Some nice stuff here, I thought, with 25 across getting my COD nod, not least for putting me in mind of the newly elected politician here in Hong Kong, who became something of an Internet sensation when he responded to a question posed by a reporter for an English-language television station by telling him repeatedly that his party would do their “breast” to make the most of a disappointing result. 43 minutes for me, with one wrong, which will learn me to stop inventing words.
ACROSS
1. GAME – double definition.
3. ACETIC ACID – AC + IT reversed in ACE + CID. I was pretty proud of myself thinking of ‘lactic acid’, but sadly, when I got round to parsing the clue, I couldn’t quite see how ‘lac’ could mean great. I thought it just about possible, though, on the basis that a ‘vide’ could mean a hole at 24a.
9. END-USER – ENDURES (‘puts up with’) with two letters doing a swap. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never liked the expression ‘end-user’. But then, I don’t like words like ‘product’ (as in ‘We need to make more product’) or ‘grow’, when used transitively (‘We aim to grow our business by 200% this year’), so I score highly on the intolerant-of-anything-that-smacks-of-bu
11. NITPICK – TIN reversed + PICK. ‘Nitpick’ is putting itself in contention for the Kim Kardashian Award for High Visibility.
12. TONGUE-IN-CHEEK – INCH in TONGUE + EEK. Collins to the rescue prevention of nitpicking wise, with its seventh nominal sense of TONGUE being ‘utterance or voice (esp in the phrase give tongue)’.
14. CHAPS – double definition, putting one in mind of frontier folks who ate beans.
15. OUBLIETTE – [d]OUB[t] + I in LETTE[r] for the place even Jason Bourne would be hard pressed to escape from on his motorbike after he’s ridden across the Algerian rooftops chasing the bloke who looks like Youri Djorkaeff.
17. THE CREEPS – HE in an anagram* of RESPECT.
19. EERIE – E + ERIE.
21. SOCIAL CHAPTER – SOCIAL + CHAPTER (as in ‘Dean and Chapter’, which body stalks Trollope’s novels). I’m no fan of the European Union (or whatever it’s calling itself now), so I will merely quote Oxford: ‘The section of the Maastricht Treaty dealing with policy on social matters such as workers’ rights and welfare.’
24. EMINENT – NET* around MINE (not ‘vide’).
25. ABREAST – ‘level’, as in he pulled ‘level’ in the final furlong plus a suckling babe doing what comes naturally.
26. MAGISTRATE – MAGI + sounds like ‘straight’.
27. SKID – S + KID.
DOWNS
1. GREAT SCOTT – the definition is ‘my’ (more often masquerading as a single word such as ‘cor’ or ‘blimey’); GO-CART TEST*.
2. MADONNA – DO in MANNA.
4. CARNIVORE – the literal is ‘elephant is not one’; CARE around N + IVOR[y].
5. TUNIC – TUNI[s] + C.
6. CATHERINE PARR – TRAIN PREACHER*. ‘Survived’ in terms of the mnemonic, Ms Parr holds the distinction of being the most-married English queen – unless Elton John gets on his bike…
7. CRICKET – CRICK + ET. Personally, I think it’s unfair that a bunch of insects rubbing their forewings together and annoying the bejeezus out of you should be bracketed with a group of chaffinches trilling outside your window of a summer morning, but I had no say when the language was growing its meanings.
8. DUKE – K in DUE.
10. SQUASH RACKETS – the slightly posey full name for the preferred game of city types who grow businesses. I had ‘squash ladders’ for a while for no particular reason other than it fitted.
13. DESECRATED – this may prove to be the clue that makes the writing (and indeed reading) of this blog worthwhile in terms of crossword-related explication. Actually, I just worked it out myself: it’s DE[con]SECRATED, where a ‘con’ (‘criminal’) leaves ‘no longer to be used religiously’.
16. BUSHCRAFT – H in BUS + CRAFT – a useful skill-set (there’s another one) for those who like to get lost in the desert to find themselves.
18. EASTING – finally we have it, today’s clue for hot debate. I can’t find a single reference to that big ball of fire in the various dictionaries I’ve looked at. What we have are variations on the Oxford line, viz. ‘Distance travelled or measured eastward, especially at sea’. That star may rise in the east, but it doesn’t stay there from our perspective, so I have to say I don’t get this. If I were playing Scrabble, I would certainly challenge. But will the letters be withdrawn or will the setter get 5 points and a smug smile on his face? For the record, it’s T in EASING.
