26338 Cutting through the red tape.

A respectable 18.11 derailed by a rather spectacular mondegreen (even if I do say so myself). Up to that point of discovery, on something like the third or fourth careful check, I rather enjoyed this one, replete as it is with some elegant and plausible clues and generous help with words that might be construed as unknown, though to be honest, I think I’ll give up on estimating what my fellow solvers know and don’t know. I’m sure you’ll let me know in due time which Nigerian ports, ancient rulers and Greek islands you are aware of, and I conjecture that I will not be alone in discovering that the shrubs I probably wouldn’t know were nowhere near that esoteric.
As always, I will endeavour to provide an complete and error free account of the workings of this puzzle, and leave the rest of you to spot where I have missed the mark.

Across

1 SACCHARIN sweetener
Ghastly stuff, C7H5NO3S to its very few friends, on my palate vying with aspartame for truly nasty aftertaste. Bag: SAC, tea: CHAR, in: -um- IN.
6 APIAN  social worker described thus
It’s the other social worker in a crossword this time, the humble bee. Quiet gives you the musicain’s PIANO which is curtailed by one letter after you have spotted that the A at the beginning of the clue is not just there for decoration.
9 RAMADAN  Religious festival
Is festival the right word? It is, after all, mostly a month of fasting and general abstention. Here, it’s managed: RAN surrounding A + cross: MAD. Extra points for religious probity if you can read the word out loud without automatically following it with “ding dong”.
10 TOPPING  custard
Chambers gives “to finish off; to dispose of finally” for polishing off, so a reasonable if not immediately obvious synonym for “topping”. If you normally put the custard in first, of course, you might want to argue that topping it ain’t. Be my guest.
11 PODGE  One with pounds to spare
The word “say” gives you EG, which you reverse and tack on the end of POD, a school of whales, and not YSGOL which is a school in Wales, possibly Betws y CoEd
12 FIRECREST  Bird
The musician’s loud is F, one is I, others is/are REST, and the park is a REC(reation ground). Gettable from wordplay, and a guess as to what it might look like is probably right.
13 SAWBONES  Doctor
It helps if you know that BS is a Bachelor of Surgery. Here it surrounds ONE for “a certain person” and follows SAW for “consulted”. Sawbones shortened to Bones for Leonard McCoy.
14 HEAP  Old car
Not worth much is CHEAP. Fall the front off.
17 NOTE  Message
The even letters of iN bOtTlE
18 EUROCRAT  Brussels employee.
You can’t make sprout picker fit, so make do with firm: CO(mpany), regret RUE, tax: RATE. Reverse the first two in tandem, add a cut version of the third.
21 GREAT AUNT  Relative
Here’s where my world fell apart as I entered a Bristolian GREY TAUNT. Amazing how hard it is to spot the error. the ultimate in complaininG, about: RE, a: A, gibe: TAUNT.
22 TACIT  understood.
The food found in short supply is TACo, it’s IT
24 GORDIUS very old ruler
You know him from the knotty problem solved at a stroke by Alexander the Great. Attempt: GO, straight line: RADIUS, remove the A.
25 RAILMEN On-line workers (tee hee)
Hidden (though not very well) in winteR AILMENTs
26 LEHAR  Musician
A “reinterpreted” Mahler missing the first letter.
27 DUDE RANCH  holiday resort
California, form which you only need the initial C, helps to point you towards this US style vacation spot. Surround the C wth an anagram (gathering) of A HUNDRED

