I rather dawdled through this, trying to make proper sense of everything, and finished only just over 2 Verlaines at 22.56. I had most pause with 18, where I could not reconcile the definition with anything I knew about the English language, eventually entering on wordplay alone and keeping my fingers crossed.
Here’s how I threw the available letters in the air and watched them land in all the right places
Across
1 EDGED went cautiously
Double definition where “made keen” means sharpened.
4 CHERUBINI Composer
That’ll be Luigi, a contemporary of Beethoven and highly regarded by him. A French darling is a CHÉRI, so classy must be U (all that ridiculous Mitford stuff) and a writer about will give NIB backwards.
9 RHAPSODIC effusively prosaic
This is an anagram, “turning out” in which you must first collect the needed letters. H(usband), initially D(ull) and PROSAIC.
10 FROST Poet
Robert, that is, American poet, 1874 – 1963. You may well recognise his
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
It’s also a winter coat in the sense of one scraped off your windscreen in April.
11 YES-MAN an agreeable type
Molly is Molly Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, and her final word in her great soliloquy is Yes with an unaccountable capital. It’s also the last word in the book. Husband in the clue is there to provide a generic MAN, not Leopold, which doesn’t fit.
12 STURGEON One providing delicacies
Caviar to the mess sergeant c1945 “This blackberry jam tastes of fish”. Your operator is a SURGEON, and the inserted T comes from Tons
14 LOWER CASE In which I should never appear
To drop luggage would be to lower case. Grammar insists that the first personal singular pronoun should always be in upper case, though couldn’t care less about the rest. e, e, cummings and Archy might disagree, but then one of those was a cockroach.
16 STOIC Philosopher
Search in vain for a named philosopher. Endlessly banal is STOCK without the K (think stock phrase). Admit I (one)
17 SHAWM ancient instrument
An early oboe. One of the many faces of George Bernard SHAW was as music critic: “There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.” The M comes from Marks.
19 NOR-EASTER a blow
As in wind. Refusal NO, festival EASTER, inserted monarch R
21 NOT AT ALL The opposite
To write down in symbols is, or can be, NOTATE. Knock of the end (“almost”), add ALL for everything.
22 EDIBLE it’s not hurting to swallow
A blatant anagram, of I BLEED
25 DEIGN stoop
What you get if you kick the S(ingular) out of DESIGN, plan.
26 OVERSHOOT to go too far
Cricket is conducted in a series of OVERS, and is occasionally a HOOT or laugh
27 YARDSTICK Standard
“Some distance“ rather vaguely converts to YARDS, which is then extended by TICK, informal credit.
28 NUKED devastatingly attacked
The country is the UK, and the backed retreat that protects it is DEN
Down
1 EARLY CLOSING DAY
Cryptic definition, just about. When I was a boy, shops in most towns closed at lunchtime for the rest of the day, hence “beyond, say, one”. Don’t see that much, if at all, in 2016.
2 GRASS Main constituent of lawn
Not if it’s a camomile one, of course. Weed/GRASS /pot etc.
3 DESPAIR Bunyan’s giant
I grew up on a graphic novel (before such things existed) version of Pilgrim’s Progress, so this was a gimme. It’s also an anagram of ASPIRED
4 CODE Established standards
Switch the final two letters of CO-ED. You can’t do that with academy.
5 EX CATHEDRA Officially
To spell is HEX, without H(ard) that’s EX. Worcester is an example of a CATHEDRAL, which you are instructed not to finish. When Popes ( and by extension any panjandrums) speak “from the chair” it’s official.
6 UNFURLS Spreads open
Warm coat is FUR, add L(left), place in a “boiling” sun, or UNS
7 IRONED OUT cleared up
I quite like the conceit of a n internet query being an E_DOUBT. Remove the B(ook) and tack it on to proverbially hard IRON
8 I STAND CORRECTED You’re right
It’s “wrong” provides I ST, and donates – um – AND, fixed the rest. The merest suggestion the setter might be running out of steam.
13 CANNELLONI Pasta
Alphabetti spaghetti: play with LOCAL IN NE on the side of your plate until you have accounted for all the letters, and that’s how you spell the entry.
15 WEALTHIER better off
Bite the head off a Whippet for a W, decide “thriving more” is HEALTHIER, bite the head off that and substitute the W
18 MUTANTS sports
The wordplay’s easy enough, (dogs MUTTS, a A, passion ultimately N, construct) but the definition is a new one on me, so much so I considered what the misprint might be. Chambers: “an animal or plant that varies singularly and spontaneously from the normal type”. Wiki: “the common usage of the word ‘mutant’ is generally a pejorative term only used for noticeable mutations. Previously, people used the word ‘sport’ (related to spurt) to refer to abnormal specimens.” Not this people.
20 ADDISON Essayist
That’ll be Joseph, 1672 – 1719. Today we’d probably call him a columnist. His advice on extending your family might be “ADD I (one) SON”. Ho ho.
