But other than that this was a crossword that had a bit of everything, obscure words, interesting GK, the correct level of smut (that being, marginally lower than that of a saucy seaside postcard) and really great “storytelling” in pretty much all the surfaces. Two thumbs up from me, and not just because I’m in a good mood from having a day off work today. Happy 3^5th birthday, America!
FOI 9ac, which fortunately I knew how to spell off the bat, favourite clue probably 11ac even though I as the definition of iodine is a well-trodden path at this point. But that’s only because it’s such a seductive road! Thanks to the setter for taking us on a ramble down it and the others.
ACROSS
1 Subject that’s closed, still (5)
TOPIC – TO [closed, as in a door] + PIC [still, as in a photo]
4 Part of shop makes fast returns on singular beer (9)
SALESROOM – MOORS [makes fast] returns on/after S ALE [singular | beer]
9 The city of Kyiv a jerk misspelled (9)
REYKJAVIK – (KYIV A JERK*) [“misspelled”]
10 Fought to be heard with a gong (5)
AWARD – homophone of WARRED [fought] with/after A
11 I must have both bits to eat (6)
IODINE – 1 and 0 [both bits, in computing] + DINE [to eat]
12 Store up memoir for play (8)
EMPORIUM – (UP MEMOIR*) [“for play”]
14 Crime occurring without judge hearing a thing (9)
OBSESSION – {j}OB [crime, minus J] + SESSION [hearing]
16 Veil’s collar containing a measure of brightness (5)
NIQAB – NAB [collar] containing IQ [a measure of brightness]
17 Boy dispatching daughter in place of Clare (5)
ENNIS – {d}ENNIS [boy, minus D]. Ennis is the county town of Clare.
19 Does it constitute a blanket ban on unhealthy food? (4,5)
DIET SHEET – cryptic def, playing on sheets and blankets as in bedclothes.
21 Radical’s irritatingly cosy life diminished (8)
GLYCOSYL – hidden in {irritatin}GLY COSY L{ife}
22 Female hit gym, then chilled (6)
FRAPPE – F RAP P.E. [female | hit | gym]
25 Inclined to be having relations round last of all (5)
ATILT – AT IT [having relations] “round” {al}L
26 Bid at cards by fellow expert concealing nothing? (2,3,4)
IN THE BUFF – 1NT [bid, in Bridge] by HE BUFF [fellow | expert]
27 Like some Arabs, having weekend break outside the city (3-6)
EWE-NECKED – having (WEEKEND*) “break”, outside EC [the city].
A ewe-necked horse has a thin concave neck. Not to be confused with a V-necked sweater.
28 Spouse seen in activity centre at times (5)
HUBBY – HUB [activity centre] at/before BY [times]
DOWN
1 Go to bed — we’re not joking — and rest uneasily (4,2,4,5)
TURN IN ONE’S GRAVE – TURN IN [go to bed] + ONE’S GRAVE [we’re | not joking]
2 Stuff, which you will have opened, sealed (5)
PAYED – PAD [stuff] which YE [you] will have opened.
To “pay” is to waterproof a boat by sealing it with tar.
3 Bottle of harmful gas found by Welshman (7)
COJONES – CO [carbon monoxide = harmful gas] found by JONES [Welshman]
4 Destroyer shelled navy, one’s recalled (4)
SIVA – {n}AV{y} + I’S [one’s], all reversed for this Hindu deity.
5 Liberal president tended to be naturally sympathetic? (4-6)
LIKE-MINDED – L IKE MINDED [Liberal | President (Eisenhower) | tended]
6 Argument to have in Cheltenham, perhaps (3,4)
SPA TOWN – SPAT OWN [argument | to have]
7 Spaniard who painted, in place of worship, topless concubine (9)
ODALISQUE – DALI [Spaniard (Salvador) who painted] in {m}OSQUE [place of worship, “topless”]
8 Out to lunch, unexpectedly met by tearful officer’s wife (6,9)
MADAME BUTTERFLY – MAD [out to lunch] + (MET BY TEARFUL*) [“unexpectedly”].
Madame Butterfly was the unfortunate Japanese teenage wife of US naval officer Pinkerton.
13 Happy to land close to snack counter! (10)
TIDDLYWINK – TIDDLY [happy, as in tipsy] + WIN [to land] + {snac}K
15 What’s up with your egg? (5,4)
SUNNY SIDE – cryptic definition, referring to the common way of frying an egg, sunny side up.
18 Little fellow tore his pants (7)
SHORTIE – (TORE HIS*) [“pants”]
20 Cry that is about to reverberate endlessly (7)
SCREECH – SC [this is] + RE [about] + ECH{o} [to reverberate, “endlessly”]
23 Dead weight (5)
PLUMB – double def. “Dead” as in, precisely.
24 A lot of horses bolt (4)
STUD – double def.
Edited at 2019-07-05 05:07 am (UTC)
Additionally there were a number of clues where the answer became apparent but I had little idea how the wordplay worked. I expect on a blogging day I would have put in the extra effort to find out, but my brain was addled by the time I got near to completing the grid so I didn’t bother to go back and revisit them.
Most satisfying was coming up with the unknown EWE-NECKED and finding it was correct. Most annoying was failing to think of TIDDLYWINK, my LOI, but only after cheating. I remember quite distictly failing to think of it on a previous occasion and being similarly annoyed with myself then.
Edited at 2019-07-05 05:59 am (UTC)
Not to worry. Great puzzle, with plenty of pleasing penny-drop moments and pertinacious perplexities
Just as well GLYCOSYL was a hidden: I surmised early on that radical was scientific rather than political or botanical (or several other -icals, perhaps) and crossers allowed it to fit.
I thought SALESROOM was a bit iffy, and CHAMBERS says it’s American (we Brits usually only have one sale at a time).
