ACROSS
1. SPIN – mmm, not sure I’m nuts about this one; the idea is that the literal ‘short pleasure trip’ is a word that also goes in front of a certain type of ‘doctor’, the ‘spin doctor’. A little on the Guardian side for my taste first thing of a Monday morning.
4. CATTLE GRID – not mad about this cryptic definition either; the idea is that a cattle grid is a way into a country estate for vehicular traffic but not bovine, as a Hereford bull, for example, would be kept out. But surely it’s the road that allows access rather than the placement of metal cylinders on the road surface, which merely slow down the average non-bovine visitor rather than excluding him/her. Or did I get out of the bed the wrong side this morning?
9. COSTA RICAN – ‘countryman’ is the literal, gotten from COST (‘went for’) + A[me]RICAN, ME being the common 2-letter abbreviation for the NE state.
10. FORM – double definition, ‘form’ being slang for a criminal record.
11. DOMINO – ‘cloak’; my Becher’s Brook. A domino can refer either to ‘a long loose hooded cloak usually worn with a half mask as a masquerade costume’ (M-W) or to the mask itself. RC ‘dignitary’ (DOM) wearing (IN) + old (O). Dom is a ‘title prefixed to the names of some Roman Catholic dignitaries and Benedictine and Carthusian monks’ (ODO). For the record, having seen nothing in ***INO format, I chose DORIGO ahead of TORINO in honour of the Aussie who played in England for Chelsea, Leeds and Villa, if memory serves.
12. ANTEATER – a cryptic definition hardly saved by the exclamation mark.
14. FIRE – double definition, where FIRE = ‘set light to’ is an archaic usage.
15. SILVERSIDE – [Long John] SILVER + S[erved] + IDE; I’m not sure that Silver, quartermaster in the book Treasure Island, did much cooking, even if he was nicknamed ‘Barbecue’ by the men. But neither does Gordon Ramsay, and that doesn’t stop some people calling him a cook.
17. PISTOL-WHIP – ‘belabour’ (which can be a physical attack); PISTOL (‘Shakespeare’s ancient’ = ensign = standard bearer – to Falstaff) + W (wife) + HIP (with it).
20. LARK – double definition, lark being both an avian (‘flighty type’) and a bit of impish fun.
21. CHORIAMB – ‘a metrical foot used in classical verse consisting of four syllables, two short ones between two long ones (– ◡ ◡ –)’ (Collins); CHOR[e] + I AM + B[anging]. A ‘choliamb’ also exists in the prosodic world, if a setter cares to have a go at that one.
23. TANDEM – a bicycle built for two hidden in manhatTAN DEMocrat. Everyone together now: ‘Daisy, Daisy…’. Today’s earworm.
24. TOFF – ‘posh geezer’; T + OFF (as in ‘I took the day off’, where ‘off’ sort of equals ‘for relaxation’). One of two crossing ‘off’ clues.
25. SIX-SHOOTER – ‘weapon’; IX (XI reversed) in SS (SS stands for ‘steam ship’) + HOOTER (‘siren’). I doubt I’m the only one who had it starting with SEX-…
26. SERMONISER – the whole thing is the literal, and the wordplay is an anagram (marked by ‘perhaps’) of SIN and REMORSE. If a six-shooter were placed against my head, I would say this was a semi &lit, and if asked to explain, I would shout ‘Look!’ and run for it. My favourite, at any rate.
27. RITE – double definition, where ‘say’ is the homophone indicator (‘conforming with accepted standards’ – ‘right’ – sounds like ‘rite’).
DOWN
2. PHOTO-FINISH – Oh, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing! I spent ages on Becher’s, water-jump, Chair, before, ‘Snap!’, I saw the flashbulb. (Aintree is a famous racecourse in Liverpool, should anyone not know this.)
3. NUTRIMENT – ‘diet’; NUT followed by RENT around IM[p].
4. CUR+IOUS.
5. TICK ALL THE BOXES – TICK (‘second’) + ALL (‘complete’) + THE BOXES ‘(area of auditorium’).
6. LUNETTE – ‘an arched aperture or window, especially one in a domed ceiling’; LUTE around NET (‘clear’). Besides being a stringed instrument played by blokes with very high voices, ‘lute’ is also liquid clay or cement.
7. RO(OS)T.
8. DEMUR – double definition, one verbal, one adjectival; Well done, Kevin Gregg, who plays his part of Sergeant Wilson to perfection and spots today’s deliberate error: the literal is ‘raise scruples’, which is obtained by taking the last letter off DEMUR[e].
