Thank you to Picaroon. Definitions are underlined in the clues.
Across
1. Ball in the box pushed back Hearts regularly – they put a cross in the box (6)
VOTERS : O(letter shaped like a “ball”) contained in(in) reversal of(… pushed back) TV(a television set/the “box”) + 2nd, 4th and 6th letters of(… regularly) “Hearts“.
Defn: …., the box on the ballot paper, that is, which is then put into the ballot box.
4. Anti-Congress, like one Republican force from the right (6)
FRIGID : Reversal of(… from the right, in an across clue) [ DIG(to like/to be into something, an activity like a sport, say) + I(Roman numeral for “one”) + R(abbrev. for “Republican”) + F(symbol for “force” in physics).
Defn: Uninterested or unresponsive in/anti- congress/sexual intercourse.
9. Paper round, flipping burden! (4)
ONUS : Reversal of(…, flipping) [ SUN(a British tabloid newspaper) + O(a round-shaped letter) ].
10. Women imprisoned smuggling energy drinks chill here (4,6)
WINE COOLER : W(abbrev. for “women”) + [IN COOLER](imprisoned/confined in the cooler, slang for “prison”) containing(smuggling) E(symbol for “energy” in physics).
11. Promiscuous person‘s soft blanket (6)
PLAYER : P(abbrev. for “piano”, a musical direction to play softly) + LAYER(a blanket/a covering).
12. Add ginger to fried greens I braise at the end (8)
ENERGISE : Anagram of(fried) GREENS + I + last letter of(… at the end) “braise“.
Defn: Add ginger/energy to/make more lively.
13. Isn’t fat novel entertaining like Don Quixote? (9)
FANTASIST : Anagram of(… novel) ISN’T FAT containing(entertaining) AS(like/comparable to).
Defn: An example of which/? is the Man From La Mancha who dreamed The Impossible Dream.
15. New free houses in part of Lancashire, say (4)
RIND : N(abbrev. for “new”) contained in(… houses) RID(to free from/to dispose from).
Defn: …, Lancashire being an example/say, as shown below:
16. Outstanding header from Spurs’ subs (4)
DUES : DUE(outstanding/unpaid) + 1st letter of(header from) “Spurs“.
Defn: …, short for subscriptions/obligatory payments for being a member of an organisation.
17. Suspected mug has funny diet drink’s last bit in it (9)
IDENTIKIT : Anagram of(funny) [DIET + last letter of(…’s last bit) “drink” + IN IT ].
Defn: Sketch of a police suspect’s face/”mug” in slang made from eyewitnesses’ descriptions.
21. Where stockholders make a killing? (8)
ABATTOIR : Cryptic defn: Reference to livestock/fam animals such as cattle, pigs and sheep who are put out in the slaughterhouse.
22. Paper, Times you said, probing legislator’s muddles (3-3)
MIX-UPS : [ I(a British national newspaper) + X(symbol for times, as used in multiplication) + homophone of(… said) “you” ] contained in(probing) MPS(abbrev. for Members of Parliament/the body of legislators).
24. Push bucket down, carrying tons without doubt (3,7)
FOR CERTAIN : FORCE(to push/to exert pressure on) + RAIN(to bucket down/rain cats and dogs) containing(carrying) T(abbrev. for “tons”, the unit of weight).
25. Got off with appeal after case for acquittal (4)
ALIT : IT(sex appeal, as in “the it girl”) placed after(after) 1st and last letters of(case for) “acquittal“.
Defn: A rare alternative to “alighted”/got off, say, a train or a boat or a plane.
26. Windows components needing small series of tests (6)
SASHES : S(abbrev. for “small”) + ASHES(the trophy for the winner of a series of Tests, cricket matches between England and Australia.
Defn: Windows’ components or Window components?
That which is up in the middle window, and down in the others:
27. Developing this drained Steve Jobs (6)
HEISTS : Anagram of(Developing) [THIS + 1st and last letters deleted from(drained) “Steve” ].
Defn: Like …, an informal term for robberies.
Down
1. Following vehicle, I’m going to American plain (7)
VANILLA : VAN(a motor vehicle) placed above(Following …, …, in a down clue) I’LL(contraction of “I will”/”I’m going to”) + A(abbrev. for “American”).