Down

1 SCRIP  There might have been money in it
An old word for a traveling bag, cf Luke 10.4 in the KJV “Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes”, and here “to write for TV” or SCRIPT contracted by one letter.
2 COME DOWN TO EARTH  face reality
Wake up provides COME TO, sad gives the “nursed” DOWN and a broken heart is EARTH if you break it in the right way.
3 HEDGEROW  Shrubs
Have no fear, thiis is not some green excrescence you’ve never heard of. “Fellow would cultivate” gives HE’D GROW, into which you insert you insert the E found at the end of cottage. See what I mean about smooth cluing?
4 RUN AFTER  pursue
Rugby, or the 15 a side version anyway, is RU, A supporter is FAN, which is reversed, and a short period is TER(m). Assemble.
5 NOTARY  Legal official
A(rea) surrounded by NO TRY for no go.
6 ASPECT  viewpoint
A faction give A SECT (once again, don’t ignore the A). Insert P from P(olitical) leader.
7 IF I WERE A RICH MAN  song
OK, here we go. On Internet connection gives RE WIFI, and that’s “turned”. Another version of H(ot) AMERICAN is EARICHMAN, which when correctly spaced gives Tevye’s big number. Mrs Z went to see FotR with her dad shortly after revealing she wanted to marry a Goy. Oy oy oy!
8 NIGHTSPOT  Disco
Which it might well be. Near: NIGH, Main: TOP, Street: ST. Revererse the last two in tandem and add to the first.
13 SYNAGOGAL Like religious edifice
The select-one-out-of-seven note is G, some is ANY, and the Nigerian port is the one you’ve heard of, LAGOS. Tuck two into one and reverse the lot.
15 BUTTERED  covered with spread.
Complete gives you UTTER, which you insert into the odd letters of BrEaD. Is it me, or are there rather o lot of insertion clues today?
16 COSTLIER
Lettuce see, do we know of any other Greek islands of sufficient brevity? COS, its bank a TIER, the pound an L, appropriately inserted. That word again.
19 ÉTRIER  rope ladder
For use on mountains. Energy E, and person testing is a TRIER. Add accents to choice. If you can.
20 BUSSED  transported by coach
Picked up is not a soundzlike indicator, but another reversal instruction, in this case of DES, French “from the” if you ignore the grammar, and SUB, warship.
23 TENCH  Fish
The unknown number is N, and the school a TECH. Insert (aaargh!) one into the other.

48 comments on “26338 Cutting through the red tape.”

  1. I zipped through this one on paper, about half a glass of wine, but I didn’t stop to parse IF I WERE A RICH MAN. Needed wordplay to get my last in, FIRECREST
  2. 42 minutes of fun, finishing with the unknown ETRIER in-jokey GORDIUS crossing. MY favourite was HEDGEROW, even if I were trying to work in WOO[D].

    I was taken to see Fiddler on the Roof on its theatrical release by a female admirer. I was 12. (It was the 70s.) Rewatching it recently, apart from the classic Topol number, the rest is a bit of a bore: the ‘daughter marries ne’er-do-well’ story told three times while the Russians revolt off screen.

  3. Very satisfying puzzle, as I felt that it was quite a workout and was happy to escape error-free.

    Since you asked Z, my unknown was ETRIER and my vaguely-knowns were FIRECREST, EUROCRAT and GORDIUS.

    Relieved that the shrubs clue wasn’t an obscurity, HEDGEROW being quite familiar. In fact I even know not to be alarmed if there’s a bustle in it. Invaluable advice, I’ve always found.

    Thanks setter and Z (BTW Z, I thought it was tack rather than taco at 22ac, not that it matters a jot).

    1. Now I know why crosswords are so difficult!!

      ….. ‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.

  4. Even if it did take over the 30-min limit. (I follow Jack on this principle.)
    Only unk. was the rope ladder. Now I know that it’s also French for “stirrup” — that should come in handy one day no doubt.
    As for 22ac, I’d assumed TAC{k} (as in “hard tack”) rather than TAC{o}. Nice to see I was wrong again. At least I’m consistent.
    Is this the first time we’ve had “gathering” as an anagram indicator (27ac)? If they ever let me loose on compiling (which the gods forbid), I’d be more likely to go for “wandering” in such contexts.
    Now I must, indeed, wander off.
    1. I knew etrier as I used to climb and owned several. They have disappeared having been replaced decades ago by nylon webbing slings which perform the same function but are lighter.
  5. I put in ‘pudge’ at 11ac–PODGE not being in my idiolect, alas–leaving it for later to figure out the relation between ‘dup’ and school. Like Galspray and McText, I got the TAC from ‘tack’ not ‘taco’; although actually, I think I had ‘tuck’ in mind. Biffed the long downs, and SAWBONES & DUDE RANCH for good measure. Pleased to get DNK ETRIER, albeit after some time. It took me a long time to parse APIAN, simply because I was so used to ‘quiet’ being just P (or SH); can’t think when I last saw the whole word used.
    1. Not in ODO but just checked Collins:

      Informal, food, esp. when regarded as inferior or distasteful. See also “hardtack”.

      Reminds me that my Old Dad and his ex-army mates always used to refer to cheese as “bung”.