13. ENDORSEMENT – not sure how I would categorise this – a cryptic definition in search of a double, perhaps; I cannot remember the last time I had no penalty points, as ‘endorsements’ are called in these parts. Comes of living in the fast lane, I guess. Man.
16. SPLENDOUR – today’s winner of the clue most likely to remain unparsed competition. It’s ‘SPEND O around L[arge] followed by UR (the mother and father of old cities).
18. LIAISON – I (‘current’) + AIL reversed together + SON.
19. PITCHER – DD; easy for folk like me who only know a few baseball terms; an ‘Aintree’ clue in reverse.
21. CUTIS – a write-in for a beautician, but not for me; a simple procedure, really – just take the E out of a young woman in the genitive (CUTIE’S).
22. OFFER – I didn’t do this online, so know not how many bishes I made, but I imagine I am right with this one and that it is just a dreadful play on words, whereby something, like a cheese you buy for you vacation in Perigord, leave in a cupboard and forget about, may be said to get ‘offer’ (ie higher, ie pongier) with the passing days. I have an idea of a category I’d like to put this one into, but it’s not for putting into print…
Overall a strange mix of giveaways (TANDEM) and the more difficult (CHORIAMB). Left at the end with ANTEATER and LUNETTE. Do short-sighted French people walk around with pairs of domes on their eyes?
Edited at 2015-02-09 03:26 am (UTC)
I had ‘pea-shooter’ for a bit, but saw it was obviously wrong. That gave me ‘check all the boxes’, which didn’t fit, but eventually I remembered the UK verb I was looking for. I couldn’t recall ‘silverside’, either, although we had it a couple of months ago, otherwise I would have finished the whole thing much more quickly. As it was, it was a bit of a slog.
Edited at 2015-02-09 05:43 am (UTC)
I though splendour was not quite right since old really does double duty as O and as a qualification for UR since it isn’t a city today.
last one in was lunette since I couldn’t think of anything else. I had never heard of lute as cement but it was at least plausible.
And that error was DOMINO, where I threw in torino. Didn’t parse COSTA RICAN, or PISTOL WHIP, dnk that LUTE was cement. I too wanted it to be sex goddess at 25ac, and DEMUR went in with a shrug.
But then I would go for either CATTLE-GRID or OFFER as Clue Of the Day, which I realise might not be everyone’s choice.
Edited at 2015-02-09 09:06 am (UTC)
CHORIAMB from countless former clues for the last four letters + generous worplay.
I think CATTLE GRID’s OK – without one, visitors would have to negotiate a hole in the ground, so it certainly allows access.
In my mind, SACK is more to do with plundering and pillaging, but I suppose you might want to play with matches once you’d done that, just to be emphatic.
The truly terrible pun for OFFER gets my CoD.
Andrew
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On edit – Z just overtook me on the grid.
Edited at 2015-02-09 11:26 am (UTC)
And just like our blogger, I couldn’t get sex out of my head at 25.
I can’t see the problem with CATTLE GRID. The whole point of the thing is to allow access to humans (whether in cars or not) but not cows, which is pretty much exactly what the clue says.
Edited at 2015-02-09 12:16 pm (UTC)
Ulaca, don’t tell Galspray but although Tony Dorigo was born in Australia he shrugged off his lowly birthright and played for England.
The “give away” tandem was my last in (too busy trying to fit NY into it somewhere to create the name of one of the myriad carriages I’ve never heard of due to my ignorance of Georgette Heyer’s oeuvre).
I got the Dom in 11 from a tentative connection with Benedictine and I’m still none the wiser as to what makes Pistol ancient.
Re Pistol, my understanding is that ensign, which means standard bearer, is derived, after liberal application of Grimm’s Law, from ‘ancient’ (noun).
Add me to the predictably misled over 25a.
CHORIAMB was new to me, though clear from the wordplay. I can’t help thinking that the same mental aberration that produced 28 different names for salmon, and 73 names for cricket positions, is also responsible for the unlimited number of metrons. If the Greeks had spent less time worrying about the distinction between “Ti dum de diddly-dum” and “Dum de dum-diddly” their economy would probably be in better shape.
That aside, I quite enjoyed this one.
Like anonymous Andrew, I assumed straight away that “estates” meant “cars”, but then wasted ages assuming that “access to …” was referring to a particular type of car door.
An enjoyable start to the week.