicet
Not for me. It took me so long to get started I feared I wasn’t going to get any answers. As it was, after about an hour I got a handful of answers but couldn’t get any further.
I love starting the week with Filbert
#11 reminds me of this from Randy Rainbow, who I think actually is a genius https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-LTRwZb35A
eimi@22:
That is brilliant! I agree BIGLY.
Here’s another G&S parody featuring a similarly execrable personality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkogmYkfhUQ
Both of these people are outclassed in every way by any one of these non-people who speak only nonsense:
https://youtu.be/FkogmYkfhUQ
Sorry that last one should have been:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv-kny3l7i8