Defn: …/without special or extra features.
2. Appetising, pleasantly warm bagel’s put away (5)
TASTY : “toasty”(informal term for “pleasantly warm”) minus(…’s put away) “o”(letter in the shape of a ring, like a bagel is).
3. Issue Guardian looks after, after dealing with wages, say (7)
REWARDS : WARDS(issue/children looked after by a guardian) placed after(after) RE(dealing with/with reference to).
Defn: An example of which/say, are wages given in recognition of work done.
5. One may be taken to court for fraudulent scheme (6)
RACKET : Double defn: 1st: …, the tennis court, that is.
6. Ruler, say, put up with endless orgies, wild ones … (6,3)
GEORGE III : Reversal of(…, put up, in a down clue) EG(abbrev. for “exempli gratia”/for example/say) plus(with) anagram of(…, wild) last letter deleted from(endless) “orgies” + I,I(2 x Roman numeral for “one”).
Defn: Former … of the UK.
Family portrait of the prolific King, his Queen and 13 surviving children (out of 15 born):
7. … covered in oil perhaps, not naked (7)
DRESSED : Double defn: 1st: An example of/perhaps, being covered in oil, viz. a description of salads.
8. Two football teams without arrogance among stars (13)
INTERSIDEREAL : [ Two football teams: INTER(from Milan) + REAL(from Madrid) ] containing(without) SIDE(informal term for “arrogance”/pretentious manner).
Defn: Existing between/among 2 or more stars.
14. Parisian is hosted by ignorant society in backwater (3,6)
THE STICKS : EST(“is” in the language spoken by one from Paris, France) contained in(is hosted by) THICK(ignorant/dim) + S(abbrev. for “Society”).
Defn: Informal term for …/a rural area considered backward.
16. Call evidence of overspending unconvincing (7)
DUBIOUS : DUB(to call/to give a name to someone or something) + IOUS(“I owe yous”/acknowledgements of debts, a sign/evidence of overspending).
18. Figure bags honour with ecstasy, one up for award (7)
NOMINEE : NINE(a figure/number) containing(bags) OM(abbrev. for the Order of Merit, an honour/award recognising notable work in certain fields) plus(with) E(abbrev. for the drug “ecstasy”).
19. Insinuates you can’t believe what troublemaker says (7)
IMPLIES : IMP(a trouble maker) LIES(what someone, especially a troublemaker, says, that you can’t/shouldn’t believe).
20. How week begins with caviar for old president (6)
MONROE : MON(abbrev. for Monday, the day a calendar week begins with) plus(with) ROE(the basic ingredient in caviar, from a sturgeon or other large fish)
Answer: James …, the 5th US President.
23. Images of Musk company with more cash, we hear (1-4)
X-RAYS : X(Elon Musk’s company, the formerly named Twitter) plus(with) homophone of(…, we hear) “raise”(more cash/an increase in wages, as in “you’ve got a raise as from next month”).
Picaroon never fails to entertain and I was pleased to solve INTERSIDEREAL from the wordplay although SIDE took me sometime to work out. Other favourites were FRIGID, WINE COOLER, FANTASIST, RIND, IDENTIKIT, FOR CERTAIN, HEISTS, GEORGE III, DUBIOUS and IMPLIES. Four football teams, two billionaire investors and a Nina of H(enry)II across the middle. Great finish to a mixed bag of a week.
Ta Picaroon & scchua for the colourful blog.
Thanks Picaroon and scchua
I needed a wordfinder for INTERSIDEREAL, but apart from that it mostly went smoothly, though I took ages to see LOI RIND.
I tried SHAMBLES first at 21a – right idea, wrong word!
Favourite SASHES.
My first three solved clues in the top left all had a similar device of using a circular object to indicate O: the ball in VOTERS, the missing bagel in TASTY and the round in ONUS. Is this some kind of theme, I wondered? But that was all.
Maybe not Picaroon’s finest hour but still plenty of fun to be had. Ticks for ALIT, REWARDS & HEISTS
Spent much too long trying to shoehorn Tesla into X-RAY – I must have a mental block on the Twitter renaming
Gladys @3 I had the same thought and presumably the same first three 🙂
Cheers P&S
I remember as a young ginf wondering how ‘side’ got to mean ‘airs’ as in arrogance. Language .. endlessly fascinating! But I didn’t immediately remember that, besides being where my grands came from, Lancashire is a cheese. Hey ho, all good fun, ta P and S.
