There were no “meh” moments, just much merriment. I particularly liked the definitions so well hidden in plain sight for 1A, !0A and 21A. Definitions elsewhere were sneaky in other ways (“School of note”). I was quite taken with 28, which evokes the surreal transformation of part of a river into the bloom of a plant. Slick surfaces throughout.
I do (nasagarm)* like this, and italicize anagrinds in the clues.
| ACROSS | |
| 1 | One’s really commercial, making final billion (6) |
|
ADVERB — ADVER[ |
|
| 5 | Friendly parent heading off for church (6) |
| CHUMMY — …and that’s “Mummy” removing her head for CH(urch). | |
| 9 | Grown men unknown to welcome a flattering (9) |
| ADULATORY — ”Grown” is ADULT, “men” the timeworn OR (“other ranks”), taking in (“welcoming”) A. | |
| 10 | Hold on to power with son as a leader (4) |
| STOP — TO + P(ower) following S(on). This was my LOI, as I didn’t suspect that “to” was simply handing me half the answer (and was not part of the defintion). | |
| 11 | Governments panic with last of referendums (6) |
| STATES — Here “panic” is a noun. “I was in a panic…” or “I was in a STATE over my test results,” with (referendum)S for the plural. Governments panicking, and talk of referendums, have been very much in the news. | |
| 12 | This is a hazard for swingers, of course (4,4) |
| SAND TRAP — Get yourself tested regularly! CD. That’s a golf course, of course. | |
| 14 | Guys curse what they might get themselves into (8) |
| MENSWEAR — A semi-&lit, you might say, as you need “Guys” from the wordplay to see the definition as well. | |
| 16 | River one’s come across twice (4) |
| ISIS — I’s, two times. I must have learmed some time ago (here) that the stretch of the mighty Thames where Oxfordians row is, strangely, known by the name of an ancient Egyptian goddess, but at first I wanted IBIS (alas, there is no such river), a bird you might find on the Nile. | |
| 18 | Greasy or dirty (less satisfactory) (4) |
| OILY — [-s]OILY | |
| 19 | Seize Yorkshire town for pearl-adorned queen (8) |
| ARROGATE — Sounds like Harrogate, with the Pearly Queen signaling Cockney pronunciation | |
| 21 | Yo, this is the start of something! (4,4) |
| YEAR ZERO — The brief greeting at the beginning is an abbreviation for the answer. Brill! | |
| 22 | One barking? That’s what you call me? (6) |
| SETTER — DD | |
| 24 | Red fish you dropped (4) |
| TROT — TRO[-u]T | |
| 26 | A bad girl swiped one’s biscuit (9) |
| GARIBALDI — (A bad girl + I)* | |
| 27 | White’s fourth blunder creates consternation (6) |
| TERROR — [-Whi]T[-e] + ERROR | |
| 28 | White-tipped parts of a flower? (6) |
| RAPIDS — CD. You will find “flower”, flow-er, meaning “river” exclusively in cryptic puzzles, of course, but I like this clue a lot. | |
| DOWN | |
| 2 | Set a limit for what an angler might do? (4,3,4) |
| DRAW THE LINE — DD | |
| 3 | Might broker do this with market finally 100 per cent up? (5) |
| ERUPT — &lit, with (marke)T + PURE ( “100 per cent”) <— . I originally had EXULT, until corrected by MartinP, and, although LUXE wasn’t the most obvious equivalent of “100 per cent,” I still find my answer more appropriate for what a broker might do when the market is way up. Major eyebrow raise, actually, at this. | |
| 4 | More blaring from support ship that’s close to Dover (8) |
| BRASSIER — BRA (“support”) + “that’s” (that is, id est, IE) + R (“close to Dover”) | |
| 5 | Clubs attempting to ban bit of tasteless shouting (6) |
| CRYING — C(lubs) + [-t]RYING | |
| 6 | Tipping over pint, guest must be smashed (9) |
| UPSETTING — (pint guest)* | |
| 7 | First of martins circles low (3) |
| MOO — M(artins) + O O (“circles”) | |
| 8 | School of note to rear novices in a new way (13) |
| CONSERVATOIRE — (to rear novices in)* …and a cryptic definition. | |
| 13 | Robin could be described as one’s secret informer (1,6,4) |
| A LITTLE BIRD | |
| 15 | Violently strike wry author of heavenly words (9) |
| SKYWRITER — (strike wry)* I rather like the cryptic definition. The pilot writing, however, is often not the author of the words briefly seen in the empyrean. | |
| 17 | Bit of sports equipment in Ford saloon? (8) |
| CROSSBAR — ”Ford” as in CROSS, “saloon” as in BAR. What makes this surface plausible is thinking that the drinking establishment might be found in a movie directed by John Ford. | |
| 20 | Book creep held in hands (6) |
| LEDGER — L(EDGE)R, with “hands” being L(eft) and R(ight) | |
| 23 | Sheep swallowing half of lily flower (5) |
| TULIP — TU(LI[-ly])P | |
| 25 | Regret being naughty, but not bad ultimately (3) |
| RUE — RU[-d]E | |
I got that one right but was marked down on 10ac and 21ac, STOP and YEAR ZERO. For the former I was completely stumped and put SHOG for want of anything better and for the latter I put NEAR ZERO. I failed to spot the significance of Yo.