20. RATPACK – AT + P[erson] in RACK.
22. ASTER – [m]ASTER. Our flower du jour.
23. SEAM – SEA + M.
My one cavil is that although a duke may be a royal, a duke is not necessarily a royal.
Definitely meatier and more enjoyable than the average Monday. DNK OUBLIETTE or SOCIAL CHAPTER, and took a long time to get the ACETIC ACID / CARNIVORE crossers.
The clue for RATPACK was a bit (ahem) tortured, but I’ll give it COD for the definition.
Thanks setter and Ulaca.
ACETIC ACID was my first one in having considered “nitric” and rejected it as it would leave a bit more than a sour taste, and then “citric” which seemed more likely until I considered wordplay.
Add me to the growing list of solvers who doesn’t understand the “sun” reference in 18dn. I lost time there considering “wanting” before checkers did for that idea.
I wondered if there was more to “swapping a couple of positions” at 9ac, S (South) and R (Right) perhaps. I’m not sure it needs to be that specific but if I’d been blogging I’d probably have mentioned it just in case.
I took EASTING to mean the further East you go, the nearer you get to the sun, i.e. something of an &lit. But I’m not totally convinced.
Edited at 2016-04-18 07:12 am (UTC)
Chirping crickets count as exotic here in SE England, and thus far more interesting than boring old chaffinches ..
About 45mins, the last 10 or so on ABREAST. ‘evident’ didn’t occur to me, so no worries there. Put in EASTING from wp, assuming it was some technical term I dnk, so no worries there, either. Lots biffed, which, on this occasion, turned out to be ok.
COD: OMNIVORE
I know it is correct but I don’t like ‘M’ as the abbreviation for the plural marks – for me just the singular so LOI 23dn SEAM
I’m with Ulaca on most of his crabiness – bar his COD –
clinging is not the primary verb that associates babies with breasts – is it!? MY COD is 4 dn CARNIVORE
I loathe passengers on trains and planes being referred to by over-chirpy staff as customers!
For 24ac I just banged in EVIDENT – it is Monday after all – so 55 mins DNF
Today was a :(-
Marks slightly crippled old man finally with a grumpy old man(7)
horryd Shanghai
I’ve no first hand experience of the baby situation, but it strikes me that, if the equipment is sufficiently voluminous, a baby might well cling thereto.
I didn’t understand EASTING, but the wordplay was very clear so it didn’t bother me at the time. Seems a bit odd now that I know what it’s supposed to mean.
The two that almost did me were 3ac, where I had LACTIC, since lac/lakh is “an indefinitely vast number” which adequately translates “great”, and while I have no idea what lactic acid tastes like, I thought its association with milk might well indicate “sour”. This left me at 4d with the rather zen contemplation of what an elephant is not, beginning with A, hoping it wasn’t AIRWORTHY, because then I’d have had to discount Dumbo and make some changes elsewhere in the grid.
This sort of thing messes with your mind. What is the sound of an elephant not being? And if it isn’t something in the middle of the forest, does its trumpeting make a noise?
Deke.
Alan (will add an avatar one day)
horryd Shanghai
Helen – a long time lurker (also in Hong Kong)
I did like 1d
Tyro Tim
It came up in 2008 and 2011 as well for certain. Welcome to the club!
I guess that those Brits of my age who had to study French would know an oubliette as a place where you are just forgotten. As said above, it comes up once in a while.
Like others I have my doubts about EASTING; and like Olivia I associate RATPACK with Sinatra and Co. (My wife has retired to bed so I’ll have to ask her another time, but I seem to remember her telling me that Peter Lawford came from round Ealing way and that she used to know a girl he’d dated in his younger days.)
I assumed I’d finish a long way down the TCC leaderboard, but I seem to have fared better than likely. Anyway I found this a pleasant, reasonably straightforward start to the week.
Looking back, I can’t see why I wasn’t faster, since everything seems reasonably straightforward in retrospect. I wasted a little time with “lactic acid” at 3ac, and my botanical knowledge failed me at 22d, but there were no NHOs – not even a single cricketing reference nor an obscure life-stage of a salmon (apart from 6d).
27 minutes, and all correct including parsing of desecrated & not understanding easting. But nearly tripped up trying to justify TERM as join.