Here’s my reasoning
Across
1 BOARDER paying guest
The first of our slightly dated words, Marge needs to be distinguished from Mrs Simpson, and indeed from ersatz butter, and poetically taken to mean BORDER. Insert A as instructed.
5 ARGUE give reason for believing
A scoundrel is A ROGUE, from which you exclude the 0
9 ATLAS a set of maps
Quick, think of another word that fits the definition. Neither could I. So it’s A followed by SALT for sailor reversed.
10 GAUCHERIE awkward ways
One of the many ways in which language insults sinister or cack-handed people. G(rand) CHERIE (undoubtedly a woman) absorbs AU for gold for one of those words nicked from the French to serve in English dictionaries. And do you hear the Academie Anglaise complaining? I think not.
11 GLOSSOP town in Derbyshire
Stick SOP for concession onto the end of GLOS, short for the shire that isn’t spelt that way.
12 DWARFED made to look small
Nice one this: Start with DEFRAUD for dupe, reverse it and swap out the U(ranium) for W(olfram) the much more romantic version of tungsten.
13 BESMIRCHED dirty
HERBS and MEDIC are the pieces of anagram material which when “gathered” may give our answer.
15 PEEP Begin to appear
As in “the Sun peeped over the horizon”. Palindrome, which, since the crossers give you both letters, only has one answer.
18 ERST Long ago
Really just means “former”, and perhaps more familiar as “erstwhile”. Hidden in ChaucER’S Time, which is indeed long ago.
20 SAND PLOVER bird
Chopin, who wrote some of the finest piano music ever committed to paper, and not just the Minute Waltz, was the sometime paramour (despite raging TB) of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin, better known to history and literature as George Sand. Insert a musical soft P(iano). My CoD, though if you don’t know of that particular (demi?) monde, I can concede that it might not be yours.
23 SALTIRE cross
The word “flag” might also be a help here, not just because it means “TIRE” and follows the girl SAL. Best known version is the Scottish white cross on blue background, the diagonal placing making it a saltire. Tip for puzzled solvers: when the Times uses “boy” or “girl” it generally indicates a diminutive version of a name.
24 TACHYON that must travel faster than light
On the grounds that if it doesn’t, it’s not a tachyon, a “theoretical elementary particle moving faster than light”. Structure is in the imperative mood: ON YACHT is what you apply the instruction to.
25 PROVENDER Food
Tested gives PROVEN, a half hearted DEER is a DER. Ruminants are not limited to cows.
26 EAGRE bore
Such as the Severn bore, a tidal rise in water level. Take M(iles) away form MEAGRE
27 RISEN up
Another bit of French for you, signified by Norman. A Norman’s “nothing” is RIEN. make it hold S(on). I had to keep resisting the urge to enter RESIN, despite it having nothing to do with the clue
28 NEW YEAR time for celebration
Crackers might nudge you towads Chritmas, but it’s just there so you can rough up WERE ANY. Simples.
Down
1 BELLOWS accordion part
Be honest, how many other parts of an accordion can you think of? You need the extra ‘S on the end of Saul BELLOW, who wrote Herzog and won lots of literary prizes.
2 ASSASSIN killer.
Get out your Dickens, and one of my favourite quotes, from the henpecked beadle, Bumble, in Oliver Twist (It survives intact into Oliver!) “If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble “the law is a ass – a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience – by experience.”. If the law is a ASS, double it and append I N(ame)
3 DIG UP Find
D(etective) I(nspector) and a flipping PUG
4 ROUNDHEAD Combatant at Naseby
If you know your English Civil War history, this is easy. Cromwell’s New Model Army destroyed Charles 1’s forces at Naseby. Crudely, ROUNDHEADs on one side, Cavaliers on the other. Part of contest gives you ROUND, top gives you HEAD.
5 ASHRAM religious community
R(asputin’s)leader inserted into A SHAM gives the Indian religious community. Some may have been fraudulent, Gandhi’s at Sabarmati wasn’t
6 GIRAFFE animal
A solecism is a GAFFE. Insert IR(ish)
7 EMEND this
A bit of an &lit. ED(itor) takes in MEN for what an editor does.
8 TANGIBLE concrete
The final T of Poirot (Christie’s Belgian sleuth, anyone not know that?) attached a cracked BELGIAN. Nearly a good clue: needed to be less demolition-ish and more detective-ish.
14 CLARENDON type
As in font. Derive it from CLARE (college, Cambridge) N(orthern) and lecturer DON. Clarendon looks like this:
16 PYRENEES the mountains
A pile of firewood is a PYRE, SEEN is “up” (reversed in a down clue) and attached. Had to be careful with the spelling, for which the wordplay was a great help.