Thank you for STATES, ADVERB, OILY and RUE all of which I have question marks against in my notes.
49m 33s with the two errors I’ve mentioned.
Edited at 2019-03-17 03:04 am (UTC)
Oddly enough, I had written ‘meh’ on my hard copy.
Just a little tribute in my avatar to my old pal, who died two years ago today.
A most enjoyable puzzle where I was on David’s wavelength, and my only danger of being “bunkered” was in the SAND TRAP.
I took 3D to be the usage “to erupt into laughter”, so no quibble there.
FOI ADULATORY
LOI STOP
COD YEAR ZERO
TIME 8:59
Would like to know for future reference.
Thanks
On refelection U for ‘you’ (24ac) ought to be commonplace but it took me a little by surprise so perhaps we don’t see it very often.
On a point of tecnicality about LJ, why am I seeing a dotted rectangle around Phil Jordan’s contribution?
Edited at 2019-03-17 07:58 am (UTC)
Wait, now it’s back again.
…Looks like I may have accidentally hit the “Screen” button, as clicking “Unscreen” removed the lines.
I have no idea what “Screen” does!
Edited at 2019-03-17 08:24 am (UTC)
I too found ERUPT the least bad of the answers which occurred to me;happily I never thought of EXULT.
Otherwise I romped through most of this enjoyable puzzle in 31 minutes; very fast for me. Quite a bit more time needed for ERUPT and my last two which were OILY and YEAR ZERO which I failed to parse at the time; thanks for that. David
PS and Phil Jordan’s comments have now gone missing.
53 minutes all told.
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Before we look at the other good clues, I have a bit of news for you. Long-standing contestants will remember Bob Price of York (and later, Edinburgh) as a regular winner about four years ago. When we recruited a new Sunday Times Crossword setter at the end of 2015, Bob sent a sample which was very promising but not quite good enough to get the job. Later, we needed new setters for the TLS crossword, and Bob’s sample that time was definitely good enough to be chosen. He has recently sent another good enough puzzle, this time for the ST crossword setting spot which became available when Jeff Pearce stood down, and his first puzzle appears this coming Sunday. I have no idea when we will have our next vacancy, but I like to give some good clue-writing contestants a chance to show that they can step up from one clue a week to about thirty every three weeks.
DNF: for my LOI 3d I shoved in ‘EQUIT – dear me!
FOI 13dn A LITTLE BIRD
COD 1ac ADVERB
WOD 26ab GARIBLDI and his biscuits.
For a moment I wondered if “one’s” were an adverb, grammatically speaking, but obviously it’s a pronoun… I’d be grateful if any reply is expressed in terms appropriate for an utter simpleton.
In the matter of adverbs, one example is really.
One adverb is “really”.
One is really.
One’s really.
>
My average time of around the 3/4 hour across three sittings to get this one done. Started off with CHUMMY and finished back in the top right corner with STATES (which took a while to work out the requirement of ‘panic’ as a noun) and ERUPT (where, like others, I’d initially written in EXULT but couldn’t parse it satisfactorily).
Enjoyed the clever cd’s, particularly the clue for RAPIDS.