Lovely surface readings, though, especially 8 and 9.
9ac would have been a write-in if I had had any clue where the J was supposed to go. After that and Cojones, Odalisque, Niqab, I thought ‘uh-oh!’ but it all turned out ok.
Mostly I liked: Iodine and What’s up with your egg?
Thanks clever setter and V.
FOI 9ac REYKJAVIC (My dear mother used to go there a lot)
LOI 2dn PAYED!
COD 15dn SUNNY SIDE (how I like ’em!)
WOD 13dn TIDDLYWINK
A note to Mr. Myrtillus have you seen the new Gordon’s Gin Bottle? What a delightful design. I might just start having it for brekker, neat (sensa marmalade)! Do tell your friends at Northallerton.
A note to the PC Brigado re-18dn SHORTIE (little fellow)
PLEASE! What about the vertically challenged?
And 8dn MADAME – No carrot-tops,no birds,no bananas, no gone postals and no out to lunches! Further, I used the word Pac-a-Mac yesterday – I am informed it is now known in PC DC as a ‘rain poncho’!
Mr. Setter NB. a shortie is also a type of mac, as worn by a recent Tottenham Manager!
Edited at 2019-07-05 08:32 am (UTC)
Dodd’s (London)
La Republica (La Paz) (botanicals of rainforest tree bark)
Theodore (Pictish – from Ardross)
Edited at 2019-07-05 10:32 am (UTC)
Come on Lewis & Cooper – keep up! ‘Wooden Spoon’ (Wye, Kent) looks very good!
Edited at 2019-07-05 02:37 pm (UTC)
But as you say, each to their own.
The rest rather proved me right. It also proved that I can’t spell REYKJAVIK, where I had to leave some blanks in the middle until I’d got the excellent COJONES and the unknown PAYED into place. I nearly convinced myself that I was wrong about how to spell “omission” at 14a, too, until the American SUNNY SIDE turned up. Those were my last couple in.
NHO EWE-NECKED, didn’t really know of ENNIS’s existence, let alone that it was in Clare, had never considered what FRAPPE actually meant despite drinking them quite often at this time of year… Lots of question marks!
This programmer’s COD goes to 11a IODINE.
My first thoughts when I saw Cheltenham were of the race course and the Ladies’ College, so not as healthy as the answer,
Knowing how to spell REYKJAVIK off the bat would have saved me quite a lot of time I think, but I didn’t so it was my last in.
Thanks setter and v, have a lovely weekend everyone.
I had the Y and J transposed in Reykjavik for a bit, likewise the A and I in Niqab until I twigged what sort of brightness (or non-dimness in my case) was being measured.
Last in was the very well hidden hidden. Enjoyable challenge, thanks setter.
Lots of unknowns or near-knowns today, and some where it took a long time for the penny to drop (e.g. TOPIC). REYKJAVIK was theoretically my FOI but I was very unsure of the spelling, even given all the letters.
Does it look like the kind of egregious advertising you get on a lot of sites these days? LiveJournal was bought by a Russian firm more than a decade ago, so there’s probably nothing sinister about its adverts being in Russian, but an ad blocker might be the best option…
MER at SALESROOM as noted above, and not too keen on TO for closed, but some brilliant stuff here, liked Iodine, Glycosyl, (as chemists do), COJONES and the Puccini lady.
ENNIS, an otherwise pleasant but bland town, was famous in the late 90s for getting a 19 million euro government grant to become Ireland’s ‘Information Age Town’ where everyone was given PCs and fast internet and taught technology. When eircom pulled out in 2002, there was quite a lot left of the 19m to throw around, and it was duly dissipated.
Edited at 2019-07-05 05:12 pm (UTC)
I had a real battle with this on the train to Doncaster (a wonderful place for decent beer if nothing else). I originally planned a day at the races, but scrubbed that when I saw the card (only 4 runners in 3 of the races). Pontefract next Tuesday may be better.
NHO EWE-NECKED, or GLYCOSYL, and shot myself in the foot with a stupidly biffed “turn in ones sleep” which took ages to resolve.
I didn’t like the spelling of SHORTIE (to me that’s a biscuit !) but it wasn’t a bad puzzle all things considered.
Thanks to Verlaine for parsing IODINE (25 years in IT ? Bah !)
FOI TOPIC
LOI GLYCOSYL
COD ODALISQUE
TIME 24:05
Edited at 2019-07-05 12:08 pm (UTC)
I liked the ‘Cheltenham’ clue, my first in, and TIDDLYWINKS, my last in, mainly because I was so relieved to finish!
Thanks to setter and blogger.
Thanks verlaine and setter.
Odalisque and niqab make for a curious pair 😊
Struggling to see how WARRED and WARD differ phonetically
Edited at 2019-07-05 08:27 pm (UTC)
REYKJAVIK was going to be my FOI, but then I dithered, realising that the Icelanders are not to be trusted when it comes to spelling. It was therefore my 7thOI, after PAYED went in. I’m not especially nautical (although, thanks to a superb clerical error by the RYA, I have a licence that covers me to drive cruise ships), but the folk-etymology of the phrase “the devil to pay” has stuck with me.
EWE-NECKED was an NHO, but with all those Es there were only so many options. PLUMB was unknown as a weight – I know “plumb bob” (a weight on a string used to check if something is plumb, i.e. vertical), but had always assumed that the weight was the bob. I suppose you could use a plumb bob to check if your plumbing is plumb; but you probably wouldn’t.
All in all, my Friday has gone better than the rest of the week; thanks to setter and blogger alike.
Pretty tough in places but plenty of ‘ah’ moments.
No idea about GLYCOSYL so pleased to spot that. ODALISQUE is a lovely word.