A bit of a Brief Encounter this one, at least in my terms, at 13.56. It’ll be interesting to see how rapid a fill it is for others, though my experience this week is that the puzzels are getting steadily more straightforward. I suppose it’s possible that solvers have cruised through life without encountering Cleopatra’s maid or the aquatic creature, but (apart from having to translate “biscuit” into “cookie” stateside) the foodstuff at 17, which I thought might be a bit parochial, seems to be a pretty much universally recognised hazard to brittle teeth. And even the gardener turns out to be the only one I can confidently name. Which is nice. I submit my workings thus:
Across
1 HISS urgent whisper
Greeting can’t be anything much other than HI, and Sons gives you the needed two esses
4 ROSE WINDOW …that’s on the Church wall
A teeny tiny quibble – I’m not convinced that “on” is the best preposition. Be that as it may, ROSE is the flower, lady having lost husband is WIDOW, chuck in a N(ame). I initially thought “flower lady” was a rather generous clue for ROSE, but cool reflection says “lady” is needed in the next bit.
9 CAPABILITY So-called gardener
Mr and Mrs Brown named him Lancelot, but the C word stuck to him and floated serenely through history and into my consciousness. “Working” BY I (ONE) CAPITAL into a confused state provides our answer.
10 MOLE Tunneller
Take “trouble” to be a verb, and translate it easily enough to molest. Knock of the ST(reet) way.
11 TITTLE Companion to jot
We can be thankful to the astonishing William Tyndale, producer of the first printed English New Testament, for this felicitous phrase for “really amazingly small things” here referenced. Until the 18th century, the dot on the i was a tittle. Prosaically “name” in the clue is TITLE, and the end of document is, of course T, which you insert.
12 KNEE JERK automatic
“Criminal” instructs you to twist KEEN, and pull translates to JERK
14 SARI dress
From which you can guess, correctly, that Cleo’s maid was IRAS, which Shakespeare had no doubt about and which you must reverse.
17 GINGER SNAP biscuit.
The Times biscuit tin houses a pretty small selection, of which this is the one that most requires dunking. Subject the last letter of tiN and all of PRESAGING to “disastrous” rearrangement.
20 APEX Top
Answer provides the A, the rest sounds like pecks, or kisses.
21 GESTATES carries
A mammalian interpretation. Put SET scenery backwards and attach it to a new arrangement of STAGE
23 ON SITE Present for work
Sounds like “on sight”, loosely (but not unduly so) interpreting “without preparation”
24 NOELCelebration
And the first name of the awf’ly elegant Mr Coward. The quote at the top of the page is the terribly terribly poignant moment in Brief Encounter when the not-actually-cuckolded husband seeks the answer to a crossword clue from his conflicted wife which turns out to be “romance”.
25 FOUR-IN-HAND Carriage
As driven by HRH Prince Philip to an individual championship gold medal in 1982 (sic). Two couples by basic maths are FOUR, and “under control” gives IN HAND. In my experience “in hand” means “I haven’t actually started it yet, but I don’t want you to know that”
26 EFFLORESCE Blossom
“Wind”, as in twist, FEELS FORCE. A very neat clue.
27 TOOL For example, saw
I like this. Not enough right, so it must be TOO L(eft)
Down
2 IMAGINATIVE full of ideas
I reverse engineered this one to MAG (publication) I (I) in 1 (one) NATIVE (local).
3 STARTLING Shocking
The last letter of amounT taken on board by a STARLING definitely a bird
4 RAIDERS Attacking force
Probably the simplest of today’s clues: R(ight) and AIDERS (helpers)
5 STICK TO ONES GUNS Don’t budge
As in an argument, for exanmple. Keeping armes close is another mildly whimsical interpretation of the phrase
6 WRYNECKWinger
You can safely ignore the apparent footie reference. This is WARY (cautious) with the A missing, and NECK for a bit of bottle, either literally or figuratively
7 DRONE Aeroplane
If not carrying hellfile missiles, it would just be a very expensive executive toy. Managed equates to DONE (“so that’s how it’s done”). Drop in a R(iver)
8 WREAKCreate
Another soundalike, this time of reek “awful smell”
13 RALLENTANDO Slowing down
Though most conductors I’ve sung under insist it’s Italian for “watch the conductor”. One might get DON’T EARN ALL from the letters.
16 THAT’S THAT Emphatic conclusion
Bernard Cribbinsanyone? “..And beneath it is the chap in the bowler hat. And that’s that.” Also a “trivial” truth, and unless I’m very much mistaken, a tautology.
18 ROTIFER Aquatic creature
“A wheel-animalcule, or member of the Rotif’era, minute aquatic animals whose rings of waving cilia suggest a rotating wheel.” So now you know. Knew the word, somehow, and it’s relatively easily deduced. I took regular procedure to be ROTE, and in it is IF (provided); add the second R(iver) of the day.
19 PROFILECryptic definition.
I suppose on a police record or such you might be photographed in this (sc profile). Nearly not cryptic at all.