23 BROCK Badger
Derived from the Welsh, just another term for the affable black and white creatures. B(ishop) plus ROCK for to be really exciting.
24 PEAK point
Today’s sound alike, to needle being to pique.
The phrase ‘sport of nature’ is the sort of thing Pope or Dr Johnson would say, so I was not taken aback.
Thanks to Zed for the parsing of the composer, where I had CHER for the darling (the little dear?) and therefore an ‘i’ left over. Not sure I’ve ever heard of the fellow, Beethoven notwithstanding.
Brahms’ Requiem would be one of my Desert Island discs. I still think the best music critic comment was the bloke talking about Wagner: ‘Better than it sounds.’
Edited at 2016-04-28 03:16 am (UTC)
It thus took me 55 mins LOI 18dn MUTANTS. FOI was 19ac NOR EASTER.
I also initially had 6dn as UNFOLDS but saw the error of my ways and UNFURLS it was.
5dn EX-CATHEDRA also caused probelms as I thought CHINA was going to be included.
horryd Shanghai China
I never got past the first couple of pages of “Ulysses” so didn’t stand a chance of knowing the reference at 11ac to whatever was on the last page. I assumed “Molly’s last” accounted for the Y and “husband” was MAN, leaving the ES unaccounted for.
Horryd’s description of EARLY CLOSING DAY in Sleaford is more in keeping with memories of my childhood in Middlesex than zed’s i.e. the shops only closed in the afternoon one day each week.
Edited at 2016-04-28 05:06 am (UTC)
Ah yes, I see I implied early closing might be every day, which I did not intend. Where I grew up it was Thursday, Wednesday being cattle market day.
7dn was either inspired or one from the Groan Repository and best forgotten.
Off now to go and pester the knagaroos [sic] in Wally’s Paddock across the way.
BTW (again): they taste good — but buy the fillet steaks eh?
I seem to remember being told that BROCK was the only word in English that survived from the original Celtic language, but the Welsh influence seems more likely.
ORIGIN Old English brocc, broc, of Celtic origin; related to Welsh and Cornish broch, Irish and Scottish Gaelic broc, and Breton broc’h.
Thanks to setter and blogger.
Dereklam
Never having read Ulysses to the end, couldn’t parse 11ac, so was trying to make something from ‘last word’=AMEN, but couldn’t see where the ‘husband’ could provide an S.
I knew ‘sport’ at 18dn from a botanical context.
Had no idea at all about MUTANTS either, so thank heavens for the straightforward wordplay. 24dn was very much my last one in; I’m definitely a member of the “the small ones are the toughest” gang.
Having said that I actually really enjoyed it, probably because I possessed most of the recondite knowledge required, like SHAWM, or what Molly Bloom said last. Looking at it objectively though I have to say that excessive obscurity is still excessive obscurity even when by pure coincidence it happens to correspond with the flotsam and jetsam that has washed up by chance on the largely barren shores of my memory.
And I really liked ‘not hard to spell’.
French or Italian, I hadn’t heard of him either.
Edited at 2016-04-28 11:58 am (UTC)
Certainly a challenge today, well done setter. Nice to have some variety in the clues, even if they’re not up everyone’s alley. We’re a bit of a spoilt bunch here some times.
And thanks for the blog Z, though I haven’t been able to crack the cryptic heading.
It was the only way I could think of to link mutant and sport!
Only joking. Variety is the spice of these things.
The decision last night to open the bottle of 18y.o. Glenmorangie I got for my birthday may have had some bearing on my solving prowess (what’s the opposite of prowess?)
Edited at 2016-04-28 12:34 pm (UTC)
CHERUBINI, FROST (the poet), Molly’s last, SHAWM, this meaning of sport, EX CATHEDRA and ADDISON all in the dnk group (which probably says a lot about my lack of classical education (BA (Open) in maths, science and technology!)), although most of these were gettable.
Thanks blogger, for bringing light where there was darkness!
I figured that BROCK and EARLY CLOSING DAY would have challenged those solvers who had not won first prize in the lottery of life. Whatever happened to the EARLY CLOSING DAY? It was a very civilised idea – that shopkeepers would regularly take an afternoon off simply because they felt like having a nap.
Edited at 2016-04-28 08:19 pm (UTC)
DNF after a slow 40 mins, missed YARDSTICK of all things. Many NHOs along the way – Cherubini, Frost, Molly’s yes, Shaw & shawm (lucky guess), Early Closing Day, Bunyan’s Despair, Ex Cathedra, Brock. Strangely remembered SPORT=MUTANT from a previous Times crossword.
Rob
I’m firmly in verlaine’s camp with this one – just the sort of puzzle I like. It’s a mystery to me why dorsetjimbo should have bothered with Times crosswords up until about the end of the 1980s (perhaps even beyond that) since almost every day must have been a misery for him.
Nice blog BTW. A couple of years ago I had a spell of learning (or relearning) about 20 favourite poems, of which one was Frost’s The Road Not Taken.