That was a fun solve today, and everything fell into place quite quickly. Some nice misdirection there and I was pleased to get INTERSIDEREAL, but my solve was slightly different. I took INTER and SIDE as two football teams with REAL being genuine and unpretentious. Your parsing makes much more sense, scchua. Interestingly the SIDEREAL part gives us conSIDER and deSIRE with the likely idea being to “observe the stars” and “await what the stars bring” respectively.
Thanks for a fun puzzle today, Picaroon, and scchua for the blog.
For INTERSIDEREAL Picaroon could have gone for three football teams: INTER, SIDE and REAL. As it was I did consider whether the two teams were INTER and SIDE, with REAL being “without arrogance”. Just about works?
Many thanks Picaroon and scchua.
You beat me to it Lechien!
On the easier side for Picaroon, but all good fun, from untangling VOTERS to discovering INTERSIDEREAL (perhaps one of the scientists can explain why we need this word as well as “interstellar”?) Thanks Picaroon, and scchua for parsing MIX UPS and GEORGE III.
Am I being a killjoy, or is there a bit of a weakness in 16ac? Surely ‘dues’ are intrinsically ‘outstanding’ – they are ‘subs’ that need to be paid. There is probably a technical name for this, but shouldn’t the bits of the clue differ rather more distinctly from the answer? Or am I merely revealing my ignorance/naivety/obtuseness?
Alec @10: my problem with DUES is it that it doesn’t read correctly. To make sense it should be Spurs’ sub – one header, one sub?
Great minds, Lord Jim@8 😀
I found the LHS almost a write-in, the RHS considerably harder, and couldn’t get the long central one. As ever, I’m mystified by the ellipses in 6d and 7d, which don’t seem to contribute anything useful. A good puzzle all the same.
Thank you scchua for your excellent blog and illustrations.
Solved INTERSIDEREAL, with my limited knowledge of football teams and stars, but I didn’t get the middle ”arrogance” thing. Onelook gives ▸ noun: (slang, dated, uncountable) An unjustified air of self-importance.
Loved this. Slight quibble about ABATTOIR, as the daughter of a butcher who took me to abattoirs, as you do.. The stockholders don’t make a killing. They’ve already sold their stock to others who make the killing.
The parsing of REWARDS was a bit of a challenge. I thought the Guardian, as often in Guardian cryptics, was WE, and I couldn’t find the reversal, because it wasn’t there. Nice misdirection with the capitalisation of Guardian.
poc @13 – I think the ellipses are to make the surface reading funnier, that’s all. I agree that this was on Picaroon’s gentler side, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. 6d took me a long time with the second word being I-I with the crossers, until I realised what the definition was. Thanks scchua and Picaroon.
I agree, poc@13. But I quite enjoyed completing the puzzle, especially RIND, INTERSIDEREAL and HEISTS, which sent me up several garden paths of misdirection. Very clever. Thanks Picaroon and scchua
ginf @5 Lancashire is deffo a cheese, some (me) would say the best cooking cheese in the world. I never remember a rind though. There are three variants, creamy, tasty and crumbly. I’ve only ever found it in IGA here in Oz. Cheshire and Wensleydale (more cheese Gromit?) are not bad substitutes, but life is hard in the only third world country where you can drink the water. 🙂
Favourite here was FRIGID for the anti-congress definition.
[As an aside, I’ve just finished a lovely novel, The Fellowship of Puzzle Makers by Samuel Burr. It should appeal to cruciverbalists].
Another one with side as the other football team and RIND taking ages.
Fun crossword – thank you to Picaroon and scchua.
Excellent fun with a good number of head-scratchers and sideways looks.
Re “interstellar” vs “intersidereal” (gladys @9) we can blame Latin which gives us the two root words “stella” and “sidus”. Looking back from our modern viewpoint, it is harder to appreciate but lights in the sky were not so clearly differentiated and words could be used to refer to actual stars (typically “stella”), constellations (typically “sidus”), the heavens as a whole and their influence on us etc depending on context. Stella derives from Greek roots (“aster” which gives us “astronomy” as well as the flowers) but sidus seems more originally Latin
AlanC @11: I agree with you and have commented before that the weakest clues (in my opnion) are ones where the wordplay and definition share a clear etymological link.
