I got off to a quick start with this, slowed down a lot in the middle, and then had a sprint to the finish. A bit of a theme based around 5d, and some nice clueing – thanks to Crucible.
| Across | ||||||||
| 1. | ESTATE | What’s left in Parisian art gallery (6) ES (Parisian “art”, or “are”, as in “tu es”) + TATE (gallery) |
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| 5. | COPPICES | Woods manages to keep still (8) PIC (photo, a still) in COPES |
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| 9. | KINGSHIP | Elvis’s joint position of authority (8) KING’S HIP |
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| 10. | ARISTO | Noble poplar is topped, with sides lopped (6) Hidden in poplAR IS TOpped |
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| 11. | BACKBENCHERS | Most MPs‘ patrons tour mountain chain (12) BEN (mountain) + CH in BACKERS |
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| 13. | HA-HA | Ditch dance, ejecting hundreds (2-2) CHA-CHA less the two Cs |
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| 14. | LONGLEAT | Bath site, area covered by extended rental (8) A[rea] in LONG LET. Longleat is the seat of the Marquess of Bath, famous for its safari park (“Have you seen the lions of Longleat?”). Capability Brown did some work on the grounds around 1760. |
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| 17. | LANCELOT | Knight left at once, galloping across line (8) L (left) + L (long) in (AT ONCE)* |
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| 18. | NEEM | Recall crew tackling crown of elm tree (4) E[lm] in reverse of MEN (crew) – it’s a tree found in India: new to me, but the clueing is clear |
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| 20. | WEDDING BELLS | Directors begin dithering in spring’s union rounds (7,5) Anagram of D D (directors) + BEGIN in WELL’S (spring’s), with a whimsical definition |
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| 23. | GEORGE | He enjoyed 9, lodge or genteel houses (6) Hidden in lodGE OR GEnteel. Take your pick of Georges I-VI. |
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| 24. | OPERA HAT | Topper, old and jaunty, covers topless 13 (5,3) O [h]AHA in PERT |
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| 25. | STOCKMAN | He tends neat laurel screening mock bananas (8) MOCK* in STAN (Laurel – a bit naughty to omit the initial capital). “Neat” means cattle |
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| 26. | SIENNA | Queen is reclining in shade (6) Reverse of ANNE IS |
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| Down | ||||||||
| 2. | SOIL | Dirty pictures finish on top (4) OILS with the last letter moved to the top |
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| 3. | ALGEBRAIC | Redecorate Gaelic bar with symbols for numbers (9) (GAELIC BAR)* |
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| 4. | ETHICS | Start to educate Catholic in the present moral code (6) E[ducate] + C in THIS (“the present”) |
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| 5. | CAPABILITY BROWN | 17 to surpass skill British possess (10,5) CAP + ABILITY + BR + OWN – Capability Brown‘s real first name was Lancelot: not much of a definition, but there’s additional help with the reference in 15d |
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| 6. | PLANNING | Carpenter’s job limits new council’s responsibility (8) N in PLANING |
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| 7. | IRISH | Hibernian girl hit it off (5) IRIS (girl) + HIT less IT |
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| 8. | EXTIRPATED | Uprooted old Irishman, ready to drop trousers (10) EX (old) + PAT in (“trousered by”) TIRED (ready to drop) |
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| 12. | MANAGEMENT | Admin guy meets spy handling Middle East (10) MAN + ME in AGENT |
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| 15. | LANDSCAPE | 5 down’s bag is large, with small point (9) L AND S CAPE |
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| 16. | BLENHEIM | Palace establishment ordered to release various stats (8) ESTABLISHMENT* less STATS – another estate that Capability Brown worked on |
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| 19. | ALDERS | Trees in not very attractive Hampshire town (6) ALDERSHOT less HOT (very attractive) |
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| 21. | DORIC | Classic order: cook most of cereal (5) DO (cook) RIC[e] |
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| 22. | FAWN | Buff fine beard (4) F + AWN – buff and fawn are light-brown colours (maybe aka beige) |
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Thanks for the blog, Andrew.