17 BLACK EYE mouse
Supposedly because it resembles a small rodent, dating from 1842 (we do the research so you don’t have to). Empty B(ottl)E, and place LACKEY for servant therein.
19 SALOONS cars
Yet another bit of French, SANS (without) acts as a frame for LOO(M) for appear, without its last letter. Shakespeare used it in the All the World’s a Stage speech in As You Like It.
21 VOYAGER traveller
VOYEUR is the observer. Non-U tells you to remove the U, the result housing A G(ood) The crossing of Voyager and tachyon set me off on a Star Trek reverie, though not for long
22 WIGEON duck
I so wanted to spell it with a D in the middle, but the anagram fodder IN WE GO generously disabused me
23 SUPER fabulous
Short version of SUPERintendent.
24 THROW cast
Extremely T(oug)H is followed by ROW pronounced to mean line.
The first thing I noticed on the club leaderboard was that I was within five minutes of a z8b8d8k, so was feeling quite chuffed until I came here to find that he had done it twice in that time.
Had no idea whether Chopin loved cards, bards, bands, land or any of the other possibilities, but sand seemed most likely for the bird. A test of courage in my childhood was to stir up the plover’s nest and then run for it, on the understanding that it would swoop you and could rip your face off with its spiky wings. Suspect we might have over-egged that one, as kids do.
Edited at 2014-07-24 06:44 am (UTC)
Hilda Bracegirdle (Dip. Ornithol.)
After recent heavyweight offerings, I rather enjoyed this North by Northwest of a crossword, a romp best enjoyed without thinking too much.
Zed, you have two ‘Chrit’s’ (at 28a and 8a). Sending coded messages – a new sect you are founding?
Sadly I didn’t resist putting in resin despite it having nothing to do with the clue, and I also had tochyan for the unknown elementary particle.
Thanks for parsing SALOONS and DWARFED.
About 40 or so minutes.
I had to chuckle at the innocent understatement of “perhaps” in 20ac.
Edited at 2014-07-24 04:45 am (UTC)
After the past few days I don’t know what level of difficulty I shall face on my watch tomorrow. Normally by Friday I have a good idea of what to expect.
Edited at 2014-07-24 06:06 am (UTC)
FRY: This is great, as long as you don’t make me smell Uranus. Heh heh.
LEELA: I don’t get it.
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: I’m sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
FRY: Oh. What’s it called now?
PROFESSOR FARNSWORTH: Urectum.
I had 19dn as SANS around LOO
K. Either will do.This was a gentle 25 minute meander meeting old friends like “sand-lover” in the Chopin clue. Nice blog z8.
Edited at 2014-07-24 09:48 am (UTC)
It was the SE corner that did for me. It all went wrong when I parsed 21 as SEAGOER fairly early on (another parsnip), which messed up the acrossers and took a while to sort out. It was TACHYON that showed me the error of my ways, but it took a disgusting amount of time for me to see that given that I count myself as something of a lay cosmologist (relatively speaking of course).
Very enjoyable puzzle.
Some interesting wordplay devices new to me.
Thanks very much for the blog z8.
Liked a DER quite a lot.
Much of the GK (marge, tachyon, Clarendon, Ashram, eagre) was right near the back of my fact store, behind the goalscorers from all the FA Cup Finals in the 1970s.
I’m pretty sure the Chopin/Sand thing has been used before in this puzzle (though probably not as elegantly) so that was pretty straightforward once I had the V.
Like K I got the LOO in 19 from LOOK but either seems to work fine.
I didn’t know Bellows the writer but as Z says there aren’t many “known” parts to the instrument. Keyboard, strap, buttony things. I heard this on the radio recently from someone who clearly isn’t a fan:
Q. What’s the difference between an accordion and a trampoline?
A. You take your shoes off before you jump up and down on a trampoline.
Entertaining blog Z, thanks.
Alan
Edited at 2014-07-24 03:58 pm (UTC)
‘Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.’
Didn’t know EAGRE, and had no idea if I was looking for tedious person, the size of a hole or a tidal river-wave. ERST was another unknown (I was adtrapolating from “erstwhile” to justify it).
“Marge” for “margin” is just another example of the persistent incompetence of poets. If they can’t make things scan and rhyme without having to lop off syllables, then they ought to consider an alternative career. I mean, it’s not as if they have anything better to do than find words that actually fit properly.
Like many, I spent a long time wondering if Chopin was bald. Plumped for sand without getting the reference.
All in all, I was glad to get out of this one in one piece. I am somewhat annoyed by the numerous wilfully obscure words that have cropped up lately, but one man’s obscure is another’s working vocabulary, I suppose. And I admit to enjoying TACHYON. Interestingly (or perhaps not – these things are very subjective), if tachyons exist then they have to travel backwards in time. They are widely used by us medics to ensure that our initial diagnosis corresponds with the findings at post mortem.