I was glad to see the chestnut of “heists” and “atheists” (or “theists”) being avoided though!
Many thanks to Picaroon and scchua
Thanks for the blog, hola y disfruta del sol, very good puzzle, neat wordplay , I really liked IDENTIKIT and FOR CERTAIN . Only one clue with proper name , Steve Jobs, split and de-capitalised , which is the right number.
The difference between interstellar and INTERSIDEREAL is that the latter is a better film.
If I may dare to extend Monty Pythton , here are the football results.
Inter Milan 2 Real Madrid 0
Exhume Milan 3 Surreal Madrid a fish .
Good fun. I’ve never heard of side/arrogance.
I prefer to spell it RACQUET, but I’m a dying breed.
[ Tim@17 , you missed out smoked with a definite rind, I always buy all 4 when I visit Bury market ]
[Roz @23… smoked Lancashire??? They’re a different breed in Bury and not surprisingly no longer in Lancashire 🙂 Smoked must be a recent innovation]
Fun puzzle, with some fine clues – too many to list.
INTERSIDEREAL was new to me, but etymologically obvious, and I parsed it as intended (though “Among stars from three teams” would certainly have been more succinct).
I failed to parse RIND, mistakenly interpreting ‘houses in’ meant that IN was contained in ‘New free’ – but this left the mystifying RD 🙁 . Great surface, though Lancashire cheese doesn’t have a rind, as Tim C @17 points out (the smoked version has a darker surface because of its manufacture, but not a hard rind like Parmesan. Excellent cheese for cooking as it melts without becoming stringy. Only the ‘creamy’ and ‘TASTY’ varieties are traditional – the others are recent innovations).
Thanks to S&B
A quicker solve than some, free of enormously obscure words except for INTERSIDEREAL which could be put together from its roots.
6-7 were amusing. I did carp at some slight inaccuracies/inelegance such as the subject/verb confusion in 15 (which left me looking for something that “houses IN”) and others already mentioned.
I made an error on 27a, but another super puzzle from Picaroon.
[ Tim@24 , Bury will always be in Lancashire although not for local government purposes. I think the Smoked Lancashire I buy at least once a month has a definite brown rind but what do I know ? Clearly I need a man to explain these things . ]
Well, going against the general tide of approval on here so far, this felt quite unlike a normal Picaroon puzzle for me today. In fact the clues read rather like Fed’s yesterday. And once I had revealed to confirm that Thick for Ignorant was part of the clue for 14 down I upped stumps. Each to his own, not for me this time…into the garden now to enjoy the fine weather here in East Anglia.
I agree this was easyish for Picaroon, but fun. I got stuck on GEORGE III – I could see it seemed to be GEORGE something, but had a temporary mental block about the second ‘word’ until I revisited later, when it was obvious – this then led me to loi RIND. Favourites INTERSIDEREAL, FRIGID, REWARDS.
[I might have a mini-moan about VANILLA defined as plain – yes I know that’s its colloqial meaning, but I was brought up in SW Scotland where for historical reasons there are quite a few families of Italian heritage who sell wonderful ice-cream; definitely my favourite flavour is vanilla.]
Thanks Picaroon and scchua.
[beaulieu @30: I agree with you about the pejorative usage of VANILLA. Moctezuma II must be turning in his grave]
Another here who thought Inter’s side was keeping it real, as kids do these days. I had thought of Real Madrid, but hadn’t heard of, or had forgotten, “side” as arrogance.
GEORGE III is, in these parts, the villain of the tale in which he figures, although it’s not clear exactly how fair that is. Anyway, it’s another chance to prove that there’s a showtune for everything.
mrpenney: GEORGE III is certainly not seen as a hero on this side of the Atlantic. His chief minister at the time of the War of Independence, Lord North, has traditionally been seen as our worst prime minister ever (though he’s had a bit of competition in recent years). Both of them came in for a bit of stick from Sherlock Holmes:
It is always a joy to me to meet an American, Mr Moulton, for I am one of those who believe that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a Minister in fargone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.