What a delightful puzzle! This year is actually the tercentenary of the birth of LANDSCAPE architect LANCELOT CAPABILITY BROWN. Just to fill out some of the references Andrew mentions: he was involved in the PLANNING and MANAGEMENT of ESTATEs [like BLENHEIM and LONGLEAT] for ARISTOs, using HA-HAs, COPPICES, DORIC temples and probably ALDERS and NEEMs, too. He must have moved a lot of SOIL in the process!
Many thanks to Crucible – I thoroughly enjoyed the solve and the research!
My favourite non-themed clue was the one with the Irishman’s trousers. 😉
My favourites were MANAGEMENT, SIENNA, STOCKMAN, WEDDINGS BELLS.
New words for me: HA-HA = ditch, and ALDERSHOT (needed for 19d) as well as LONGLEAT.
I needed help to parse 2d, 7d, 1a, 8d, 16d.
Thanks Crucible and Andrew.
Caught out by ‘trousered’ again, in 16d. Next time I’ll remember…maybe!
A very fine puzzle indeed
I loved this. A “bit” of a theme, Andrew? 15 clues/entries, arguably.
Great stuff, many thanks to S&B
Thank you Crucible and Andrew.
I enjoyed this. Probably just chance, but Richard Payne Knight (17a) was a BACKBENCHER who appears never to have made a speech – in 1794 he wrote “The LANDSCAPE: A Didactic Poem” in which he mocked the “smooth” style of LANCELOT BROWN.
typo 17a, L(line) not “long”.
Thanks Crucible & Andrew; a very capable blog.
I’ve found out that ‘formulations made of neem oil find wide usage as a biopesticide for organic farming;’ so now you know.
Got HA-HA straight away but that didn’t help me to get CAPABILITY BROWN early on. ARISTO was my LOI, nicely hidden. I was struggling with a Hampshire town ending in ‘s’ until the PDM. I liked the STOCKMAN, despite the missing capitalisation, and the WEDDING BELLS.
fawn — felt that this fine puzzle deserved a better ending, or maybe my beard is too thick, like me!
tout @9, SIENNA and FAWN are both BROWN…
very nice, though I didn’t twig many of the theme entries – new words NEEM, EXTIRPATES and improved geography LONGLEAT, ALDERSHOT, never saw the latter.
CAPABILITY BROWN came up in a recent puzzle, hadn’t realised we were having a tercentenary
many thanks Crucible and Andrew
@10, more appropriately I should have written that SIENNA and FAWN are both “shades” of BROWN…
Thanks to Crucible and Andrew. I had great trouble getting started (and almost gave up), but finally got started with WEDDING BELLS, ARISTO, LANCELOT, and a few others. I dredged up CAPABILITY BROWN from a long ago course on Pope and Swift but not the other links provided by Eileen. I needed help parsing EXTIRPATED, BLENHEIM, and ALDERS. Last in were NEEM (new to me) and FAWN (I did not make the connection to “buff”). For me, a challenge, but worth the effort.
The leaves of a 18ac tree are within reach from the window of my second-floor flat here in Chennai as I type this. It is very common in India. Its oil has medicinal properties.
P.S. @7, this might interest some people
Knight, rather than adopt the fashionable landscape style of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, designed his gardens in a new picturesque style. He aimed to duplicate, as far as possible, the effects he admired in the paintings of his favorite artists. In his long poem, The Landscape, published in 1794, Knight dropped a few hints on his approach to gardening. According to him, the gardener should try to create scenes that reproduced in reality the painted landscapes of Rosa and Lorraine, including ruined buildings, broken trees, and other wildly picturesque features that conveyed a sense of dramatic antiquity. By the end of the 18th century, Knight’s picturesque style had been adopted by many English landscapers.
Elliott, Charles, 1997: From canvas to landscape. Horticulture 94, abridged.
Enjoyed this, but found it tricky in places. Remembered NEEM, but had to cheat slightly to get FAWN and SIENNA – no excuses for the latter in retrospect. Liked KINGSHIP, EXTIRPATED and BLENHEIM
Thanks to Crucible and Andrew
Thank you, Andrew.
I was a bit indifferent to this until I saw Eileen’s notes @1. It now looks like a work of art! What a shame I was too dull to spot it all.
Cookie @15 Fascinating – many thanks for that.
Rogered by “trousered” again. When will I ever remember this?