      1. It is in SOED, which has 14 entries for ‘tack’; tack 4 gives ‘Foodstuff (chiefly in hard tack, soft tack) …’ and gives an example from D.C. Murray: “I thought the canteen tack the nastiest stuff I had ever tasted.” This is one of what I call my Gettier solves, where I’m right for the wrong reason; Gettier being the philosopher who showed that knowledge could not be defined as justified true belief.
        1. I expect the setter had tack rather than taco in mind because it’s more “British”: a bit esoteric but also a bit Boys’ Own Adventure. Nonetheless, I have eaten in a Taco Bell and can confirm it’s a close approximation of ” food”. Once I’d thought of taco, no further thought seemed necessary. Just as well it wasn’t critical.
  6. 45 minutes with a few biffed but more wrangled out from wordplay. Thank you, Setter, for bunging in that wretched song which will act as an earworm for me for days now that I’ve had it put in my mind.

    TACIT was biffed but on returning to it later I thought of ‘tack’ for ‘food’ and never even considered ‘taco’.

  7. Top half quick – bottom half slow.

    TACK is food as per Chambers. I do not like TACOs much.

    FOI 12ac FIRECREST LOI 24ac GORDIUS

    COD 27ac DUDE RANCH

    horryd Shanghai

  8. Finished but couldn’t parse a few which were guesses. Thanks for the tenuous explanation of 22A. Had to cheat on ETRIER which was a new word for me even though I had just taken my grandchildren to an indoor climbing wall. 27A was cleverly clued and another guess. 13D was gruesome.
  9. Liked this one but that’s not unusual. RAMADAN has a very neat surface, the whole equals the sum of the parts, and is easily COD. Like others, didn’t consider ‘taco’ at 22ac and much prefer ‘tack’.
  10. 18:41 … I thought this was going to be another sub-10 biff fest but the setter conspired with my subconscious to make it a tricky one to finish. HEDGEROW really is nice, and a great red herring for all of us with a morbid fear of shrubs.
  11. A lengthy 48 minutes,but I’m not complaining because it was a delightfully constructed puzzle.
    My unknowns: SCRIP (at least as a purse – I know it as a share transaction) and DUDE RANCH (Bognor Regis is the limit of my knowledge of holiday resorts)
      1. Ditto on Palm Beach Ulaca. Have you seen Sullivan’s Travels by Sturges? – it’s right up there.
        1. Um, the “usual film sources” on the Internet recommended by my teenager don’t seem to have it, so not yet. Of the others of his I have seen I like The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek.

          State Governor on phone hears of big publicity opportunity in remote town: “Nothing as big as that has happened in the state since we stole it from the Indians.”

          PR Guru standing next to him: “Borrowed…”

          Edited at 2016-02-18 01:30 pm (UTC)

            1. I managed to dig out Sullivan’s Travels and kept waiting for it to get funny. Of course, anything from Sturges is good, but I felt that despite vowing to make a funny picture rather than a sociological study, he succeeded better at the latter than the former.

              Best line – not from the movie but from Joel Macrae after making it: ‘Life’s too short to make two movies with Veronica Lake.’

  12. 7 minutes something. Like everyone else apparently I was sure the shrub was going to be a stinker, possibly some variant of HEDERAE… exhale with relief!
      1. Apparently that’s also known as “setterwort”, so I’m surprised it doesn’t stink up crossword puzzles more often…
  13. 23m. Another rather knotty but highly enjoyable puzzle. I seem to have gone down a lot of blind alleys, getting the right general idea about the wordplay but unable to assemble the parts in the right order. FIRESTREC? COEUR_T?
    I thought ‘polishing off’ and TOPPING were both synonyms for ‘killing’. I have Collins on my side.
    I thought I knew SCRIP, but it turns out I didn’t. The whole point about a SCRIP dividend is that it doesn’t contain money. And I thought I knew what an ETRIER was, but again it turns out I didn’t. Although I think this may be an English meaning of a French word that doesn’t exist in the original. C’est la vie.
  14. That’s torn it Z – not just ramalama dingdong but yabba dibba dibba yiddlediddle dum. Same as others on ETRIER and TAC[k]. 16.31
  15. Another nice puzzle of middling difficulty that was entertaining to solve. No problems though as a minor point not convinced “incurring more losses?” means COSTLIER – it depends what you do to the price!