(The Noble Bachelor)
I parsed NOMINEE as figure=NO + bags=MINE (as in what you shout if you see something you want) + e(cstasy). I suspect this says more about me than anything else, scchua’s parsing makes much more sense, I can’t have been the only though?
mrpenney: And don’t forget one of Edmund Clerihew Bentley’s original clerihews:
George III
Ought never to have occurred.
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.
4 out of 5 complete this week. Miserable attempt at Fed yesterday. Enjoyed this one even if my parsing was a bit dodgy on some.
Thanks both.
Pleasant puzzle, finished most last night.
Howcum we get to use S for “society.” Of course it stands for that in many acronyms, but can it stand alone?
I want to register a complaint about FRIGID in the sexual sense. It was a cruel word that used be applied to women with any number of problems that could have been solved but were instead ascribed to some kind of deep neurosis. Let’s just keep the word to mean “very cold.”
I think “side” used to mean “arrogance” only occurs in the negative. You might say “there’s no side to her,” but not that somebody “has a lot of side.”
Thanks, Picaroon and scchua (liked the photos).
Thanks scchua, I had the same gripe as Alec@10 but wasn’t sharp enough to notice AlanC’s extra objection, liked the rest a lot, especially as I always thought that “side” meant deviousness and came from that style of snooker shot! Enjoyed discussion of cheese and etymology as usual, as one who hasn’t encountered much Lancashire I found this interesting reading:
https://thecheesemakingyears.com/tag/lancashire/
and this suggests that rind is available if you want it:
https://www.finecheesesltd.co.uk/product/grated-kirkhams-lancashire-rind-on-2-5kg/
Thanks Picaroon!
I thought of SIDEREAL. with the teams being SIDE and REAL, which held me up for a while.
[Valentine @37: I also raised an eyebrow at FRIGID, but as a mere male I forbore to comment. It lives with the original diagnosis of ‘hysteria’, whose etymology comes from the idea that the uterus was moving about in women (whose mental health was probably affected by the social constraints they were under)]
As usual highly competent from Picaroon with no quibbles. DUES is fine I think, in the sense for example of paying one’s “union dues” where “dues” means “subscription fees” not “arrears”. Favourite clue today was the lying imp, which made me smile.
Enjoyed this although couldn’t get rind and had inter and real but not side. Vanilla and implies made me laugh of loud because of the misdirection in former and clue in latter. I’m sure we saw heist and ashes recently. On my personal scale of difficultly, only had three left when I got home which implies a chewy but achievable challenge for this particular solver. Thanks picaroon and sschua
Valentine@37: FRIGID was a nasty insult in my youth, implying that if a woman wasn’t eager to sleep with the insulter, there must be something psychologically wrong with her. Sexual liberation in the 60s wasn’t all sweetness and light.
[AlanC @18
Thanks for the tip. It’s looking promising!]
I had ‘woman in cell’ with a dangling AR. Never have a dangling AR.
I’ve been an astronomer for decades, but I’d never seen the word INTERSIDEREAL before. So I’m afraid I can’t help with gladys @9’s quite reasonable question about why we need such a word.
With enough crossers I managed to guess it, even though I also didn’t know this meaning of SIDE.
In my youth, WINE COOLER referred to a drink consisting (I think) of wine and fruit juice and stereotypically consumed by teenage girls. I don’t think I’ve actually seen the phrase used to mean a cooler for wine, although of course that meaning seems perfectly reasonable.
[muffin @44: I hope you enjoy it and complete the grid😉].
[AlanC @47
I’ve solved several, but can’t find a way of writing in the answers on my Kindle 🙂 ]
Gervase@40 Thank you for your sympathetic comment, and can i ask of you that you avoid “mere male?” It always sounds like the patronizing self-description “foolishly constrained by the rules of logic, (as you privileged ladies are not, of course).” I’m sure that’s not what you meant, but it’s not a pleasant phrase to see. I’m only saying this, not as a reproach, but because you come across as someone to whom it would make sense.
Ted@46 I thought a wine cooler was a drink too, but when I looked it up what I found was a specialized cabinet with some hoity-toity wine snobbery about proper care of wine. It reminded me of a young man I met once in France on a train to the Channel Ferry who had come to France to get a start on “laying down” a wine collection. Very Brideshead Revisited.