Liked ALDERS & COPPICES.
Fine work, Crucible, many thanks.
Nice week, all.
Got the theme reasonably early which helped with LONGLEAT but not much else. COPPICES should not have been last in however, for I know them well from their use in the Essex landscape.
A few unusual uses made this more tricky than some: beard = AWN. And though my French is reasonable, I couldn’t see art = ES till I can here … I was thinking ‘in Parisian’ = EN, which is probably exactly what Crucible wanted me to think. So ESTATE and hence SOIL needed a scurry to the on line check button before entry.
23a, it must be GEORGE III, in 1764 Capability Brown was appointed King GEORGE III’s Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace.
Worth noting that “es” also means “in” in French, as in licence ès lettres (a contraction of en les), which is how I parsed it
THanks Crucible and Andrew
I too really enjoyed this, though it took two sessions (I had to play golf and cook in between!) Favourites were STOCKMAN, SOIL and IRISH.
I do a bit of painting, and I use Raw Sienna and Burnt Sienna, but I haven’t come across a colour just called SIENNA.
Good point Muffin. Strictly speaking siena is a pigment, not a shade
Rather too difficult for me. HA HA was FOI and I got CAPABILITY BROWN from the charade and LANCELOT but things got much trickier and harder the longer I struggled with it. I finally figured out the theme and LONGLEAT and BLENHEIM went in but I still struggled. I had to cheat to get NEEM of which I’ve never heard, and that wrapped it up.
Too much of a struggle to be enjoyable.
Ho hum!
I forgot to say that I had never heard of NEEM. I constructed it from the clue, but was a bit surprised when my answer was correct.
Also I thought that the ES of ESTATE was just wrong – that went over my head!
Too hard for me – 1a rather set the scene, I do think this was too obtuse, and hats off to anyone able to get it; likewise 20. The theme passed me by, didn’t help that I had no idea Capability Brown was a Lancelot. I think perhaps more one for the maestros.
A rather wonderful thing happened for me, solving in bed, with the ‘Today’ programme in the background: at the exact moment that I looked at 11ac, I heard BACKBENCHERS on ‘Yesterday in Parliament’ – it fitted ‘most MPs’ and the parsing followed – Serendipity. ; -)
Sorry, forgot the space! 😉
Thanks Andrew and Crucible.
Thoroughly enjoyed this and Redshank offering – double pleasure – in FT (uploaded way too late so no blog so far).
Loved “Admin guy” and “Palace establishment” for great surfaces.
Both puzzles were fairly clued offering a steady solve.
Am I being cynical in thinking that 1ac should have read “What’s left is Parisian art gallery (6)” and that it’s just a fluke that it can be parsed anyway.
“art” = “es” just seems a little too obtuse. (And were the French using “es” when we were using “art” although I admit that is probably being a little pedantic!)
I solved 1a but couldn’t parse it. Having as a result got S as the first letter of 2d I parsed it as pictureS finish. With 9a solved I was left with a 4 letter word S-I-, meaning “dirty”. SOIL did not come to mind. Using a synonym of “top” in the recording industry I reached the wrong solution.
Eileen @26 Just as I was about to write in Blenheim, someone on the TV said Chatsworth. They got it wrong though. It’s not a palace and it didn’t fit.
Brendan29 I’ve certainly seen the “art” (thou art, making clear that it’s singular) before. I’m glad to say that I can’t give you chapter and verse on who used it and when.
Brendan @29, David @32 – the only previous examples I found were also both by Crucible, so it’s clearly a device he likes:
Crucible 26560: Parisian art model entertains high-class champion (7)
Crucible 25230: Get Free French art, 23 (6)
(23 was: Second half of porter’s Scottish water (4)
Thanks Andrew and Crucible.
Nice puzzle, nice theme.
ALDERS and FAWN (tricky) were my last 2 in after a lot of thought – but got there.
Thanks Crucible and Andrew
This one took a couple of sittings to finish off and although I spotted a couple of linked solutions to the man, didn’t realise that a good part of the puzzle was based around him.
Missed a couple of the parsings, including the subtle use of ‘art’ for the old fashioned ‘are’ and for good measure this time a conversion to the French variety of it.
Enjoyable puzzle as usual from Crucible.