21 GENRE Class
Eco-friendly is GREEN, gently lower the RE (about) to the bottom.
22 SHEAF
A lockable box is a SAFE, and an almost one is a SAF. Include man’s, strictly perhaps his, but here HE.
My time was poor, and in the end I had a titanic struggle with ‘apex’ and ‘profile’, where I nearly put in ‘axes’ and ‘provide’.
Edited at 2016-02-04 03:08 am (UTC)
Thanks. I could swear I had already corrected that (and the unwarranted inclusion of an extra U), but the evidence was convincing. Now corrected.
No, really.
Managed to wade through the other unknowns and semi-knowns, including ROSE WINDOW, FOUR-IN-HAND, WRYNECK, RALLENTANDO and TITTLE in about half an hour, then took ages to remember CAPABILITY, who I only learnt about from a fairly recent crossword.
Nice challenge all round. Thanks setter and Z.
But I was not to escape the Crossword Furies as I unaccountably popped in RATIFER. I reckon that half-way through parsing, I started thinking about dear old Ratty in Wind in the Willows, and those Furies did the rest. 39 minutes for what it’s worth.
While I got ’em, had trouble justifying ON SITE, TITTLE and TOOL. Thanks to Z8 for those. COD to the anagram at 9ac.
Fond memories of the ROSE WINDOW in York Minster (despite thinking ROOD SCREEN from the def.).
Edited at 2016-02-04 06:30 am (UTC)
Thank you for both spotting and remedying the deficit. I think I may have accidentally discovered a device for measuring the advance of senility. When I omit (say) allthe down answers, I’ll know it’s time to become a proper nuisance to my grandchildren. Though of course, by then, I may well have forgotten what I was measuring.
To be sure, it’s not one of the worlds most memorable clues. I’m not all that sure what the surface would mean, though I have a lurking image of something post-iceberg Titanic
I’m sure we’ve had ROTIFER not so long ago – I’m sure someone more adept than me will be able to let us know.
More satisfying than yesterday, even though it took me just as long at 34 minutes – which for me is a Result.
> I’m sure we’ve had ROTIFER not so long ago
> …
In No. 25,366 (8 Jan 2013): Being in water, ready to turn up and replace oarsman’s wife (7).
I learned somewhere that Brown was called CAPABILITY because he would tell his plutocrat clients that their spreads had “capabilities”. Somehow I don’t think he would have much to say about my garden. 17.35
Otherwise no issues.
If Jimbo called yesterday’s vanilla, I’d taste this one as strawberry.
I’ve never heard of “jot or tittle”. If pressed I’d have said that tittle’s one and only companion was tattle.
The bird and the swimmy thing were unknown.
Where’s the last ginger snap? ‘ti’nt in tin.
Edited at 2016-02-04 03:23 pm (UTC)
> Is IRAS more likely than IXAM? Probably, but then a SARI isn’t really a dress, whereas a MAXI undoubtedly is. So the clue is ambiguous unless you happen to possess the arcane GK.
> ROTIFER, RITIFER, ROTIFAR? More ambiguous wordplay for an obscure word. ‘Regular procedure’ is at least as good a definition for both RITE and ROTA as ROTE, even if ROTIFER does look a bit more wordlike.
I got these both right, but only by looking them up. If forced to guess I’d have got the creature right and the dress wrong but I don’t like being forced to guess.
I was feeling smug, as I had seen the ‘pro’ = for and ‘file’ = record at 19d, but when I read through the comments I found that I wasn’t the first.
Sincerely hope that Dr thud found this Thursday offering gentle, and that my light-hearted comment yesterday was taken in the friendly way in which it was intended.
Edited at 2016-02-04 11:21 pm (UTC)
This being my second Thursday of the week, I embarked on this with some trepidation, and indeed found it very chewy. I was happy to know TITTLE, ROTIFER, WRYNECK and FOUR-IN-HAND, and unattractively smug after working out RALLENTANDO despite its being an NHO for me.
However, the dress was my undoing – I decided that Ixam sounded more Egyptian than Inim, and never considered Iras. I would like to say that this was because a SARI is not a dress (though it is a form of dress in the sense of attire), but in fact it’s just that it never occurred to me. If I were grumpy (and it’s still Thursday, so I am), I would say that it’s a poor clue when the wordplay leaves one reliant on obscure knowledge, so I’m with Keriothe on that one.
There have been only two high-points to make this Thursday worth having. The first was an injury involving a Magic Marker, which cheered me on account of the imaginative explanation as to how it occurred; and I have just poured myself the second.
Despite my tiredness I enjoyed this one very much; but then things others found obscure were all thoroughly familiar to me. Unfortunately 9ac (CAPABILITY) induced severe vocalophobia at the finish, but at least I didn’t have to work too far through the alphabet to find it.
Thanks for tittle – that was hidden in the deepest part of my fading memory…
ie ‘Just bloody watch’.