Valentine @49: Thanks for the reproach. It was tongue in cheek but inappropriate in context.
WINE COOLERs can be cabinets, or just ice buckets, but the in the UK it usually refers to the large oval bowls, usually of silver, which adorned aristocratic dining tables in former days.
Gervase — your ice bucket description reminds me of a crossword definition of “salver” — “used to carry trifles to the eminent.”
Have to say, what with today’s momentous events, clue to 26a couldn’t be more apposite! Coincidence, I suppose.
This was fun and all went in except HEISTS – I should have got the anagram but it escaped me – I pencilled in SEPSIS but couldn’t make sense of the PSIS part. So a DNF – sadly for a Pickers.
I also didn’t parse RIND correctly – I thought IN was part of the wp and then wondered how RD equated to “new free”. But at least I wrote it in.
As well as SASHES, likes for VANILLA, VOTERS, FRIGID (sexist? I’ll pass on that), GEORGE III (stretching it a bit to say ‘ruler’, he was definitely of the age of constitutional monarchs, but no matter); THE STICKS; DUBIOUS. But plenty more to like.
Thanks to Picaroon and scchua.
The side/arrogance stumped me though I might recall having heard the term “side remark”.
Ted@46 – I too have the astronomy ‘bug’ – or at least used to – and INTERSIDEREAL was new to me, but plausible, and Chambers certainly has the word as a synonym for INTERSTELLAR.
The word ‘sidereal’ on its own is of course familiar to anyone with an astronomy bent – e.g. in “sidereal day” (23h 56m 4.0905…s – and I’m not about to elaborate on why it’s not 24h!)
[I will not promise to have as much restraint as Laccaria @54. With the slightest prodding, I’ll elaborate on why a sidereal day is the length that it is, as I regularly do to my students.]
Thanks both. I thought GEORGE III was on the borderline of fairness (although, for some reason, the un-parseable GEORGE VII passed muster.
endwether@45: I decided they were pent in the cellar, so no dangling ARs here. And ‘wine cellar’ ticked all the boxes(?).
Laccaria@52: Laugh out loud! Well spotted.
[Ted@55: Go on then.,,,]
[The slightest prodding has been given.
An ordinary day, also known as a solar day, is the (average) time it takes for the Sun to go around the sky once and get back to its original position — e.g., the time from noon to noon. Of course, since 1543 we’ve known it’s really the Earth that’s turning, so what I described is just an apparent motion. A sidereal day is a day as measured by the stars instead of the Sun, so it’s the time it takes for a particular star to (apparently) make one circuit around the sky and come back to the same position.
Over the course of a day, the Earth both turns on its axis and moves (a bit) in its orbit around the Sun. That’s why the two days are different. Specifically, if you viewed the solar system from a fixed location outside of it, a sidereal day would be the amount of time for the Earth to rotate on its axis through 360 degrees, so that a (very distant) star that was directly overhead at the beginning was directly overhead again at the end. But during that same amount of time, the Sun would not quite have returned to its original apparent position, because the of the Earth’s slight motion in its orbit. For the Sun to get back to its original position (say, to go from directly overhead to directly overhead), the Earth would have to turn just a bit more, so a solar day is just a bit longer than a sidereal day. (A picture really helps here.
To be precise, it’s just about four minutes longer. Why four minutes? Because if you add up 4 minutes per day over the course of a year, it adds up to a full day. That means that there is precisely one more sidereal day in a year than solar days. So the sidereal days and solar days gradually shift relative to each other, but after a year they come back into sync.]
[aa@56 – I didn’t work in the software business for 40 years for nothing! Test, test, and test again … and if it looks like it works and is bug-free, still test again! … that was the mantra we had to adhere to.]
Ted@57: Star-like. Tvm
Thanks Ted @57 for the explanation of sidereal. And even though Lancashire is my favourite cheese, I still don’t get RIND.
Roz @21. A belated thank you for the Python quote!
Tom @61 Surreal Madrid was from Monty Python , the Milan bit was my own work .
Roz @62. Even more impressive then. Love it.
I just wanted to reference 8 Down , and INTER is such a crossword favourite but usually meaning bury .