    Detest the song and the show it comes from – must now et it out of my mind

  16. Made heavy weather of this one, putting in COME HOME TO ROOST and following up (eventually) with GORYTUS, a well-known old king. Wondered what CLOSTIER meant and DNK ETRIER. It came together in the end but at around the 35 min mark.
  17. 25 minutes, echoing above
    – relief to get HEDGEROW instead of obscure plant
    – dislike of Topol song
    – question costlier = incurring more losses but I suppose it could be men in a battle not cash
    – only vague memory of Gordius so used an aid to check
    – much pleasure from this tasty puzzle.
  18. Another one that I found fairly easy until it came to completing the bottom half. I did know ETRIER but it didn’t come readily to mind, and 27 meant nothing to me at all, though it was clearly an anagram.
    Several interruptions, so no reliable time, but around 40-45 minutes in the end.
  19. DNF being stumped by ETRIER (we have to have a cricket reference somewhere!). It took a lifetime to get the song even with all of the checkers. The first few checkers I had fitted with an anagram of hot American song, which delayed me as well as impressed me. (CHEATING MORONS comes to mind! on edit, that doesn’t work either being short of an A – must be a bad hair day for me).

    Very enjoyable puzzle, shame it beat me.

    Edited at 2016-02-18 12:35 pm (UTC)

  20. Enough for me to think about without being completely left floundering – just right. DNK etrier or scrip, but gettable from wordplay, and quite smug with some of my guesses, which I couldn’t parse and have now been explained. Thanks Z, if I may be so familiar! However finally undone by Gordius, which I did know, but didn’t when it mattered!

    Edited at 2016-02-18 02:32 pm (UTC)

  21. Didn’t know ETRIER but it was easy to get from the cryptic. No problem with the rest. But I only knew SCRIP from an old Victorian song which I used to play at family gatherings. “A Friar of Orders Grey”. He kept venison in his scrip – which sounds a bit messy. 28 minutes. Ann
  22. A knock-affected 33 mins. I have a few days off next week and the week after, followed by a couple of weeks off in March, and I’m looking forward to seeing if I can avoid drifting off once I’ve overcome my jet lag towards the back end of March. I lost concentration/nodded off here with three pairs of crossing answers to get, and once my mind slipped back into gear I got them in the order of BUSSED/GORDIUS, IF I WERE A RICH MAN/APIAN, and PODGE/SCRIP. My COD was the one for BUTTERED.
  23. About 30 minutes, ending with ETRIER from wordplay and accompanied by a raised eyebrow. I then looked it up to find out it exists and what it really means. Interesting. Everything else OK, although I wasn’t sure that this was a familiar spelling of SACCHARIN. I thought there was an ‘E’ at the end, but I confess I wasn’t curious enough to look that one up. Regards.
  24. Had several goes at this throughout the day, interrupted by an early physio session and an afternoon walk on the beach at Runswick Bay, so I’ve no idea of the time I took. FOI HEAP followed by SYNAGOGAL. The rest went in steadily apart from unknowns GORDIUS, ETRIER and FIRECREST, which I eventually constructed from wordplay. Struggled for a while with LOI, NOTARY as I had LAPPING for polishing off a bowl of custard. Having eventually worked out NOTARY, I forgot to revisit 10ac, so had 1 wrong, TAPPING instead of TOPPING. Doh! Parsed the rest without trouble. Thanks to blogger and setter. John
  25. Today for a change all the words I made up (ETRIER, TENCH and perhaps a few others) were real and I did finish. But as usual I stopped just under the hour with no idea how to go on and then found GORDIUS, ETRIER and TENCH within a minute or two when I returned to the puzzle two hours later. Very enjoyable puzzle, anyway. COD to HEAP, which I found quite amusing. Oh yes, my food was TACK too.
  26. Travelling all day so didn’t start until 9.30 pm, after my bedtime.Nobody else has confessed to never having heard of a dude ranch. I don’t think there are any in the Lakes or the Dales, but maybe Blackpool has some.
  27. Like deeza and keriothe, i stopped working on the definition of scrip assuming it meant money itself (I thought Confederate Dollars, as an example, were termed scrip). Otherwise flummoxed by the well laid out but uno etrier, and still don’t completely understand the custard reference to topping.

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